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AUTHOR: 


SIMCOX,  GEORGE 
AUGUSTUS 


TITLE: 


STORY  OF  LATIN 
LITERATURE  FROM.. 

PLACE: 

NEW  YORK 

DA  TE : 

1883 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 


Master  Negative  # 


BIBLIOGRAPHIC  MICROFORM  TARHFT 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


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Simcox,  George  Augustus,  1841 T-  1^05, 

\  liistory  of  Latin  litoraturo  from  Ennius  to  Boetliins, 
by  Geor^^e*  Augustus  Simcox  ...  New  York,  Harper  & 
l)rotliers,  1883. 

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LATIN    LITERATURE 


Vol.  I. 


i#: 


A    HISTORY 


OF 


LATIN   LITERATURE 


FROM 


ENNIUS   TO   BOETHIUS 


BY 


GEORGE    AUGUSTUS    SIMCOX,    M.A. 

FELLOW  OF  queen's   COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


IN  TWO   VOLUMES 

Vol.  I. 


V 


NEW    YORK 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN   SQUARE 

1883 


PREFACE. 


An  ideal  history  of  anything  would  tend  to  be  a  his- 
tory of  everything ;  w  hether  the  primary  subject  were 
letters,  institutions,  manners,  wars,  or  arts,  the  same 
figures,  the  same  facts  would  present  themselves  over 
and  over  again  in  slightly  different  lights.  In  illustrat- 
ing a  truism,  one  period  or  one  subject  is  as  good  as 
another.  Take  the  days  of  Domitian.  His  colossal 
equestrian  statue,  the  Hercules  which  held  the  dessert 
of  Vindex,  the  sculpture  gallery  of  Vopiscus,  which 
were  celebrated  by  Martial  and  Statins,  all  ought  to  find 
their  place  in  a  perfect  history  of  arts,  of  manners,  or  of 
letters.  Was  Domitian's  effigy  less  ridiculous  than  the 
Duke  of  Wellington's?  Was  Vindex  the  happy  pos- 
sessor of  an  original  of  Lysippus  inherited  from  Sulla, 
and  Hannibal  and  Alexander  the  Great  ?  Was  Statins 
enthusiastic  over  a  collection  of  skilful  reductions  from 
ancient  masterpieces  or  a  collection  of  audacious  forg- 
eries that  professed  to  be  original  models  ?  It  is  hardly 
his  fault  that  we  have  to  guess;  contemporaries  knew. 
Again,  take  Roman  law ;  it  would  find  a  place  in  a  his- 
tory of  Roman  style,  of  Roman  science,  of  Roman  soci- 
ety, for  jurists  developed  a  style  of  their  own,  elabo- 
rated their  science  for  its  own  sake,  accommodated  its 
matter  to  the  movement  of  society  and  the  needs  of 


391023 


VI 


PREFACE. 


the  day;  but  the  monuments  are  hopelessly  defective. 
Almost  all  the  positive  law  of  the  great  writers  of  the 
second  and  third  centuries  is  lost ;  we  have  only  two 
elementary  treatises,  both  mutilated,  and  the  miserable 
fragments  of  the  Digest  selected,  not  because  they  were 
representative,  but  because  they  could  be  clipped  to  fit 
into  the  motley  mosaic.  The  laws  of  the  republic  have 
perished,  from  the  twelve  tables  downward.  The  great 
lawyers  of  the  republic  hardly  wrote  at  all ;  the  great 
lawyers  of  the  early  empire  were  superseded.  Once 
more,  a  history  of  Roman  grammar  ought  to  include  a 
history  of  Roman  schools  and  schoolmasters  from  the 
Decemvirs  to  Cassiodorus,  which  would  be  equally  in- 
teresting to  the  student  of  literature,  of  manners,  and 
of  institutions ;  for  the  teaching  of  grammar  up  to  a 
point  which  often  varied  was  endowed  in  various  ways. 
But  here,  too,  the  greater  part  of  the  evidence  has  dis- 
appeared. Most  of  what  we  know,  of  the  Latin  gram- 
marians is  in  the  shape  of  glossarial  notes  reduced  to 
the  curtest  shape  by  the  laziness  of  successive  copyists  ; 
the  rest  is  partly  a  few  minor  treatises  of  good  times,  pre- 
served quite  at  hap-hazard,  and  rather  more  extensive 
treatises  of  worse  times,  preserved  because  they  were 
written  last ;  partly  meagre  biographical  notices  due 
to  writers  increasingly  inclined  to  abbreviate.  We  ask 
almost  in  vain  what  books  the  grammarians  of  a  given 
day  read,  how  much  of  their  reading  they  communi- 
cated to  their  pupils,  or,  indeed,  to  anybody  but  their 
note-books. 

True,  matters  might  be  worse :  there  are  no  such  de- 
plorable gaps  in  Latin  literature  as  in  Greek.  The  loss 
of  the  lyric  po€try  of  Lesbos  outweighs  the  loss  of  all 


PREFACE, 


Vll 


the  dramatic  poetry  of  the  age  of  Augustus,  of  almost 
all  the  tragic  poetry  of  the  age  of  Nero  and  Vespasian  ; 
the  New  Comedy  is  better  worth  regretting  than  the 
covicedia  togata,  and  the  mimes  of  Sophron  than  the 
mimes  of  Laberius.  We  can  spare  the  predecessors  of 
Livy  better  than  Philistus,  Ephorus,  and  Timaeus,  or 
even  Theopompus,  and  the  gaps  in  Polybius  may  be 
set  against  the  gaps  in  Tacitus. 

Still,  we  can  follow  the  movement  of  Greek  literature, 
as  a  whole,  more  easily  than  that  of  Latin. 

Hardly  any  period  of  Greek  literature,  except  that 
between  the  death  of  Cimon  and  the  death  of  Demos- 
thenes, is  so  well  known  as  the  periods  of  Latin  litera- 
ture from  the  death  of  Sulla  to  the  death  of  Augustus, 
from  the  death  of  Nero  to  the  death  of  Trajan  ;  but  at 
Rome  all  is  darkness  before  and  between  and  beyond, 
till  one  comes  to  the  days  of  Diocletian.  Even  the 
days  of  Augustus  are  full  of  insoluble  problems.  What 
were  the  tragedies  of  Varius  or  the  comedies  of  Melis- 
sus,  the  freedman  of  Maecenas,  like?  We  are  just  told 
that  Melissus  tried  to  reproduce  the  tone  of  a  better 
society  than  his  predecessors ;  we  cannot  tell,  if  he  was 
ever  acted,  how  his  plays  were  received,  whether  they 
had  more  literary  value  than  ''  Caste  "  or  "  Ours."  Did 
Horace,  in  his  satire  on  legacy-hunters,  imitate  the 
**  Necyomantia"  of  Laberius,  as  we  happen  to  know 
that  Theocritus  imitated  Sophron  ?  What  was  Augus- 
tan oratory  like  ?  Even  Antiphon  is  an  intelligible  per- 
sonality, while  Cassius,  Messalla,  and  Pollio  are  names, 
and  nothing  more.  Before  Ennius  we  hardly  know 
whether  there  was  a  vernacular  literature  at  all,  whether 
the  Fauni  and  Carmentes  were,  as  Professor  Nettleship 


VI 11 


PREFACE, 


PREFACE. 


IX 


has  suf^gested,  its  official   guardians,  or  whether  they 
were  supernatural  beings  who  inspired  it. 

There  are  other  difficulties  less  directly  due  to  our 
ignorance.  How  shall  we  separate  what  belongs  to 
biography,  what  belongs  to  philosophy,  what  belongs 
to  history  in  the  narrower  sense  from  what  belongs  to 
literature?  The  history  of  the  talent  of  Tacitus  is 
complete  without  the  history  of  his  career,  even  if  we 
guess  that  his  enforced  compliances  under  Domitian 
imbittered  him.  Can  we  say  the  same  of  the  talent 
of  Horace?  Can  one  judge  fairly  of  the  intention,  the 
good  faith,  the  effectiveness  of  speeches  like  Cicero's 
and  apologetical  memoirs  like  Caesar's  without  some 
appreciation  of  the  political  situation?  If  political  his- 
torians have  done  something  less  than  justice  to  Cicero, 
something  else  than  justice  to  Cx^sar,  can  one  take  the 
political  history  for  granted?  Can  one  even  take  for 
granted  the  convenient  classification  of  orators  as  adher- 
ents of  assumed  aristocratical  and  democratical  parties? 
Can  one  discuss  the  method  of  Lucretius's  philosophi- 
cal poem,  or  even  Cicero's  philosophical  tracts,  without 
trenching  a  little  upon  their  matter?  We  need  a  fur- 
ther knowledge  of  early  Roman  history  to  form  an 
adequate  opinion  of  the  unconscious  hypocrisy  of  Livy, 
who  neglects,  to  an  extent  we  do  not  know,  the  real 
springs  of  affairs — of  which  we  generally  know  just  as 
much  as  he  allows  us  to  guess — in  favor  of  all  sorts  of 
imaginary  motives,  coined  sometimes  in  the  interests 
of  edification,  sometimes  in  the  interests  of  family  or 
national  vainglor^^ 

When  we  come  to  the  fourth  century  and  to  a  litera- 
ture mainly  Christian,  it  is  far  more  puzzling  to  draw 


the  line  between  the  history  of  literature  and  the  his- 
tory of  theology  than  it  was  before  to  draw  the  line 
between  the  history  of  literature  and  the  history  of 
philosophy.  Professor  Ebert,  in  his  history  of  Christian 
Latin  literature,  cuts  the  knot  by  excluding  dogmatic 
theology  and  admitting  everything  else.  Such  a  rule  ex- 
cludes a  book  as  well  worth  reading  as  the  *'  De  Trini- 
tate  "  of  St.  Augustin,  and  includes  the  dreary  chron- 
icle of  Prosper,  and  other  chronicles  more  dreary  still. 
It  tells  us  much  more  of  St.  Jerome  as  a  continuator  of 
Suetonius  and  Eusebius  than  of  his  quaint  and  passion- 
ate controversies,  which  never  had  the  misfortune  to 
become  text-books  in  Carlovingian  or  mediaeval  schools. 

Of  course,  it  is  a  confession  of  defeat  to  despair  of 
organic  unity  and  fall  back  upon  a  sort  of  comparative 
portrait-gallery,  or  rather,  perhaps,  one  should  say,  a 
series  of  sketches,  now  slighter  and  now  fuller,  contrast- 
ed ill  or  well,  with  more  or  less  of  background  to  throw 
them  up.  Even  then  it  is  not  easy  to  settle  the  ques- 
tion of  scale.  Some  of  my  readers  may  think  that 
overmuch  space  has  been  given  to  a  writer  like  Horace, 
because  the  historian  found  him  sympathetic;  to  a  writ- 
er like  Ovid,  for  an  opposite  reason,  because  it  seemed 
necessary  to  sample  a  large  assortment  of  wares  repeat- 
edly if  it  was  too  difficult  to  analyze  them  ;  while  a 
writer  like  Ouinctilian  may  have  received  less  than  his 
due  because  the  form  of  his  work  is  hardly  separable  in 
any  degree  from  the  matter,  and  it  seems  as  if  any  space 
reserved  for  him  would  be  absorbed  by  a  colorless,  un- 
profitable pr(fcis. 

My  original  aim  in  writing  was  to  do  something  tow- 
ards making  Latin  literature  intelligible  and  interesting 

A* 


..; 


PREFACE. 


as  a  whole  to  the  cultivated  laity  who  might  like  to 
realize  its  literary  worth,  whether  they  read  Latin  or 
no.  It  seemed  impossible  to  do  this  in  any  adequate 
measure  within  the  limits  of  a  hand-book  for  beginners. 
Hand-books  for  advanced  students  exist  already,  but 
their  necessary  severity  of  method  reduces  every  au- 
thor to  a  skeleton,  and  almost  excludes  literary  criti- 
cism. Perhaps  one  may  hope  that  even  scholars  famil- 
iar with  the  masterly  outline  of  Bernhardy,  and  the  rich 
storehouse  which  we  owe  to  the  self-denying  diligence 
of  Professor  Teuffel,  may  find  these  volumes  serviceable 
in  their  way.  My  own  obligations  are  greatest  to  Pro- 
fessor Teuffel,  from  whom  (and  in  a  less  degree  from 
Professor  Ebert)  I  have  borrowed  largely  for  details  in 
the  chronological  tables  which  have  been  prefixed  to 
each  volume  in  order  to  compensate,  in  some  measure, 
for  any  want  of  precision  in  the  text. 

My  best  thanks  are  due  to  the  Rev.  R.  L.  Clarke,  of 
Queen's  College,  Oxford,  and  to  my  brother,  the  Rev. 
W.  H.  Simcox,  of  Weyhill,  who  have  read  the  proof- 
sheets  and  enabled  me  to  correct  many  inaccuracies, 
also  to  the  Rev.  Sir  G.  W.  Cox  for  much  valuable  ad- 
vice. I  am  also  indebted  to  a  very  suggestive  paper 
by  Professor  Nettleship,  upon  Roman  satire,  and  to  the 
author  of  an  article  in  the  CornJiill  Magazine,  who  con- 
victed Aulus  Gellius  of  boasting  that  he  had  picked  up 
on  a  second-hand  book -stall  the  erudition  he  really 
owed  to  Pliny. 


CONTENTS    OF    VOL.  I. 


Chronological  Table 


PAGE 
XV 


INTRODUCTION. 


Italian  Races  :  Latin — Sabellian 
— Etruscan      .... 

Some  Contrasts  of  Italian  and 
Greek  Culture 

Latin  Literature  as  Classical 


PAGE 


2 

7 


Latin  Literature  as  Dependent 
upon  Greece :  its  Epochs 

The  Actual  Beginning  of  Latin 
Literature :  Livius  Androni- 
cus  and  Nasvius 


10 


i6 


PART  I. 
early  literature  of  the  republic. 


CHAPTER   L 
Ennius  :  the  **  Annals  " 


22 


CHAPTER   IL 

latin  tragedy  under  the 

republic. 

Ennius 34 

Pacuvius  .  .  .  .  •  37 
Accius  .  .  .  .  '41 
His  Successors  ....     42 


CHAPTER  HL 

EARLY   LATIN   COMEDY. 

Plautus        .... 
Caecilius      .... 


46 
53 


Terence 54 

Afranius 60 

CHAPTER  IV. 

ROMAN   SATIRE. 

Ennius 62 

Luciiius 63 

CHAPTER  V. 

EARLY   ROMAN    HISTORY. 


The  "Annals"  . 

.     69 

Fabius  and  Cincius     . 

•    73 

Glabrio  and  Scipio     . 

.    74 

Cato  and  his  Imitators 

•    75 

Caelius        .... 

•    79 

XII 


CONTENTS. 


PART    II. 

LATER    LITERATURE    OF   THE    REPUBLIC. 


CHAPTER    L 

LAST  POETRY  OF  THE  REPUBLIC. 


Lucretius  .         .         .        .         _ 
Catullus 

CHAPTER    H. 

ORATORY  OF  THE   REPUBLIC. 

Cicero's  Predecessors 
M.  Cornelius  Cethegus     . 

Cato 

C.  La^lius .... 

Scipio:  Galba  . 

Porcina  :  Fannius  :  Carbo 

Scaurus     .... 

G.  Gracchus 

C.  Galba:  C.  Fimbria 

Antonius  and  Crassus 

Crassus     .... 

L.  Marcius  Philippus 

C.  Aurelius  Cotta 

P.  Sulpicius 

Rufus:    Curio:    C.  Julius  Cx 

sar         .... 
Hortensius 

Cicero       .... 
His  Position  and  Training 
His  Poetry 
Early  Speeches 
Prosecution   of  Vcrres :   other 

Speeches 
Consulship  Contest  with  Cati 

lina        .... 
"  Pro  Murena  :"  Quarrel  with 

Clodius. 
Exile  of  Cicero. 
His    Return    and    Subsequent 
Policy    .         .        .         .157 
Cicero's    Struggle    with   Anto- 
nius         


PAGE 

84 

107 


122 
122 

123 

126 
128 
129 

130 
132 

134 

136 
136 

137 
139 

146 

147 
152 

155 
^11 


His  Death 

Cicero's  Philosophy . 

Minor  Works   . 

Political  Treatises    . 

Rhetorical  Works    . 

Oratorical  Characteristics 

Cicero's    Contemporaries    and 

Successors:    Auctor  ad  He 
-  rennium 
M.  Claudius    Marcellus :    Cae 

sar  .... 

M.  Calidius  :  C.  Curio :  M.  Cai 

lius  Rufus:  C.  Licinius  Cal 

vus         .... 
M.  Brutus 
Pollio  and  Messalla  . 


PAcr 

it)3 
165 

174 

175 
177 


iSc 
186 


1 88 
191 
192 


15S 
163 


CHAPTER  IH. 

LATER   HISTORIANS  OF  THE 
PUBLIC. 

Later  Annalists  and  Memoir 
Writers  :  Cn.  Gellius  :  M 
i^2milius  Scaurus,  etc.    . 

Q.Claudius  Quadrigarius 

Valerius  Antias 

Cornelius  Sisenna     . 

Licinius  Macer 

/Eli us  Tubero  . 

T.  Pomponius  Atticus 

Cornelius  Nepos 

Varro        .... 

Caesar's  Commentaries     . 

Gallic  War 

Civil  Wars 

Hirtius      .... 

Hirtius's  Continuators 

Sallust       .... 

The  "Catilina" 

The  "Jugurtha" 


RE- 


195 
196 

198 

200 

201 

202 

203 

203 

206 

208 

210 
216 
219 

224 
229 


CONTENTS. 


xiu 


PART    IIL 

AUGUSTAN    AGE. 


CHAPTER   L 

General  Considerations    . 


PAGE 

244 


CHAPTER   H. 

VERGIL. 

Early  Writings 

.     256 

l)Ucolics    .... 

•     259 

Georgics    .... 

.     264 

yEneid      .... 

.     271 

CHAPTER   HL 

HORACE. 

Satires      .... 

.     287 

Second  Book  of  Satires    . 

.     294 

Epodes      .... 

•     300 

First  Three  Books  of  Odes 

•     305 

First  Book  of  Epistles 

.     314 

Last  Lyrics 

.     318 

Second  Book  of  Epistles 

and 

his  Poetica     . 

319,320 

CHAPTER   V. 

THE  LAST  POETS  OF  THE  AGE  OF  AU- 
GUSTUS, AND  THEIR  SUCCESSORS. 

PAGE 

374 


Cornelius  Severus  and  Marsus 

Pedo 

Gratius  Faliscus 

Manilius   . 

Phaedrus   . 

T.  Calpurnius  Siculus 

CHAPTER   VL 

LIVY. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

TIBULLUS:    PROPERTIUS:    OVID 

Tibullus    . 

Third  and  Fourth  Books 
Propertius 
Second  Book    . 
Third  Book 

Fourth  and  Fifth  Books 
Ovid 

"  Letters  of  Heroines" 
"  Amores  " 
"Art  of  Love" 
*'  Remedies  of  Love  " 
"  Metamorphoses  "  . 
The  "  Fasti "    . 
Exile  of  Ovid    . 
*'Ibis"      . 

•'  Tristia "    and    Letters    from 
Pontus  ..... 


324 
326 

327 
330 
331 
332 
334 
335 
341 
347 
352 
354 
367 
369 
370 

370 


377 
Zll 
379 

385 
389 


Dionysius  of  Halicarnassns 

426 

Pompeius  Trogus 

.     426 

CHAPTER   VH. 

TECHNICAL  LITERATURE 

Hyginus    .... 

.     428 

Fenestella 

428 

M.  Verrius  Flaccus  . 

.     428 

Vitruvius  .... 

430 

Pompeius  Mela 

431 

The  Sextii        .         .         .        . 

431 

CHAPTER   VHL 

THE    DECLAIMERS. 

The  Elder  Seneca    . 

433 

M.  Porcius  Latro 

434 

The  Character  of  the  Themes 

•     435 

Latro        .... 

443 

Gallio        .... 

445 

Albucius   .... 

.     445 

Mamercus  Scaurus    . 

■     447 

Labienus  and  Cassius  Severus 

■     447 

CHAPTER   IX. 

HISTORICAL  COMPILATIONS. 

M.  Velleius  Paterculus      .         .451 

.     452 


Valerius  Maximus 


INDEX 461 


A 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


Rome  founded  .... 

Accession  of  Numa   .     .' 

I 

Tarquin  expelled  .     .     .  ? 


L.  Cornelius  Scipio  Bar- 
batus,  consul .     .     .     , 


L.  Cornelius  Scipio,  son 
of  above  consul  .     .     . 

Naval  victory  of  C.  Duil- 
lius 


Close  of  the  first  Punic 
War 


P.  Cornelius  Scipio  Afri- 
canus  born    .     .     .     . 


B.C. 

?  753 

?  713 

753-5 
505 


Salian  song  (only  known  in  fragments). 

Liturgy  of  Arval  brothers  (preserved 

i     in  an  inscription  of  a.d.  218). 
12  Leges  Regime  (in  fragments). 

Treaty  with  Carthage  (translated  by 
Polybius  from  the  inscription  ac- 
cepted /y  ///;/;  as  contemporary). 
320  Decree  to  reassure  the  people  of  Tibur, 
who  imagined  they  were  suspected 
of  an  intention  to  revolt :  from  an 
inscription  not  contemporary,  found 
at  Tibur  ;  formerly  in  the  Barberini 
collection,  now  lost. 

298 
CI  rc3. 
280-1  CQ^P'^^P^^s  of  the  Scipios. 


272 
260 

?  254 
244 

243 


241 
240 
239 

235 


Livius  Andronicus  came  to  Rome. 

Columna  Rostrata.  The  inscription  is 
an  ancient  restoration,  and  is  now 
defaced  in  several  places. 

T.  Maccius  Plautus  born. 

Lex  Silia  de  Ponderibus  (on  weights 
and  measures),  quoted  by  Festus. 

Lex  Papiria  de  Sacramentt),  providing 
that  the  city  praetor  on  coming  into 
office  should  hold  an  election  of  three 
officials,  charged  to  see  that  all  liti- 
gants should  pay  into  court  the  sums 
they  staked  to  be  consecrated  (/.  ^. 
confiscated)  if  they  failed  to  make 
good  their  plea. 


First  play  performed  at  Rome. 
.Birth  of  Q.  Ennius. 

i 

Cn.  Naevius  first  exhibits,  according  to 
A.  Gellius. 


XVI 


CHKOXOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHROXOLOGfCAL    TABLE. 


xvii 


M.  Porcius  Cato  born  . 
Hannibal    besieges    Sa- 

guntum 

Hannibal     crosses     the 

Alps 

Battle  of  Cannae     .     .     . 

Oppian  law  passed  to 
forbid  women  to  i)os- 
sess  more  than  half 
an  ounce  of  gold  jewel- 
lery   

Defeat  and  death  of  I  las- 
drubal  at  bena  (Jallica. 


M.  Cornelius  Cethegus 
(whom  Knnius  praises 
as  an  orator)  is  con- 
sul     

Battle  of  Zama  .... 


15. c. 
234 

219 

21S 
216 


»< 


215 
210 

207 


205 
204 


203 
202 
199 


IJirth  of  M.  Pacuvius,  sister's  son  of 
Knnius. 

Q.  Fabius  Pictor,  the  historian,  is  sent 
I     as  ambassador  to  Delphi. 


First  known  play  of  Plautus,the  Sticluis. 

Thanksgiving  ode  by  L.  Livius  Andro- 
nicus,  who  also  wrote  (a)  abridged 
translation  of  the  Odyssey;  (/■-)  trage- 
dies—  Achilles  (ti.  Karkinos),  tAjax 
Mastigophorus  '  (So|)hocles),  Armo- 
rum  Judicium  (/lischylus  and  Sopho- 
cles ?),  *Fc|Uos  Trojanos''*  {}  Sinon 
of  Sophocles),  /ILgisthus,  *Hermi<)ne 
(Sophocles?),  Andromeda  (?  huripi- 
des),  *Hanae  {}  Sophocles),  Ino 
( ?  yEschylus),  Tcreus  ;  {c)  comedies 
— Gladi(»lus  (perhaps  an  historical 
play),  Ludius,  Verpus  (or  Virgas  or 
Auriga).  Editions  :  all  fragments — 
H.  liiintzer,  Berlin,  1835  :  fragments 
of  plays  in  O.  Ribbeck,  Scaenicce  Poe- 
sis  Romanorum  relliquiie,  Berlin, 
1871,  1873  :  fragments  of  tragedies 
are  exi)lained  in  "  Die  Romische 
Tragodie  im  Zeitalter  der  Republik 
dargcstellt,"  O.Ribbeck,Berlin,  1872. 

Death  of  P.  Licinius  Crassus  Dives,  a 
celebrated  orator. 

ILnnius  comes  to  Rome. 


Cn.  Noevius  dies  in  exile  :  he  wrote  {a) 
History  of  the  first  Punic  War  in  Sa- 
turnian  verse  (the  first  two  books 
treated  of  the  mythical  history  of 
Rome  and  Carthage)  ;  (/')  tragedies 
— *  Andromache,  Daiiae^  Eqitos  Ttq- 


*  Plavs  where  the  Greek  original  is  extant  are  marked  with  an  obelus. 

2  Plays  possibly  repeated  by  later  writers  are  marked  with  an  asterisk. 

3  Plays  possibly  based  on  an  earlier  Latin  work  are  printed  in  italics. 


li.C. 


Battle  of  Cynoscephalae, 
end  of  war  with  Philip. 


Battle  of  Magnesia 


Campaign  of  M.  Fulvius 
Nobilior,  patron  of  Kn- 
nius in  --Etolia    .     .     . 


197 
196 

195 
190 


189 


Jdniis,  Hector  Proficiscens  ( }  Asty- 
damus),  /l^sione  (.-^  Philocles),  Ij^hi- 
genia  (Euripides  and  Sophocles), 
Lucurgus  (?  /Eschylus  and  Poly- 
phradmon),  on  the  Thracian  legend 
*  of  Bacchus  and  his  enemies  ;  (r)  his- 
torical plays  —  Clastidium,  on  the 
conquest  of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  Romu- 
lus, perhaps  Lupus,  /.  e.  Alimonium 
Ronuili  et  Remi  ;  (d)  comedies — 
Acontizomenos  (the  javelin  trick  like 
the  Chinese  knife  trick),  Agitatoria, 
Agrypnuntes  (the  Wideawakes.?), 
Appella,  Ariolus,  *Carb()naria,  Chla- 
niydaria,*Colax  (the  Flatterer),Com- 
motria  (the  Waiting  -  woman),  Co- 
rollaria  (which  turned  upon  a  gar- 
land), Dementes,  Demetrius  (/.  ^., 
.''  Diobohuia),  Dolus,  Figulus,  Glau- 
coma (in  which  some  old  man  had 
dust  thrown  in  his  eyes),  Gymnas- 
ticus,  Lampadio,  Leo,  Ludus  (per- 
haps rather  Lupus),  Nagido,  Nautae, 
*Nervolaria  (in  which  some  one  was 
bo-imd),  Pcclex  (the  concubine),  Per- 
sonata  (which  turned  on  a  mask),  Pro- 
jectus  (an  abandoned  child),  Quadri- 
gemini,  Stalagmonissa  (either  on  an 
earring  or  a  slave  named  Stalagmus), 
Stigmatias  (on  a  slave  who  wiis 
branded), Tarentilla  (the  scene  or  the 
heroine  came  from  'l'arentum),Tech- 
nicus,  Testicularia,  Tribacchus,  Tri- 
phallus,  Tunicularia.  The  text  of 
the  authors  who  quote  these  plays  is 
uncertain,  as  often  to  leave  it  doubt- 
ful whether  a  play  belongs  to  Livius 
or  Na2vius  or  Novius.  Editions — 
all  the  fragments  by  E.  Klussman, 
Jena,  1843.  l*""ic  War,  H.  Vahlen, 
(  Leipsic,  1853).  Plays  —  O.  Rib- 
beck. 

Birth  of  Terence  ;  death  of  M.  Corne- 
lius Cethegus. 

Speech  of  Cato  in  defence  of  the  Op- 
pian law. 

Alleged  date  of  interview  between  P. 
Cornelius  Scipio  Africanus  and  Han- 
nibal, recorded  by  Acilius  Glabrio. 


XVI 11 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


M.  Porcius  Cato,  Censor. 


15. c. 

1 86 


184 


Senatus  Consultum  de  Bacchanalibus, 
known  from  a  copy  found  at  Teriolo 
in  Calabria,  now  at  Vienna. 

Death  of  Plautus ;  Stichus  (from  Me- 
nander),  210  K.C.,  Miles  Gloriosus 
'(from  the  Alazon  of  Menander),  per- 
formed 204  and  186,  Cistellaria  (un- 
certain original),  199  B.C.,  Persa,  196 
K.C.,  Aulularia,  after  195  B.C.,  Mer- 
cator,  not  before  195  B.C.,  Asinaria 
(from  the  Onagus  of  Diphilus),  194 
B.C.,  Curculio,  after  193  B.C.,  Rudens 
(uncertain  original),  192  B.C.,  Pseudu- 
lus,  after  192  B.C.,  Truculentus,  190 
B.C.,  Bacchides  (from  Menander,  with 
additions),  189  B.C.,  Poenulus  (from 
Menander),  Casina  (from  Diphilus), 
beft)re  186  B.C.,  Trinummus  (from 
Philemon),  186  B.C.,  Epidicus  in  pres- 
ent form,  after  165  B.C.  Other  plays 
of  uncertain  date  recognized  by  Varro 
are  the  Amphitruo  (of  uncertain  ori- 
gin), Menaechmei,  Mostellaria  (from 
the  Phasma  of  xMenander),  Capteivei, 
Vidularia:  the  latter  has  been  lost. 
L.  /4illius  Stilo  recognized  twenty-five 
plays  as  genuine,  probably  including 
those  marked  below  in  quotations, 
of  which  the  Conmorientes  is  at- 
tested by  the  prologue  of  the  Adel- 
phi,  the  Saturio,  and  Addictus,  by 
Aulus  Gellius,  VI.  iii.  4  (on  the  au- 
thority of  Varro),  as  written,  like  an- 
other play  (not  named),  in  the  mil- 
ler's shop.  Kitschl  thinks  the  fol- 
lowing may  be  the  nineteen  plays 
about  which  Varro  hesitated  on  the 
ground  that  the  style  was  like  Plau- 
tus's  :  "  vSaturio,"  "  Addictus  "  (on 
his  own  experience  as  a  bankrupt  .-'), 
P>oeotia,  N'eyi'olaria^  F'retum,  Trige- 
mini,  .'*  Acharistio  Astragalizontes, 
Parasitus  Piger,  Parasitus  Medicus, 
*'  Conmorientes  "  (from  Diphilus), 
Condalius,  Gemini  lyenones,  Fenera- 
trix,  Frivolaria,  Sitellitergus,  Fugi- 
tivi,  Cacistio,  Ilortulus,  Artemo — all 
most  likely  stock  plays,  more  or  less 
touched  up  by  Plautus  when  revived. 
Other  plays  attributed  to  Plautus  are 
*'  Coliix,'"  attested  by  the  prologue  of 
the  Eunuchus,  Carbonaria^  Acharis- 
tio, Bis  Compressa,  Aruns,  Agroecus, 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XIX 


Hannibal  dies  at  the 
Court  of  Prusias     .     . 

P.  Scii)io  Africanus  in 
exile  in  Campania  .     . 

Istrian  campaign  cele- 
brated by  Ennius    .     . 


Cato  speaks  in  favor 
of  the  Voconian  law, 
which  restricted  wom- 
en's right  to  inherit 


B.C. 


?i83 
181 

180 
170 

169 


Dyscolus,  Phlegon,  Cornicula,  Col- 
cestis,  Baccaria, Caucus,  vel  Praedones. 
There  is  no  satisfactory  edition  of 
Plautus  later  than  that  of  Grono- 
vius,  reissued  by  Ernesti,  1760  a.d.  ; 
Weise's  edition  (Leipsic,  1847)  ^"^^s 
been  generally  condemned.  Ritschl's 
three  editions,  one  mostly  posthu- 
mous, are  all  incomplete  ;  so  is  the 
smaller  edition  of  Fleckeisen,  which 
is  based  upon  Ritschl's.  The  MSS. 
fall  into  two  families,  one  represented 
by  the  Ambrosian  palimpsest,  the 
rest  represent  the  Calliopian  recen- 
sion, undertaken  at  the  end  of  the 
fourth  century  a.d.  •^ 


Birth  of  Lucilius. 

Birth  of  L.  Accius,  or  Attius,  the  tragic 
poet,  son  of  a  freedman  of  Pisaurum. 

Birth  of  Tiberius  Gracchus.  Death  of 
Q.  Ennius.  The  Annals  form  eigh- 
teen books — I.  to  death  of  Romulus  ; 
II.  Numa,  Tullus,  and  Ancus  ;  III. 
the  story  of  the  Tarqnins  to  the  end 
of  the  monarchy  ;  IV.  the  history  of 
the  Republic  till  the  capture  of  Rome 
by  the  Gauls  ;  V.  the  Samnite  Wars  ; 
VI.  the  war  with  Pyrrhus  ;  VII.  first 
Punic  War  ;  VIII.  IX.  war  with 
Hannibal  ;  X.  XI.  war  with  Philip; 
XII.  uncertain  ;  XIII.  XIV.  war  with 
Antiochus  ;  XV.  the  war  of  Fulvius 
in  /Etolia,  and  the  death  of  the  elder 
Africanus ;  XVI.  in  honor  of  the 
Denter  brothers,  who  distinguished 
themselves  in  the  Istrian  wars ; 
XVII.  XVIII.,  a  continuation  to 
1 74 B.C.,  with  an  autobiography.  The 
last  three  books  seem  to  form  an  ap- 
pendix, the  death  of  Scipio  being  the 
original  conclusion.  Of  the  tragedies 
of  Ennius,  Alexander,  Andromeda 
(  .''  Athamas),  *  Hecuba,  t  Iphigenia, 
tMedea  Exul,  Melanippa,  Telephus, 
^Aiidromacha  ^chmalotis  are  taken 
from  Euripides,  so  probably  Nemea, 
Alcumaeo,  Athamas, Thyestes  (great- 
ly  simplified),  Cresphontes,  Erech- 


XX 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXI 


i;.f" 


Battle  of  Pydna;  downfall, 
of    Macedonian    mon- 
archy      


1 68 


t( 


165 

164 

161 
159 


theus,  Medea  Atheniensis,  and  tPhoe- 
ni>-sx'.  Achilles  was  from  Homer, 
and  another  from  Aristarchus  (an 
Alexandrine  poet),  the  tKumenides 
from  /Kschylus,  the  t  Ajax  from 
Sophocles.  The  Ambracia,  an  his- 
torical play  probably  on  the  capture 
of  the  town  by  Fulvius,  i)ossibly  on 
the  war  with  Pyrrhus,  whf)se  capital 
was  there.  The  Cupuncula  and  the 
Pancratiastes  are  the  only  known 
titks  ot  comedies.  All  the  frag- 
ments, including  the  Satires  and 
Hedyi)hau;ctica,  have  been  edited  by 
Vahien  (Lei|)sic,  1856),  the  dramatic 
fragments  by  Kibbeck,Scxnic3L-  Poe- 
sis  Romanorum  Kelliquiac. 

Cato's  speech  in  defence  of  the  Rho- 
dians.  Death  of  CaL'cilius  Statins. 
( )f  his  known  coniedies,  Andria,  An- 
drogynos,  Chalcia,  Chryseon,  Dar- 
danus,  Kphesio,  Hymnis,  Hypoboli- 
maanis  (there  seem  to  have  been  at 
least  three  plays  under  this  title), 
Rastraria,  Imbrii,  Karine,  Nauclerus, 
Ol)olostates,  Pausimachos,  Philu- 
mena,  Plorium,  Polumeni  (on  the 
same  plot  as  the  Persa  of  Plantus?), 
Progamos,  Synaristosac,  Synci^hebi, 
Syracus)n,Titthe,  are  taken  from  Me- 
nander,  Chrysis  and  Epiclcros.''  from 
Antiphancs,  Kpislolograpluis  from 
PositMppus,  Epistula  from  Alexis. 

Acpiilius,  author  of  the  Boeotia  ascribed 
to  Plautus. 

r>irth  of  I'apirius  Carbo,  the  orator. 

M.  /Kmilius  Scaurus,  the  orator  and 
princeps  senatus,  born. 

C.  Titius's  speech  on  the  laziness  of  the 
Senatorian  courts. 

Death  of  Terence.  The  Andria  from 
Menander's  Andria  and  Perinthia,i66 
\\x.\  Ilecyra  from  A])ollodorus,  ac- 
cording to  Donatus,  165  n.c. ;  Ileau- 
tontimorumenos  from  Menander  ac- 
cording to  the  argument  163  H.c,  re- 
peated 146  and  138  l!.c.  ;  Kunuchus 
tVom  Menander's  Colax  (prologue  to 
Kunuchus),  161  H.c,  Adclphoe"  from 
Menander,  with  a  scene  from  the 
CTj'i'aTrof^i'i/avojTfc  of  Diphiius,  166 
B.C.;  Phormio  from  the  kTTiciKaZ.'\- 
/ifi'ofof  Apollodorus,  159B.C.;  edited 


b.C. 

155 

15S 
154 


151 


150 


Institution  of  Quaestiones 

Perpetuae 149 


by  W.  Wagner,  London  and  Cam- 
bridge, 1875. 

Embassy  of  Diogenes  the  Stoic,  Crito- 
laus  the  Peripatetic,  Carneades  the 
Academic. 

P>irth  of  P.  Rutilius,  a  Stoic  orator. 

Birth  of  C.  Gracchus.  L.  Afranius 
born  ?  Known  titles  of  plays — (To 
gat2e),  Abducta,  /Equilia,  Auctoratus, 
Augur,  lirundisinae,  Bucco  Adopta- 
tus  ( }  a  transition  to  the  Atellan 
farces),  Cinerarius,  Compitalia,  Con- 
sobrini.  Crimen,  Deditio,  Deposilum, 
Divortium,  Emancipatus,  Epistola, 
Exceptus,  Fratriae,  Ida,  Incendium, 
Libertus,  Mariti,  Matertenr,  Mcgalcn- 
siii,  Omen,  Pantelius,  Pomi)a,  Pri- 
vignus,  Prodigus,  Proditus,  Promus, 
Perosa,  Purgamentum,  Repudiatus, 
Sella,  Sorores,  Quinctia^  Suspecta, 
Talio,  Temerarius,  Thais,  Titulus, 
Virgo,  Vopiscus  ;  fragments  in  Rib- 
beck. 

Cato's  speech  against  Servius  Sulpi- 
cius  (ialba.  Galba's  speech  in  his 
own  defence. 

L.  Titinius,  a  contemporary  of  Terence  : 
the  earliest  writer  of  Comoediae  'I'o- 
gatae.  The  known  titles  of  his  plays 
arc  :  Barbatus,  Caecus,  Fullonia,  Ge- 
mina,  Privigna,  Psaltria,  *Quinctia, 
Veliterna,  Insubra  ;  fragments  in 
Ribbeck. 

Death  of  Cato  the  Censor.  We  have 
fragments  or  titles  of  ninety-three  out 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  speeches 
which  circulated  in  his  name ;  six 
out  of  the  forty  which  he  made  in 
his  own  defence  ;  the  most  interest- 
ing fragments  belong  to  the  De 
Sumtu  Suo,  In  A.  Minucium,  De 
Falsis  Pugnis,  Suasio  Legis  Vo- 
coniae,  De  Dote,  Contra  Ser.Galbam 
ad  Milites,Pro  Libertate  Rhodiorum. 
All  his  speeches  were  edited  in  his 
old  age.  His  "Origines,"  undertaken 
174  B.C.,  were  carried  down  to  149  B.C., 
to  the  prosecution  of  Galba,  '■'Qui 
diripiiit  Liisitanos ;"  the  first  bo(jk 
dealt  with  Rome  and  its  institutions, 
the  second  and  third  with  the  origins 
of  all  Italian  states,  the  fourth  and 
fifth  with  the  first  and  second  Punic 


XXll 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


B.C. 


C.  Laelius   the  younger, 
consul 


146 
143 


Scipio  /Emilianus  before 
Numantia 

Capture  of  Numantia 

Election  ofTiberiusGrac- 
chus  as  tribune,  who  is 
murdered  on  his  re-! 
eleciion 

Death  of  P.  Scipio  /Emi- 
lianus     


139 

134 

^11 


129 


wars  respectively ;  the  last  two  are  an 
after-thought.  His  chronology  was 
without  synchronisms;  it  was  only  by 
comparing  his  chronology  with  others 
that  brougiit  out  that  he  fixed  the 
foundation  of  the  city  750  B.C.  He 
wrote  also  'ATroipO^y^ara,  alter  his 
study  of  Greek.  I'raecepta  ad  P'ilium, 
besides  an  encyclopaedia  of  agricult- 
ure, soldiery,  and  oratory,  included 
probably  a  Carmen  de  Moribus,  in 
uncertain  metre:  the  fragments  are 
variously  scanned,  as  Saturnian,  or 
trochaic,  or  Sotadean.  Editions  : 
fragments  in  H.  Jordan,  Leipsic, 
1869:  the  work  "  De  Re  Rustica," 
addressed  to  T.  Manlius  on  a  definite 
estate,  in  the  first  volume  of  Gesner's 
'•  Rei  Rusticae  Scriptores." 

Capture  of  Carthage  and  Corinth. 

Birth  of  M.  Antonius,  the  orator. 


140       Pacuvius    and    Accius    each    have    a 
tragedy    performed.      T.  Quinctius 
Atta.    The  known  titles  of  his  plays 
( Togatae  )    are    Addictus,  /Edilicea, 
Aquae    Caldae,   Conciliatrix,  Gratu- 
I     latio,  Lucubratio,  *Materterae,  *Me- 
I     galensia,  Nurus,  Saturq,  Socrus,Sup- 
I     plicatio.    Tiro    Proficiscens ;    frag- 
!     ments  in  Ribbeck. 
Birth  of  L.  Licinius  Crassus,  the  orator. 


First  writings  of  Lucilius. 
Publication  of  the  "  Annales  Maximi" 

in  eighty  books  by  Mucins  Scaevola, 

Pontifex  Maxim  us. 


C.  Sempronius  Tuditanus,the  historian, 
is  consul.  Death  of  M.  Pacuvius. 
Ar/nor-iim  yudiciiim  (/Eschylus), 
Teucer  (Sophocles),  Iliona,  Dulo- 
restes  (Chrysippus,  Euripides),Chry- 
ses  ( .''  Sophocles),  Herviiojia  (Sopho- 
cles), Niptra  (the  death  of  Ulysses, 
Sophocles),  Pentheus,  Antiopa  (Eu- 
ripides), Periboea  ( .''  Euripides),  Ata- 
ianta,  ?  Amphitruo,  Medus,  Protesi- 
laus  (Euripides),  Paullus,  an  histori- 
cal play  ;  fragments  in  Ribbeck. 
The  quotations  from  the  Annals  and 


CHRO.YOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXIU 


C.  Gracchus  is  elected 
tribune 

C.  Fannius  is  elected  con- 
sul     

C.  Scribonius  Curio,  the 
orator,praetor.  C.Grac- 
chus is  slain  .     .     . 


Cn.  Pompeius  born.  Ma- 
rius  consul     .     .     .     . 


Consulate  of  C.  Fimbria. 

Triumph  of  M.  Antonius, 

the  orator 


Defeat  of  the  Cimbri  by 
Marius  at  Aquae  Sex- 
tiae,  by  Marius  and 
Catulus  at  Vercellae    . 


B.C. 

125 
124 

123 

122 

121 

120 

119 

114 

III 

106 
103 


104 

102 

lOI 


Satires  are  insignificant  and  uncer- 
tain. 

Hostius  writes  "De  Bello  Istrico,"  in 
three  books. 

P.  Sulpicius,  the  orator,  born.  C.  Aure- 
lius  Cotta,  the  orator,  born. 

L.  Caelius  Antij)ater,  the  historian,  is 
praetor. 

His  speech  against  Gracchus. 


L.  Calpurnius  Piso,  the  annalist,  is  cen- 
sor. 

L.  Crassus,  the  orator,  accuses  Carbo, 
the  orator,  who  commits  suicide.  L. 
Cornelius  Sisenna  born. 

Q.  Hortensius,  the  orator,  born.  L. 
Crassus,  the  orator,  defends  Lucinia, 
the  vestal. 

M.  Antonius,  the  orator,  defends  him- 
self on  a  charge  of  incest  with  a 
vestal. 

He  prosecutes  Cn.  Papirius  Carbo,  who 
had  been  defeated  by  the  Cimbri  two 
years  previously. 

M.  Tullius  Cicero  and  P.  Canutius,  the 
most  eloquent  speaker  not  of  sena- 
torial rank,  born. 

Tereus,  last  known  play  of  Accius. 
Death  of  Sex.  Turpilius,  author  of 
Boethuntes,  Canephorus  (from  Me- 
nander),  Demetrius  (from  Alexis), 
Demiurgus  and  Epiclerus  (from  Me- 
nander),  Hetaera,  Lindia,  Paedium, 
Thrasylion,  Paratemnon,  Philopater 
(from  Antiphanes),  Ictria.  Frag- 
ments in  Ribbeck. 

P.  Eicinius  Crassus  speaks  in  favor  of 
the  Servilian  laws. 

Death  of  Lucilius  ;  birth  of  A.  Furius, 
who  celebrated  the  victories  of  Catu- 
lus. 

Novius,  first  known  writer  of  Atellan 
farces  ?  120  B.C.  The  titles  known 
are  Agricola,  Asinarius,  Bubulcus, 
Bubulcus  Cerdo,  Dotata,  Duo  Dos- 
senni,  Eculeus,  Fullones,  Fullones 
Feriantes,  Hercules  Coactor,  Maccus 
Copo,  Maccus  Exul.,  Milites  Pome- 
tinenses,  Mortis  et  Vitae  Judicium, 
Tabellaria,  Togularia,  Vindemiator  ; 
fragments  in  Ribbeck. 


XXIV 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXV 


Consulate    of  M.  Ante 
nius,  the  orator  .     .     . 

Consulate  of  L.  Crassus, 
the  orator,  who  carriesj 
the  law  ajjainst  usur-( 
pation  of  Roman  citi- 
zenship       


lOO  l)irth  of  Lucretius.  M.  Antonius  de- 
fends M.  Aquillius,  and  resists  Satur- 
1  ninus  the  tribune,  who  brought  up 
old  charges  of  misconduct  in  the 
Cimbrian  war  to  damage  a  political 
opponent. 


99 
95 


Death  of  Crassus.  Tri- 
bunate and  death  of 
Dru>us 

The  Marsic  war  beszins  . 


M.  Antonius  defends  Xorbanus,  who  is 
prosecuted  by  P.  Sulpicius  Rufus  for 
alleged  misconduct. 


94  Death  of  .Eniilius  Scaurus.  Death  of 
Accius  ?  Tragedies,'!  elephus  (  ?  /^vs- 
chylus),  Myrmidones  ( /Kschylus  ), 
Epinau>imache  ( ?  .i'^schylusl.Xycte- 
gresia  (the  tenth  book  of  the  Iliad), 
Armonim  Jiidnium,  IMiilocteta  (.^is- 
chyliis,  Sophocles,  and  lunipides 
were  all  used),  Neoptolemus  (uncer- 
tain), Antenoridae,  Deiphobus  (both 
perhajis  from  Sophocles),  Astyanax, 
Troades,  Hecuba,  Kurysaces  (So])ho- 
cles),  Hellenes  (the  tlect  at  Aulis  trt)m 
A  pollodorus),(Enomaus(  Sophocles), 
Chrysippus,  Atreus  (  ?  Soj^hocles), 
Pelopida,  Clytemnestra,  ^-l-^gisthus, 
Agamemnonidx  (  ?  /.  q.  Erigona), 
Thebais,  IMitcnissae  (Ji^uripides),  An- 
tigonaand  Epigoni  (from  Sophocles), 
Erii)hyla  (Sophocles),  ALiiiito  (Eu- 
ripides), Ali)hesiboea,  Meleager,  Me- 
lanippus(  turipides),  Diomedes,  Ath- 
amas,  Medea  (  ?  /.  q.  Argonautas), 
Phinidx  (from  an  earlier  stage  of  the 
voyage),  Prometheus  (/Eschylus),  lo 
(Chceremon),  Alcestis,  Amphitiuo, 
Persidae,  Heraclidae  (Euripides),  An- 
dromeda, Minos,  /.  q.  Minotaurus 
(Euripides),  t  Bacchae  (  Euripides), 
Stasiastne  /.  q.  'I'ropaeum  Liberi  — 
Praetextata^ ;  Brutus,  /Eneadae  sive 
Decius  —  Annales,  Saturae  ;  insig- 
nificant fragments.  Eragments  of 
plays  in  Ribbeck. 

91         Cicero  takes  the  toga  virilis  ;  writes  his 
poems  on  Glaucus  and  Marius.    Cn. 

"  Varius  prosecutes  M,  Antonius. 

90        Cicero  translates  the  Phasnomena  of 
A  rat  us. 

89        [..  Pomponius  Eononiensis,  celebrated 

89   B.C.,  according  to  Jerome,  as  a 

1     writer  of  Atellan  farces.    The  titles 


\ 


Exile  of  Marius      .    .     ., 
Cinna  is  consul, and  mas-i 
sacres  the  nobility,  in- 
cluding   M.  Antonius, 

the  orator j 

Return,  7th  Consulate,! 
and  death  of  C.  Ma- 
rius   


Sulla  makes  peace  with 
Mithridates    .     .     .     . 
Sulla  conquers  Rome 


Sulla's  legislation  .    .     , 

Sulla  abdicates .     .     .     . 

Caesar  prosecutes  Dola- 

bella 


War    with    Sertorius    in 
Spain 

C.  Aurelius    Cotta,    the 
orator,  is  consul .    . 


B 


B.C. 


88 

(( 
86 


84 


f3 
82 


81 
79 

78 


76 

75 
74? 


known  are  ^toli,  Agamemno  Sup- 
positus,  Aleones,  Annulus  Posterior, 
Armorum  Judicium,  Aruspex,  Asina! 
Augur  Bucco,  Campana  CapelJa,  Ci- 
thanstna,  Dotalis,  Fuliones,  Hirnea 
Pappi,  Kalendae  Martiae,  Labicana, 
Leno,  Maccus,  Macci  Gemini,  Mac- 
cus  Miles,  Maccus  Sequester,  Mac- 
cus   Virgo,   Marsya    Medicus,   Pan- 
nuceata.    Pappus    Agricola,    Pappus 
1  rasteritus,    Pappus    I^atruus,    Phi- 
losophia,    Prasco    Posterior,    Pisca- 
tores,  Pistor,  Sponsa  Pappi,  Prsefec- 
tus  Morum,  Pytho  Gorgonius,Vacca 
vel    Marsuppium,  Vermones  (  >   the 
slave-breeders),  Verres.Egrotus,Ver- 
res  Salvus.     Fragments  in  Ribbeck. 
1  nlxinate  and  massacre  of  P.  Sulpicius 
Birth  ot  Catullus.     Cicero  studies  un- 
I     der  Apollonius  Malo  at  Rome, 

Sallust  born.    Cicero  writes  four  books 
on   rhetoric,  of  which  the  two  now 
extant  (De  Inventione)   form    part 
Hortensius  defends  Cn.  Pomi^eius  on 
a  charge  of  embezzlement. 

Birth  of  Brutus.  Cicero  translates 
Xenophon  and  Plato ;  studies  with 
Diodotus,  the  Stoia 


Confiscation  of  the  property  of  Valerius 
Cato,  the  grammarian  and  poet,  and 
friend  of  Catullus.  Cotta,  the  orator 
returns  to  Rome.  Varro  of  Atax  is 
J3orn.  M.  Ca^lius  Rufus,  the  orator, 
born.  C,  Licinius  Calvus,  the  orator, 
born, 

Cicero's  first  extant  speech. 
Cicero  travels  in  Greece. 

L.  Cornelius  Sisenna,  the  historian,  is 
prastor.  P.  Rutilius,  the  Stoic  and 
orator,  dies.  The  works  of  Q.  Clau- 
dius, L.  Valerius  Antias,  C.  Licinius 
Macer,  and  L.  Cornelius  Sisenna  all 
belong  to  this  period. 

Cicero  returns  to  Rome. 


C.  Asinius  Pollio,  the  orator  and  his- 
torian, born. 


XXVI 


CIIRONOLOGfCAL    TABLK. 


CHROXOLOGICAL    TABLE 


xxvu 


War  with  Spartacus.  Lu- 
cullus  relieves  Cyziciis, 
blockaded  by  Mithri- 
dates 

Defeat  and  death  of  Spar - 
tacus ;  Mithridates  is 
driven  into  Armenia    . 

rompeius  and  Crassus 
consuls.  L.  Aurelius 
Cotta,  the  brother  of 
the  orator,  is  prxtor. 
and  carries  a  refoini  in 
the  law  courts     .     .     . 


B.C. 

73 


The  Galiinian  law  gives 
Pompeius  chief  ct)m- 
niand  against  the  pi- 
rates       

L.  Koscius  Otho  carries 
a  law  reserving  four- 
teen rows  of  seats  tor 
the  kniiihts.  Manilian 
law,sni)i)orted  by  Cice- 
ro,gi  ves  Pompeiusconi- 
niand    against    Mithri-' 


dates 


Cicero  stands  for  consul. 
Agrarian  law  of  Rul- 
lus.  Conspiracy  of 
Catilina 

Ccesar  contrives  to  have 
Rabirius  Postumus  ac- 
cused of  treason  be- 
cause he  was  suspected 
of  being  concerned  in 
the  death  of  Sat  urn  i- 
nus  wiien  tribune  of 
the  commons 

Alleged  incest  and  sacri-i 
lege  of  Clodius  .     .     . 

Triumph    of   Pompeius. 
Q.  Cicero  sent  to  Asia! 
as  propraetor.   Clodius 
is  accused  of  incest 

Coalition  of  Caesar,  Pom- 
peius, and  Crassus .     . 


71 
70 


69 

C8 

67 


66 
64 


6; 


61 
60 


Death  of  Cotta,  the  orator,  and  of  C. 
Licmius  Macer. 


Cicero    designated    asdile,   prosecutes 
Verres. 


Cicero  is  aedile.  Hortensius  is  con- 
sul. 

Cicero  begins  his  correspondence  with 
Atticus.    M.Valerius  Messalla  born. 

Cicero  elected  praetor. 


Birth  of  Horace. 

Cicero's  speech  in  the  White  Gown 
j  against  the  coalition  between  An- 
I     tonius  and  Catilina. 

Cicero  consul.  Defends  Rabirius  Pos- 
!  tumusandL.Mura?na.  Speaks agaiivst 
'     Rullus  and  Catilina. 


62        Q.  Cicero  is  elected  praetor. 


Cicero  writes  a  poem  in  three  books  on 
his  consulate,  and  a  Latin  memoir 
and  a  Greek  history  on  the  same 
subject.     At  this  time  Q.  .tlius  Tu* 


Caesar  is  consul  :  is  ap- 
pointed to  command 
in  Gaul.  Cicero  re- 
fuses to  act  as  his  lieu- 
tenant or  to  serve  on 
the  Campanian  Com- 
mission, whereon  Cae- 
sar procures  the  elec- 
tion of  Clodius  as  tri 
bune 

Cicero  is  banished  at  the 
end  of  March.  M.  Ca- 
lidius  is  elected  prae- 
tor     

Cicero  is  recalled,  August 
4  ;  returns  to  Rome, 
September  4 .     .     .     . 

Caesar  meets  Pompeius 
and  Crassus  at  Lucca, 
and  arranges  that  each 
of  them  shall  hold  an 
important  province  for 
five  years 

Crassus  and  Pompeius 
are  elected  consuls  and 
carry  out  the  arrange- 
ment       

Cicero  sends  his  brother' 
to  serve  under  Cxsar 
in  Gaul I 


B.C. 


59 


58 

<{ 
57 


56 

55 

<( 
54 


hero,  one  of  Q.  Cicero's  lieutenants, 
is  engaged  upon  his  historical  work. 
M.  Caelius  prosecutes  C.  Antonius 
(Cicero's  colleague  four  years  be- 
fore), who  is  unsuccessfully  defended 
by  Cicero. 


Cxsar  commences  his  Commentaries 
on  the  Gallic  war  when  going  into 
winter-quarters.  P.  Nigidius  Figu- 
lus  is  praetor. 

On  September  30  Cicero  speaks  be- 
fore the  Pontifices  for  the  restora- 
tion of  his  house,  consecrated  upon 
the  motion  of  Clodius. 


Death  of  Lucretius,  whose  works  were 
published  after  his  death  ;  best  edi- 
tion by  H.  Munro,  Cambridge.  Best 
MS.,  Leyden  A.,  ninth  century. 

Calvus   accuses  Vatinius,  who   is   de- 
fended by  Cicero.     C.  Asinius  Pollio 
prosecutes  C.  Cato,  who    had    been 
tribune  56  B.C.    Possibly  in  this  year 
Catullus  dies.    The  poems  to  Lesbia 
seem  to  fall  into  the  following  order 
—61    B.C.,  Metellus   (Lesbia's   hus- 
band.?) returns  to  Rome;    Catullus 
tninslates  Sappho,  Ille  mi  par  esse 
deo  videtur  ;  2,  Passer  deliciae  meae 
puellae ;    then    the   intimacy   in    the 
house  of  Mallius,  to  which  belong, 
5,  Vivamus  mea  Lesbia  atque  ame- 
mus ;    7,  Quaeris    quot    mihi    basia- 
tiones  ;  then  the  quarrel:   8,  Miser 
Catulle  desinas  ineptire  ;  83,  Lesbia 
mi  praesente  viro  mala  plurima  dicit ; 
92,  Lesbia  mi  dicit  semj^er  mala  nee 
tacet  unquam.    Reconciliation  :   104, 
Credis  me  potuisse  meae  maledicere 
vitae  ;   107,  Si  quidquam  cupidoque 
optantique  obtigit  unquam  ;   109,  Jo- 
cundum    mea    vita    mihi    proponis 


XXVIU 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


B.C. 


Defeat  and  death  of  Cras-| 
siis ! 

Clodins  is  slain  by  order 
of  Milo;  Pompeius  is 
appointed  sole  consul. 


Outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War  between  Caesar 
and  Pompeius    .    .     . 


52 
50 


49 


t( 


amorem  ;  36,  Annales  Volusi,  cacata 
chaita  ;    60    B.C.,  the   death    of   his 
brother  ;  66, 65,  68  a,  Quod  mihi  For- 
tuna  casuque  oppressus  acerbo;  June 
9,  Veranni  omnibus  e  meis  amicis  ; 
13,  Cenabis  bene  mi   Fabulle  apud 
me  ;   12,  Marrucine  Asini.    59,  June  ? 
death  of  Metellus  ;  68  b,  Non  pos- 
sum reticere  Dex  qua  Mallius  in  re  ; 
3,  Lugete  o  Veneres  Cupidinesque  ; 
86,  Quintia  firmosa  est  multis  :  mihi 
Candida,    longa  ;    78,  Galliis    habet 
fratres  quorum  est  lepidissima  con- 
jux;   98,  70,  Nulli   se   dicit    mulier 
mea    nubere    malle  ;     72,    Dicebas 
quondam  solam  te  nosse  Catulium  ; 
35,  Nulla  potest   mulier   tantum  se 
dicere   amatam  ;    85,  Odi   et   amo  : 
quare  id  faciam  fortasse  requiris  ;  76, 
Si  qua  recordanti  bene  facta  priora 
voluptas  ;  64,  The  marriage  of  Peleus 
and   Thetis  is  assigned  to  this  date. 
56  B.C.,  46,  Jam  ver  egelidos  refert 
tepores ;    loi.  Arrival;    31,  Penin- 
sularum    Sirmio    insularumque  ;    4, 
Phaselus  ille  quern  videtis  hospites. 
Of  poems  connected  with  his  quar- 
rel   with    "  GelHus,"    who   did    him 
harm    with    "  Lesbia,"    74,  80,   116 
seem  to  date  soon  after  his  brother's 
death,  91,  90,  89,  and   80   after   his 
voyage   in   the    east,  55   B.C.      The 
poems   on    Aufilenus   and    Aufilena 
date  from  this   year  ;    also  that   on 
the  second  consulate  of  Pompeius; 
the  poem  on  the  prosecution  of  Va- 
tinius    is    the    latest   we    can    date. 
Etiitcd  R.  Ellis,  Oxford. 
Cicero  is  appointed  augur. 


Cicero  defends  Milo. 

Cicero  goes  to  Cilicia  as  proconsul.    M. 

Hortensius  defends  Messalla. 
Brutus  and  Hortensius  defend  Appius 

Claudius.    Sallust,  expelled  from  the 

senate,  devotes  himself  to  history. 

Curio  is  tribune,  and  allies  himself 

with     Caesar.      Cicero    returns    to 

Rome. 
?  Birth    of  Tibullus.      Q.   Cornificius 

( ?  Auctor  ad  llcrennium)  commands 

in  Illyricum. 


CHKOXOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXIX 


Battle  of  Pharsalia,  Aug. 
9.  Death  of  Pompeius, 
Oct.  6.  Cxsar  at  A  lex- 
andria 

Caesar  subdues  Egy]H, 
March  ;  Cassar  defeats 
Pharnaces,  Aug,  2  .     . 

Battle  of  Thai)sus,  April 
6.     Death  of  Cnto  .     . 


Battle  of  Munda,  March 

Death   of  Caesar,  March 
15 


B.C. 
48 

47 
46 


Death   of  Hirtius  before 
Mutina,  April  27     .     . 


45 
44 


43 


Caesar's  Commentaries  on  the  Civil 
Wars. 

Hirtius  de  Bello  Alexandrino. 

}  Birth  of  Propertius.  Death  of  P. 
Nigidius  Figuhis,  a  grammarian  ;  he 
devoted  himself  to  Pythagoreanism 
and  the  Mysteries.  Vitruvius  serves 
in  Africa. 

Death  of  Tullia,  Cicero's  daughter. 

June  and  July,  Cicero  goes  to  Sicily. 
Aug.  31,  returns  to  Rome.  From 
Sept.  2  to  April  2  (43  B.C.)  he  de- 
livers his  Philippics.  D.  Laberius, 
writer  of  mimes  :  best  known  titles, 
Alexandrea,  Anna  Perenna,//r//j-/-^jr, 
Auliilaria,  Centonarius,  Colorator, 
Necyomantia,  Rcstio.  Protest  against 
being  compelled  to  perform  in  per- 
son. In  Ribbeck.  Publilius  Syrus, 
celebrated  44  B.C.,  no  known  tides  ; 
in  Petronius  we  have  a  long  frag- 
ment ;  we  have  also  an  anthology  of 
proverbial  sayings,  all  of  which  are 
attril)uted  to  him,  and  most  may  be 
taken  from  him  or  other  writers 
of  mimiambi.  Fragments  in  Rib- 
beck. 

Sallust  publishes  his  "  Catiline."  Birth 
of  Ovid.  Dec.  8,  death  of  Cicero. 
The  lost  poems  "  De  Glauco "  in 
trochaic  tetrameters,  '*  De  Mario  " 
in  hexameters,  91  B.C.  ;  translation 
from  Aratus,  of  which  we  have  large 
fragments,  90  B.C.;  translations, 
mostly  lost,  from  Plato  and  Xeno- 
phon,  84  B.C.  Speech  for  P.  Quin- 
tius  (on  a  dispute  between  partners), 
81  B.C.  ;  for  Sex.  Roscius  Amerinus 
(accused  of  parricide  in  the  interest 
of  Chrysogonus,  Sulla's  freedman), 
}  and  for  L.  Varenus,  accused  of  as- 
sassination, 80  B.C. ;  lost  speech  for 
the  freedom  of  a  woman  of  Arretium, 
76  B.C.,  for  Roscius,  the  actor  (who 
had  taken  a  slave  to  train  for  the 
stage  on  condition  of  sharing  the 
profits  with  his  owner.     The  slave 


XXX 


CHROXOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXXI 


III 


B.C. 


I  was  killed  and  the  partners  had  a 
lung  series  of  disputes  about  how  the 
compensation  was  to  be  apportioned), 
76  B.C.  ;  against  Naivius  ;  fragmen- 
tary speech  for  M.  Tullins,  who 
brought  an  action  for  too  forcible 
ejectment ;  speeches  against  Verres, 
of  which  two  were  delivered,  five 
were  composed  after  the  exile  of 
\  erres,  70  B.C. ;  speech  for  Fonteius, 
proconsul  in  Gaul,  for  A.  Caecina 
(another  case  turning  upon  the  de- 
gree of  force  allowable  in  an  eject- 
ment intended  to  raise  a  question  of 
title),  69  B.C.  ;  for  P.  C)i)p)us,  a  quaes- 
tor of  M.Cotta,  who  aceused  him  of 
malversation  and  attempted  assassi- 
nation, 67  15.C. ;  for  xX.Clucntius,  in 
danger  of  being  convicted  of  poison- 
ing, lx?causc  universally  believed  to 
be  guilty  of  bribery  ;  for  M.  Funda- 
nius  (lost), and  for  the  Manilian  law, 
66  B.C. ;  for  C.  Cornelius  Gallus,  ac- 
cused of  treason  for  a  bill  to  deprive 
the  senate  of  its  dispensing  power, 
oration  in  the  White  Gown,  64  B.C., 
in  fragments.  A  speech  in  the  sen- 
ate (very  fragmentary)  against  the 
law  of  KuUus  ;  two  speeches  before 
the  people  on  the  same  question  ; 
lost  si:>eech  for  Koscius  Otho ;  for 
C.  Rabirius  Postumus  (very  fragmen- 
tary) ;  on  the  disabilities  of  the  sons 
of  the  proscribed,  on  his  renuncia- 
tion of  a  province  ;  the  four  speeches 
against  Catilina  ;  for  L.  Murasna,  63 
B.C. ;  for  P.  Sulla,  accused  of  com- 
plicity with  Catilina  ;  for  Archias, 
the  poet,  accused  of  usurping  the 
privileges  of  a  Roman  citizen  ; 
speeches  against  Clodius  and  Curio, 
who  had  attacked  him  in  the  senate 
after  the  abortive  prosecution,  before 
Clodius  had  transferred  himself  to 
the  Commons,  61  B.C. ;  for  C.  Anto- 
nius  (unsuccessful  and  unpublished) ; 
for  MinuciusThermus  (unpublished); 
for  L.  \'alerius  Fiaccus,  59  B.C.  (in 
fragmentary  condition) ;  for  P.  Ses- 
tius,  accused  of  violence  because,  as 
one  of  the  tribunes  who  carried  Cice- 
ro's restoration,  he  had  surrounded 
himself  with  a  body-guard;  for  Cor- 


B.c. 


nelius   Balbus,  accused   of  usurping 
Roman  citizenship  ;   for   M.  Caelius, 
accused,  at  the  instigation  of  Clodius, 
of  sedition  in  Naples;    for  Ascitius, 
accused  of  "  prevarication,"   taking 
up  a  cause  he  did  not  mean  to  suc- 
ceed, and  attempting  to  procure  the 
assassination  of  certain  Egyptian  am- 
bassadors ;    on   the   Consular  prov- 
inces ;  on  the  answer  of  the  Ilaru- 
spices,  B.C.  56  ;  the  invective  against 
Piso  in  the  senate ;  the  treatise  De 
Oratore,  B.C.  55  ;  speeches  for  Vati- 
nius  and  Gabinius,  lost,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  fragment  of  each  ;    for 
C.  Rabirius   Postumus,  accused   for 
receiving  moneys   which,  according 
to    the    prosecution,    Gabinius    had 
wrongly  extracted  from    Ptolemaeus 
on  his  restoration — according  toCice- 
ro,  did  not   nearly  cover   Rabirius's 
lawful  advances  to  the  king ;  for  M. 
ylimilius    Scaurus    (the    son    of  the 
famous  Princeps  Senatus),  who  was 
accused  of  extortion  and  cruelty  in 
Sardinia  :  the  cause  was  hurried  on 
without    evidence,  to    prejudice    his 
election  to  the  consulate  :  the  speech 
survives  in  large  fragments  ;  the  six 
books  on  the  Republic,  of  which  we 
•have  large  fragments  besides  theSom- 
nium  Scipionis  ;  speeches  for  Milo; 
the  first  (actually  delivered)  is  only 
known  from  one  or  two  quotations  in 
Quinctilian  ;  books  of  the  Laws  (of 
which  we    have   fragments),  52  B.C. 
M.  Caelius's    letters   to   Cicero    (Ad 
Familiares,  lib.  viii.)  during  Cicero's 
command  in  Cilicia.    Partitiones  ora- 
torio;, Paradoxa  (six  rhetorical  exer- 
cises on  Stoic  themes  ;    in  one  he 
proves  that  Crassus  was  poor);  Laus 
Catonis ;  Orator  ad  M.  Brutum,speech 
for  C.  Ligarius,  who  had  been  left  in 
Africa  when  the  civil  war  broke  out, 
and  was  attacked   by   another  par- 
doned   Pompeian    for    obeying    the 
Pompeian  governor  ;  46  B.C.,  thanks 
for  the  permission  given  to  M.  Mar- 
cellus  to  return  to  Rome,  for  King 
Deiotarus,  accused  of  attempting  Cae- 
sar's  life   in  Pontus ;   De  Consola- 
tione   (on  the  death  of  Tullia,  now 


XXXI I 


CIIROXOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


B.C. 


Battle  of  Philippi 


War  of  Pel  usia 


Defeat  and  flight  of  Sex- 
tus  I'oinpeius      .     .     . 


Battle  of  Actium    .     .     . 

The  Temple  of  Janus  is 

closed 


42 
41 

40 
39 


1  -> 
J/ 


33 
3- 
31 


29 

28 


lost),  De  Finibiis  I'onorum  et  Malo- 
luiu,  Acadeniica,  45  B.C.,  Tusculan 
Disputations,  Tlie  Nature  of  the 
(i()ci^,  Divination,  Fate  (fragmentary), 
Friendship,  Old  Age,  and  Glory 
(lost),  between  January  and  the  n^.id- 
dle  of  July,  44;  the  1  opics,  and  Dc 
Officiis,  between  July  and  the  end  of 
\oven)ber,  the  Piiilippics  between 
September  2,  44  r..(  .,  and  April  21, 
43  B.C.  The  latest  letter  to  Atticus 
dates  from  44  B.C.  :  there  are  letters 
to  D.  Brutus,  to  Plancus,  to  Ltpidus, 
and  to  Corniticius  as  late  as  May, 
43- 

Confiscation  and  restoration  of  Vergil's 
land.      F'iist  Eclogue. 

Ninth  Eclogue. 

Horace's  intimacy  with  Maecenas  be- 
gins. 

Vano  De  Re  Rustica.  Horace's  jour- 
ney to  Brundisium.  .'*  Death  of  P. 
Tcrentius  Varro  Atacinus.  His  Bel- 
luni  Secjuanorum  and  Satuioe  are 
sui)posed  to  be  early.  His  other 
works  are  Argonautica,  Ephemeris, 
Chronographia,  all  probably  transla- 
tions from  the  Greek. 


Death  of  Sallust.  The  exact  subject 
of  his  last  work,  the  Histories  of  the 
Twelve  Years  from  the  Consulate  of 
Lepidus,  78  B.C.,  is  known  fiom  Au- 
sonius,  Id.  iv.  62.  It  appears  to  have 
been  a  continuation  of  Sisenna. 

Commencement  of  Georgics. 

Death  of  Atticus. 


This  is  sometimes  assigned  as  the  date 
of  Pollio's  publication  of  his  history. 

Death  of  Varro.  The  fullest  list  of  his 
writings  is  given  by  Jerome  in  his 
preface  to  Origen's  Commentary  on 
Genesis.  He  wrote  74  works  in  620 
books  ;  wc  know  the  folh)wing  :  6 
books  of  pseudo-tragedies  ;  10  books 
Poematorum  ;  1  <  )raiionum,  proba- 
bly early:  4  Saturarum,  150  Saturae 
Menippeae  (imitated  from  Menippus, 
a  pupil  of  Diogenes,  and  from  these 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXXIil 


Expedition  against  Ara- 
bia     


B.C. 


Second  closing  of  the 
Temple  of  Janus     .     . 

Phraates  expels  Tiridates 
and  endeavors  to  pro- 
pitiate Augustus     .     . 

Death  of  Marcellus    .     . 

Conspiracy  of  Miirasna 
and  Caepio,the  brother- 
in  -  law  of  Maecenas, 
against  Augustus    .     . 

Actual  restoration  of  the 
standards  taken  at  Can- 
nae ;  Tiberius  in  Ar- 
menia     


Lex  Julia  de  Maritandis 
Ordinibus.     .     •     . 


27 
26 

25 


24 

23 
22 


(t 


20 
19 


18 
17 


we  have  the  largest  fragments :  one 
book,  rpiKaprjpoi^y  dates  trom  64  B.C., 
and  is  an  anticipation  of  the  trium- 
virate) ;  76  XoyiaTopiKiov  (essays  on 
different  subjects  connected  more  or 
less  closely  with  some  well-known 
historical  character),  56-50  B.C.  41 
Antiquitatum :  supplementary  works 
De  Gente  Populi  Romani :  chrono- 
logical. Imagines  :  9  Disciplinarum 
Eibri.  A  cyclopaedia  of  the  seven 
liberal  arts,  with  medicine  and  sol- 
diery added.  3  Suasion um  Libri, 
political  essays.  All  the  above  are 
lost.  25  books  on  the  Latin  Lan- 
guage, 44  B.C.  3  books  Rerum  Rus- 
ticarum,  37  B.C. 

Prop.  iv.  I. 

Comi)letion  of  the  Georgics ;  suicide 
of  Gall  us. 

Hor.  Carm.  II.  xiv. 


L.  Arruntius,  the  orator  and  historian, 
is  consul. 


Death  of  Vergil  and  Tibullus.  Editions 
of  Vergil,  Conington  :  for  the  /Eneid, 
Gossrau,  who  has  used  l>a  Cerda 
largely.  MSS.  :  a  fragment  of  the 
Vatican,  the  oldest  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury, contains  good  ancient  illustra- 
tions. The  Codex  Romanus,  of  the 
seventh  century  ?  also  in  the  Vati- 
can, is  complete  and  illustrated. 
Written  by  an  ignorant  scribe,  and 
uncorrected.  The  Palatinus  is  of 
the  fourth  or  fifth  century  :  the  best 
M.S.  is  the  Medicean,  corrected  up 
to  the  end  of  the  Bucolics,  by  Tur- 
cius  Rufus  Apronianus  Asterius, 
Cons,  of  494  A. D.  Tibullus  Dissen. 
The  MSS.  are  all  late,  and  most  in- 
terpolated. 

Alluded  to  by  Livy,  Ep.  lix. 

Carmen  Saeculare. 


AXXIV 


CJ/KOAOLOG/CAL    TABLE. 


Victories  of  Tiberius  and 
Drusus  over  the  Catti 
and  V'indclici,  also 
C lades  Lol liana  pre- 1 
supposed  in  the  9th 
ode  of  the  4th  book  of 
Horace 


Tiberius  is  consul ;  Au- 
gustus returns  from 
Gaul  ;  Lepidus  dies  ; 
A  ugustu>  succeeds  him 
as  Chief  Pontitf .     .     . 


B.C. 

16 


13 


12 

10 

Death  of  Drusus    .     .     . 

9 

Death  of  Maecenas     .     . 

8 

Death  of  Cornelia,  celebrated  bv  Pro- 
pertius,  and  of  /Kniilius  Slacer. 
"  lliacus  Macer,"  Ov.  Epp.  ex  Pont. 
IV.  xvi.  6. 
Death  of  Propertius.  His  first  book 
was  published  26  B.C.  'I'he  poetical 
guide-book  to  Rome,  from  which  we 
have  fragments  in  the  fifth  book, 
was  begun  before  the  poet  fell  in 
love.  V.  i.  71  sqq.  Most  of  the 
poems  in  the  second  and  third  books 
are  early;  e.  f^.^  HI.  xxiii.  is  written 
just  after  the  dedication  of  the  tem- 
ple of  Apollo,  Oct.  24,  28  B.C.  The 
fourth  book  is  composed  23  and  22 
B.C.  IV.  iv.,  IV.  xii.  refer  to  the  ex- 
pedition against  I'arthia,  22  B.C.  V. 
vi.  refers  to  the  fourth  celebration 
of  the  Actian  games,  16  B.C.  V.  xi. 
has  the  same  date. 
Fuscus  and  Arellius,  of  Asia,  are  cele- 
brated as  declaimers.  Horace  pub- 
lishes the  fourth  book  of  Odes  at 
the  request  of  Augustus.  Vitruvius 
writes  after  this  year,  when  two  stone 
theatres  had  been  built  in  Rome. 
L.  Cestius  Pius  settles  in  Rome. 
Verrius  Flaccus  is  ai)pointed  tutor  to 

the  grandchildren  <»f  Augustus. 
Epicedion  by  C.  Pedo  Albinovanus. 
Death  of  Horace.  The  Epodcs  seem 
to  date  between  the  war  of  Perusia, 
40  B.C.  (cf.  I'^pp.  vii.  xvi.),  and  the 
conquest  of  Egypt ;  i.  and  ix.  date 
frojn  the  war  of  .Actium,  31  B.C.  They 
were  probably  published  29  B.C.  The 
first  book  of  Satires  was  j^robably 
pul)lished  35  B.C.  Ky  32  B.C.  he  had 
received  the  Sabine  farm.  The  sec- 
ond l)ook  of  Satires  was  probably 
published  30  B.C.  The  first  three 
books  of  the  Odes  were  published 
24-23  B.C.  The  chief  dates  alluded 
to  are  the  battle  of  Actium,  I.  xxxvii,  ; 
the  illness  of  .Maecenas,  and  Horace's 
escape  from  the  fallen  tree,  28  B.C., 
I.  XX.,  II.  xii.,  H.  xvii.  The  Arabian 
expedition,  27  B.C.,  I.  xxix.,  HI.  xxiv, 
Cantabrian  expedition  and  intended 
expedition  against  Britain,  25  and  27 
B.C.,  I.  XXXV.,  I.  xxxvi.,  .' H.  vi.,  }  II. 
xi.,  HI.  xiv.  Dedication  of  the  tem- 
ple to  Apollo  on  the  Palatine,  26  B.C., 


CHROXOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXXV 


Tiberius  retiresto  Rhodes 


Banishment  of  Julia,  the 
daughter  of  Augustus. 


Recall  of  Tiberius.     .    . 

Banishment  of  Julia,  the 

granddaughter  of  Au- 


B.c. 


7 

6 

?  I 

2 

A.D. 
4 


gustus 


Death  of  Augustus 


8 
II 

Circa 

'  14 

IS 

18 


I.  xxxi. ;  Lib.  HI.  i.-vi.,  circ.  26  B.C. 
?  Marriage  of  Marcellus,  25  B.C.,  I. 
xii.  45.  Expulsion  of  Tiridates,  23 
B.C.,  I.xxvi.,  II.  xi.,  1 1 1. vii.,  HI.  xxix. 
First  book  of  Epistles  published  after 
21  B.C.;  iii.,viii.,ix. refer  to  the  Asiatic 
campaign  of  Tiberius,  xvi.  and  xi. 
seem  early.  Carmen  Saeculare  and 
IV.  vi.,  17  B.C.  ;  IV.  ii.,  iv.,ix.,  xiv.,  14 
B.C.  Second  Book  of  Epistles  after  13 
B.C.  (when  Augustus  was  Pontilex 
Maxinnis),  and  Ars  Poetica.  Death 
of  M.  Passienus,  the  declaimer. 

Birth  of  M.  Annaeus  Seneca,  the  phi- 
losopher. 

T.  Albucius  Silo,  the  declaimer,  settles 
at  Rome. 

Suicide  of  Porcius  Latro,  the  declaimer. 

I  Art  of  Love  completed  soon  after  this 
date. 


'Death   of  Pollio. 
Meyer. 


Fragments    in    H. 


Banishment    of  Ovid.      Close    of  the 

j     History  of  Pompeius  Trogus. 

{Death  of  Messalla.     Fragments  in  H. 

i     Meyer. 
12  Graiius  Faliscus  and  Manilius  begin  to 

1     write. 

Tiberius    confirms   his    nomination  of 

j     Velleius  as  prastor. 

Romanus  Hispo,  the  declaimer,  who 
always  liked  harsh  theses,  takes  to 
the  practice  of  denouncing  alleged 
state  crimes. 

Death  of  Livy  ;  best  edition,  Draken- 
borch.  Death  of  Ovid  ;  best  edition, 
Burmann,R.Merke],Leipsic,fortext; 
R.  Ellis,  Ibis.  The  date  of  the  He- 
roides  is  uncertain.  The  Amores 
are  said  to  have  been  completed  9 
B.C.  The  Art  of  Love  and  its  ap- 
j>endices  were  finished  by  i  A.D.  The 
Metamorphoses  were  not  enlarged 
after  his  exile.  The  Fasti  were  re- 
vised and  dedicated  to  Germanicus, 
16  A.D.  The  Ibis  and  the  first  two 
books  of  the  Tristia  date  from  9  A.D.  ; 
the  remaining  three  were  completed 
by  12  A.D.  Probably  the  first  books 
of  Letters  from    Pontus    were    sent 


f 


XXX  VI 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE, 


Fall  of  Scjanus 


A.D. 


'>'> 


24 
25 


27 

34 
39 


home  in  16  a.d.  with  the  Fasti.  In 
the  last  letter  he  enumerates  his  con- 
temporaries, including  "  Kabirius  i.A 

\     the  mighty  mouth/'  who  wrote  upon 

!     the  war  ot  Actium. 
Death  of  Fenestella,  the  grammarian. 

j     Death  of  Aetius  Capito,  the  liberal 
and   imperialist  jurist,  the   rival  of 

I     Antistius  Labeo,  the  republican  and 
pedantic  jurist. 

Cassius  Sevei  us  in  exile. 

Haterius  Agrippa,  the  so-called  orator, 
is  consul.     Death  of  Cremutius  Cor- 

j     dus,  the  Stoic  orator  and  historian. 
Banishment  of  Votienus  Montanus. 

Suicide  of  Votienus  Montanus  in  the 
Balearic  Isles. 

Completion  of  Velleius's  history. 

Plux'drus,  Prol.  iii.  41.  Valerius  Maxi- 
nuis  finishes  his  Collection. 

Death  of  Mamercus  Scaurus. 

Death  of  the  elder  Seneca,  who  wrote 
a  large  and  admirable  historical  work 
which  his  son  did  not  edit.  Rhetori- 
cal works  edited  by  Bursian,  1855. 


LATIN    LITERATURE. 


INTRODUCTION. 

Latin  is  the  language  of  Latium,  the  rolling  plain  round 
the  Alban  hills.     These  hills  were  recognized  from  very  early 
times  as  the  centre  of  the  Latin  nation,  whose  older  i^^xxz.n 
settlements  were  close  to  the  coast.     It  became  the  r^"*"/  h^'^' 

1  r     y  t      ,/.  in,Sabellian, 

language  of  the  western  half  of  the  civilized  world,  i^truscan. 
because  it  was  the  language  of  Rome;  and  Rome  seems  to 
have  become  the  mistress  of  the  world  by  reason  of  its  im- 
portant position  on  the  lower  Tiber,  at  the  meeting-point  of 
the  people  of  the  Alban  hills,  the  people  of  the  central  moun- 
tains, and  the  strange  people  who  held  the  valley  of  the  Arno 
and  the  heights  around  it. 

Both  the  Alban  hills  and  the  central  mountains  were  set- 
tled by  branches  of  the  Aryan  race.  Among  the  Alban  hills, 
such  Aryans  as  entered  Italy  by  the  western  coast  would  meet 
those  who  entered  it  by  the  eastern  passes.  This  may  explain 
the  fact  (upon  which  Niebuhr  founded  an  elaborate  theory, 
now  universally  abandoned,  and  never  yet  refuted)  that  the 
people  of  the  Alban  hills,  who  called  themselves  Latins,  were 
nearer  the  Greeks  in  many  ways  than  the  people  of  the  cen- 
tral mountains,  who  called  themselves  Sabines,  Samnites,  or 
Saunites.  It  is  a  plausible  conjecture  that  these  latter  stood 
specially  near  to  the  Aryans  now  known  as  Celts,  whose  first 
seats  were  on  the  Danube  and  its  tributaries,  and  who  held 
their  ground  longest  on  the  great  rivers  of  Southeastern  and 

L— I 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Central  France,  and  in  Ireland,  and  to  the  west  and  northwest 
of  the  central  range  of  Britain. 

The  Etruscans,  or  Rasena,  as  they  called  themselves,  do 
not  seem  to  have  been  Aryans  at  all.  The  ancients  were  ac- 
quainted with  two  accounts  of  them:  neither  account  had  been 
tested — both  were  sometimes  uncritically  combined.  Accord- 
ing to  one,  a  race,  alien  to  other  Italian  races,  had  entered 
Italy  from  the  coast,  having  sailed  from  Lydia,  which  was 
occupied  in  historical  times  by  a  Semitic  race.  According  to 
the  other,  the  Rasena  were  akin  to  the  Ra^tians,  who  in  the 
days  of  Augustus  held  the  passes  of  what  are  now  the  Grisons 
and  the  Tyrol,  as  the  Rasena  had  once  held  the  plain  of  the 
Po  round  Mantua.  Hence  we  should  naturally  infer  that  they 
crossed  the  Alps  before  they  crossed  the  Apennines;  but  the 
ancients  held  that  their  settlements  in  what  is  now  Tuscany 
were  more  ancient,  as  they  were  more  important,  than  their 
settlements  on  the  Po.  The  two  stories  do  not  exclude  each 
other;  but  those  who  admit  both  must  give  most  weight  to  the 
second.  Whatever  their  origin,  the  Etruscans,  whom  the 
Greeks  called  Tyrrhenians,  appear  in  history  as  rivals  of  the 
Greek  colonists  in  the  western  sea,  and  as  diligent  importers 
and  continuators  of  certain  archaic  forms  of  Greek  art. 

The  Italians  were  much  more  backward  than  the  Greeks, 
for  their  land  is  turned  to  the  west — to  Spain,  to  Gaul,  to  Africa, 
„  which  could  teach  them  nothinjj  ;  while  Greece  is 

Some  con-  o  j 

trastsof       turned  to  the  east,  to  the  coasts  alonji  which  the 

Italian  and       ....        .  i    ,      n-.-      •  i    ,  t 

Greek  cult-  civiiizatious  ot  the  Nile  and  the  1  igris  spread  through 
so  many  channels.  Besides,  the  country  itself  is  far 
less  stimulating  to  its  inhabitants:  compared  to  Greece,  Italy 
is  a  continental  country  whose  inhabitants  communicate  more 
easily  by  land  than  by  sea,  except  in  the  two  extreme  southern 
peninsulas,  which  characteristically  were  occupied  by  Greek 
colonies  whose  earlier  development  was  more  brilliant  than 
that  of  the  mother  country. 

Hence,  perhaps,  the  mythology  of  Italy  is  even  more  rudi- 
mentary compared  with  the  mythology  of  Greece  than  the 
mythology  of  Germany  compared  with  the  mythology  of 
Scandinavia.     It  is  at  least  a  curious  coincidence  (since  the 


INTRO  D  UCTION. 


archipelagoes  of  Greece,  Scandinavia,  and  Polynesia  have  all 
a  rich  mythology)  that  such  mythology  as  Italy  had  settled 
chiefly  in  the  Campagna,  which  may  almost  be  called  an  arch- 
ipelago above  water.  The  later  Romans  were  familiar  with 
Sabine  spells,  but  not  with  Sabine  legends. 

The  intellectual  development  of  Italy  was  backward,  like 
the  imaginative.  The  equable  fertility  of  the  land  was  itself 
a  hinderance.  As  far  back  as  we  can  form  any  conjecture,  the 
bulk  of  the  people  were  shepherds  or  husbandmen  ;  we  can- 
not trace  a  time  like  that  reflected  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
when  high-born  men  of  spirit  went  roving  in  their  youth  by 
land  and  sea,  and  settled  down  in  their  prime  with  a  large 
stock  of  cattle  and  a  fair  stud  of  horses,  to  act  as  referees  in 
peace  and  leaders  in  war  to  the  cotters  around.  Gifts  came 
to  them  from  the  cotters  and  from  passing  traders;  minstrels 
were  welcome  at  their  courts;  altogether  they  lived  a  life  of 
more  ease  and  splendor  than  we  can  imagine  in  primitive 
Italy. 

Other  differences  less  intelligible  to  us  were  not  less 
weighty:  the  volcanic  character  of  the  western  plain  of  Cen- 
tral Italy,  the  want  of  a  fall  to  the  coast  (which  caused  some 
of  the  water-courses  to  form  marshes,  and  made  the  Tiber  a 
terror  to  the  Romans  for  its  floods),  told  in  ways  as  yet  un- 
traced  on  the  character  of  the  inliabitants.  For  one  thing, 
the  ancient  worship  of  Febris  and  Mefitis  indicates  a  constant 
liability  to  fever;  then  the  air  of  Greece  is  lighter  than  the  air 
of  Italy,  and  this  may  be  the  reason  that  it  was  more  inspir- 
ing. The  breezes  of  the  hill-side  are  to  primitive  Greek  po- 
etry the  breath  of  wise  maidens  who  bring  the  glorified  past 
to  mind ;  the  early  sages  of  Italy  met  their  inspiration  where 
water  babbles  in  a  shady  glade,  or  leaps  down  a  rocky  dell. 
The  Greek  needed  no  sedative  except  solitude  to  lull  the 
natural  man  to  a  half-sleep  and  let  the  singer  awake;  the 
Italian  was  more  sensuous  or  more  frivolous.  His  musings 
needed  the  hush  and  the  shadow,  while  it  was  only  for  proph- 
ecy that  the  Pythia  needed  the  vapor  of  the  sacred  cavern— 
as  bewildering,  as  exalting,  as  the  heavy  air  of  a  crowded 
church.     An  inspiration  not  unlike  that  of  Delphi,  but  less 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


N 


I'M 


elements  ot 

Italian 

literature. 


ethereal,  dwelt  in  "  the  house  of  echoing  Albunea ''  by  the  falls 
of  Anio,  and  many  of  the  spots  where  sulphurous  vapors  rise 
through  the  ground  were  reckoned  oracular.  The  Italians 
were  not  long  in  reaching  the  stage  at  which  women  are  more 
idealist  than  men;  the  Sibylline  books  appear  in  Italy  ear- 
lier in  proportion  than  the  prophecies  of  Bacis  and  other  male 
prophets  in  Greece.  So,  too,  the  walling  woman  keeps  her 
place  at  Roman  funerals;  while  in  historical  Greece  the 
haughty  smiles  of  Sparta  and  the  decorous  silence  of  Ath- 
ens take  the  place  of  the  loud  laments  of  Helen  and  Androm- 
ache. Such  traits  are  a  sign  rather  that  Italian  men  were 
lacking  in  ideality  than  that  Italian  women  abounded  in  it. 

Italian  indigenous  literature  was  of  the  very  scantiest;  its 
oldest  element  was  to  be  found  in  hymns,  barely  metrical,  and 
Indigenous  SO  fuU  of  repetitions  as  to  dispense  with  metre.  The 
hymns  were  more  like  spells  than  psalms ;  the  singers 
had  an  object  to  gain  rather  than  feelings  to  express. 
The  public  hymns  were  prayers  for  blessing :  there  were  pri- 
vate chants  to  charm  crops  out  of  a  neighbor's  field,  and 
bring  other  mischief  to  pass  against  him.  Such  "evil  songs" 
were  a  capital  oftence,  though  there  was  little,  perhaps,  in  their 
form  to  suggest  a  distinction  whether  the  victim  was  being 
bewitched  or  satirized.  The  deliberate  articulate  expression 
of  spite  seemed  a  guilt  and  power  of  itself.  Besides  these, 
there  were  dirges  at  funerals,  ranging  between  commemora- 
tion of  the  deceased  and  his  ancestors,  propitiation  of  the  de- 
parted spirit,  and  simple  lamentation.  There  were  songs  at 
banquets  in  praise  of  ancient  worthies.  Cato  had  heard 
them,  Cicero  regretted  them  with  a  fervor  that  imposed  upon 
Niebuhr.  The  songs  themselves  can  hardlv  have  been  better 
than  the  epitaphs  of  the  Scipios.  The  elegance  of  the  ma- 
terial monuments  shows  the  influence  of  the  new  culture,  so 
that  it  is  likely  the  verses — some  of  them  a  survival  from 
days  when  Rome  had  no  literature  —  are  a  very  favorable 
specimen  of  the  oral  compositions  out  of  which  they  grew. 
We  find  no  trace  of  any  poet  who  composed  what  free-born 
youths  recited  at  feasts  ;  probably  they  extemporized  without 
training,  and  attained  no  mastery.    If  a  nation  has  strong  mil- 


! 


I 


INTRODUCTION-. 

itary  instincts,  we  find  legendary  or  historical  heroes  in  its 
very  oldest  traditions  ;  if  a  nation  has  strong  poetical  in- 
stincts, we  find  the  names  of  historical  or  legendary  poets. 
In  Italy  we  only  meet  with  nameless  fiiuns  and  pVophets* 
whose  inspired  verses  were  perhaps  on  the  level  of  "  Mother 
Shipton."  For  it  is  not  likely  that  the  Italians  had  as  much 
poetical  talent  as  is  now  diffused  among  their  descendants, 
whose  literary  poetry  has  always  been  exotic,'  though  their 
popular  poetry  is  full  of  feeling  and  delicacy. 

The  traditional  comic  drama  was  indigenous  in  Italy.  The 
tricks  and  jests  of  a  limited  number  of  strictly  conventional 
characters  cannot  have  had  a  wider  range  than  that  of  a  har- 
lequinade, which  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  native  Italian 
drama.  Such  as  it  is,  it  has  always  been  a  very  vigorous  form 
of  art.  After  the  Renaissance  it  gradually  spread  over  Eu- 
rope; it  is  an  interesting  question  whether  it  did  not  influ- 
ence Greek  literature  through  Epicharmus,  who  may  very 
likely  have  found  something  like  it  at  home  in  Sicily. 

Besides  these  rudiments  of  literature,  the  Romans,  and  no 
doubt  the  other  Italians,  had  some  kind  of  annals,  beginning 
perhaps,  with  a  bare  record  of  prodigies.  The  Romans  had 
from  a  comparatively  early  period  a  written  code  of  laws  and 
an  elaborate  system  of  legal  pleading,  full  of  needless  techni- 
calities,  which  were  long  the  secret  of  the  patricians,  and  even 
after  their  publication  had  to  be  observed  with  the  most  mi- 
nute and  wearisome  exactness.  This,  of  course,  was  a  check 
upon  judicial  oratory,  and  political  oratory  was  restrained  by 
respect  for  authority,  which  forbade  any  speaker  to  address 
his  peers  in  the  senate,  the  assembly,  or  the  public  meetin-'' 
without  the  formal  sanction  of  the  convener.  ^ 

The  curious  feature  of  Latin  literature  is  that  it  is  in  its 
best  days  a  Roman  literature  without  being  the  work  of  Ro- 
mans. From  Ennius  to  Martial,  a  succession  of  writ-  Latin  litera- 
ers  who  were  not  natives  of  Rome  lived  and  worked  Zt^l^^' 
there,  and  owed  their  fame  to  the  Roman  public.  The  "'{Jrfanhy" 

^  The  "  Divine  Comedy  "  is  a  weighty  but  a  solitary  exception, 
bummoned  by  tribunes  and  other  magistrates  to  work  up  public  opinion 
in  favor  of  a  particular  measure. 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


INTR  OD  UC  TION. 


111 


great  writers  of  Athens  were  Athenians ;  great  Greek  writers 
who  were  not  Athenians  did  not  owe  their  reputation  to  Ath- 
ens, unless  they  were  rhetoricians  or  philosophers.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  poets  scarcely  fixed  themselves  at  a  single  cen-, 
tre :  they  and  their  reputation  travelled  together.  Even  then 
one  notes  that  Florentine  poetry  was  founded  by  natives  of 
Florence  who  passed  their  lives  there.  When  we  come  to  the 
modern  literatures  of  England  and  France,  we  find,  as  might 
be  expected,  that  the  capital  collects  most  literary  men  (though 
there  are  exceptions,  like  the  Pleiad  in  France  and  the  Lake 
Poets  in  England);  but  the  capital  itself  is  not  barren.  In 
Germany  the  same  holds  good  of  a  number  of  local  capitals. 

One  reason  of  this  peculiarity  may  have  been  that  Rome  as 
a  city  had  never  much  life  of  its  own  ;  it  was  the  seat  of  an 
aristocracy  who  owed  their  importance  to  its  value  as  a  com- 
mercial and  then  as  a  military  centre,  and  to  the  hereditary 
temper  fostered  by  the  actions  which  the  possession  of  such 
a  site  made  possible  or  desirable.  It  was  never  a  town  of 
sailors  or  of  artisans  :  its  rulers  had  dependants,  but  not  work- 
men ;  and  their  own  life  was  too  difficult  and  absorbing  to 
leave  any  surplus  energy  for  literature,  while  at  the  same  time 
their  faculties  were  sufficientlv  stimulated  to  make  them  easrer 
and  intelligent  critics.  In  the  history  of  Latin  literature,  at 
any  rate  from  the  time  of  Lucilius,  Urbanitas  is  more  impor- 
tant than  "  Atticism  "  ever  became  in  Greek.  A  writer  could 
not  really  succeed  without  the  style  of  a  well-bred  man  about 
town;  the  opposite  to  this  was  not,  as  a  rule,  "provinciality," 
but  "rusticity."  It  does  not  seem  as  if  "urbanity"  necessa- 
rily included  any  idea  of  culture  or  distinction  or  refinement; 
it  was  a  quality  which  a  buffoon  might  possess  in  perfection  : 
what  it  excluded  was  clumsiness,  obscurity,  saying  what  need 
not  be  said  ;  what  it  implied  was  being  in  complete  posses- 
sion of  what  one  had  to  say,  and  completely  appreciating  the 
intelligence  of  one's  public.  At  this  point  "  urbanity  "  comes 
nearest  to  "  Atticism ;"  but  an  Athenian  public  was  much 
quicker  withal,  and  more  fastidious,  than  an  Italian,  and  would 
certainly  have  been  impatient  of  Cicero's  prolonged  "urbani- 
ty," which  the  Roman  public  of  his  day  enjoyed  till  the  end. 


r 

L 


I 


Down  to  the  days  of  the  Empire  "  prolixity  "  was  not  a  word 
of  blame;  on  the  contrary,  we  find  phrases  like  verbis prolix- 
issimis  graiias  cgit  (where  prolixissimis  might  be  exchanged 
for  ainpiissimis),  the  idea  being  that  to  develop  a  subject  at 
the  greatest  length  possible  is  an  appropriate  way  of  showing 
respect  to  the  subject  and  to  the  person  addressed — an  idea 
which,  since  the  Renaissance,  has  had  a  very  considerable  in- 
fluence on  Italian  eloquence.  Nor,  indeed,  has  Italian  litera- 
ture ever  aimed  at  terseness  and  brevity,  except  when  its  cen- 
tre was  the  Florentine  republic,  and  during  the  earlier  period 
when  it  was  the  organ  of  the  opposition  of  epigrams  carried 
on  by  an  indolent  and  fastidious  aristocracy  and  their  literary 
retainers  under  the  Claudian  and  Flavian  emperors. 

After  we  have  analyzed  the  meagreness  of  its  original  ele- 
ments, after  we  have  recognized  the  complacent  amplitude  of 
its  later  development,  we  have  still  to  remember  that  Latin  litera- 
Latin  literature  is  classical  as  Greek  literature  is  clas-  ££1. 
sical.     The  general  level  of  finish,  elegance,  and  richness  is 
higher,  though   the  masterpieces  are   less  exquisite,  less  su- 
preme, as  well  as  less  original.     Where  Greek  literature  fails, 
it  is  apt  to  become  dull  and  empty;  where  Latin  literature 
fails,  it  is  apt  to  become  heavy  and  florid.     Even  the  greatest 
Greek  writers  are  not  free  from  incompleteness  and  obscuri- 
ties, which  show  that  the  writer's  grasp,  not  merely  of  his  sub- 
ject, but  of  his  own  conception,  is  imperfect.     Even  a  great 
Latin    writer    is    seldom    in    such    close,  direct,  penetrating- 
contact  with  his  subject  as  a  great  Greek  writer  or  a  grea^t 
modern  writer,  but  he  is  in  much  more  complete  possession  of 
what  he  has  to  communicate  about  it.     A  Latin  historian,  for 
instance,  never  makes  us  say,  as  modern  historians  make  us 
say,  that  we  cannot  see  the  wood  for  the  trees  ;  he  hardly  ever 
makes  us  say,  as  a  Greek  historian  makes  us  say,  that  he  shows 
us  a  brick  for  a  house.     His  representation  may  be  superfi- 
cial, but  it  has  the  completeness  of  view  which  results  from 
standing  far  enough  off  to  get  things  into  focus.    One  effect  of 
this  is  that,  as  compared  with  the  literature  of  independent 
Greece,  Latin  literature  is  reflective  and  sentimental.     It  still 
deals  with  genuine  perceptions  and  emotions,  but  there  is  an 


8  LATIN  LITERATURE. 

added  sense  of  what  it  looks  like  to  experience  them  ;   the 
representation  is  in  only  mediate  relation  to  the  experience, 
and  in   immediate  relation  to  the  vvritefs  thought  about  it! 
This  is  a  point  of  analogy  with  the  Engh'sh  literature  of  the 
first  half  of  last  century;   another  is  that  in  both   to   think 
about  experience  and  express  one's  thoughts  has  still  the  in- 
terest of  novelty  for  the  writers  and  their  public.    Consequent- 
ly there  is  no  need  to  go  beyond  what  is  common  and  general 
in  experience.     Both,  even  at  their  highest,  are  content  with 
an  exaltation  in  degree  of  what  is  familiar  in  kind;  and  this 
marks  off  both  from  modern  literature,  which  tends  to  seek 
out  what  is  rare  and  singular  in  experience,  which,  being  un- 
familiar, has  to  be  thought  out  before  it  is  intelligible.    .A^cog- 
nate  tendency  of  modern   literature  is   to  make  a  more  or 
less   imaginary  experience   serve   as    foundation    for    ideals. 
Classical  literatures  go  back  to  an  heroic  age  in  search  of 
something  grander  and  simpler  than  the  present  age  supplies; 
romantic  literatures  go  back  in  search  of  the  picturesque :  in 
this,  as  in  much  else,  Vergil  is  a  precursor  of  the  modern  and 
romantic  spirit. 

But  Vergil  is  an  exception  ;  and,  in  the  sense  in  which 
"classical"  is  opposed  to  *' romantic,"  Latin  literature  as  a 
whole  is  more  classical  than  Greek.  The  revolt  against 
"classicism"  is  also  a  revolt  from  Latin  literature  to  Greek, 
if  the  revolter  be  able  to  study  both.  And  Latin  literature  is 
eminently  classical  in  the  primitive  sense  of  the  word  :  its 
representative  writers  fall  into  fixed  "classes;"  each  has  his 
well-marked  rank ;  it  is  a  literature  of  fixed  standards  fit  to 
become  the  foundation  of  an  aesthetic  tradition.  Its  generali- 
ty, its  clearness,  its  finish,  and  its  dignity  are  all  element  which 
give  it  a  permanent  educational  value,  and  make  it  interesting 
to  races  and  generations  very  different  from  those  which  orig- 
inated it.  English  literature  is  hardly  likely  to  fill  the  sam^e 
place  in  the  training  of  the  communities  which  owe  their  civil- 
ization to  England  as  Latin  literature  has  filled  in  the  train- 
ing of  the  communities  which  owe  their  civilization  to  Rome. 
So  fiir  as  this  space  is  filled  by  English  literature,  it  is  mainly 
filled  by  "classical"  writings  like  those  of  Pope  and  ALacau- 


INTRODUCTION, 


\ 


lay,  which  come  in  this  way  to  have  a  greater  relative  impor- 
tance  than  they  have  for  the  cultivated  public  at  home 

A  literature  may  be  classical  without  being  supremely  ex- 
cellent;  a  literature  may  come  near  to  supreme  excellence 
without  being  classical.  The  test  of  supreme  excellence  is  the 
admiration  and  delight  of  sane,  well-trained  minds  of  very 
high  calibre.  Tried  by  this  test,  it  would  be  impossible  to  set 
the  "Duchess  of  Malfy"  or  "Vittoria  Corombona  "  below 

r  Mr  T^r     ^"^^-^""^^"^'^  o^  the  "  Golden  Ass  "  below  the 
fables  of  Phxdrus.     Yet  Racine  and  Pha^drus  are  both  clas- 
sics m  a  sense  that  Webster  and  Apuleius  are  not.     Ph^edrus 
at  any  rate,  is  a  classic  simply  in  virtue  of  his  generalitv  his 
rationality,  his  clearness.  ' ' 

This  reflection  explains  the  impatience  with  which  many 
aesthetic  critics  are  apt  to  approach  Latin  literature  Gener- 
ality, clearness,  rationality,  are  not  attractive  literary  qualities 
to  a  cultivated  class  weary  of  old  traditions,  pining  for  fresh, 
strong,  highly  specialized  emotions.  The  appetite  for  subtlety 
IS  at  Its  height;  the  clearness  of  Latin  literature  readily  passes 
for  shallowness,  while  the  simplicity  of  Greek  literature  is  par- 
doned for  its  directness  and  intensity. 

On  another  side  Latin  literature  is'classical,  as  opposed  to 
romantic:  it  is  an  eminently  social  literature— the  work  of 
men  who  wrote  under  a  strong  regard  for  all  that  tends  to 
promote  fellow-feeling  among  mankind.  Romantic  literature 
IS  eminently  personal-as  personal  in  the  expression  of  moods 
of  passionate  sympathy  with  the  many  or  the  miserable  which 
can  seldom  be  permanently  felt,  and  never  generally  felt  as 
in  the  expression  of  solitary  rapture  in  the  presence  of  inor- 
gamc  nature.  In  both  there  is  always  a  touch  of  revolt 
against  the  concrete  claims  which  society  as  it  is  requires  us  to 
enforce  and  accept  by  turns.'  Latin  literature  throughout  as- 
sumes and  enforces  social  rights  and  duties:  even  in  the  mal- 
content literature  of  the  Claudian  and  Flavian  period  there  is 

^  The  proper  effect  of  public  spirit  and  generosity  is  not  so  much  to  lift 
a  man  above  being  occupied  with  either  set  of  claims  as  to  make  him  mag- 
nify the  claims  others  have  upon  him  and  minimize  the  claims  he  has  UDon 
others;  but,  after  all,  both  sets  of  claims  are  correlative.  ^ 

I.— I* 


lO 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


tl 


far  less  freedom  of  discussion  than  in  the  Greek  literature  of 
the  Attic  and  Macedonian  period,  though  that  is  less  bitter. 
In  fact,  Greek  literature  is  the  expression  of  a  social  life  never 
perfectly  consolidated  ;  while  Latin  literature  is  addressed  to 
a  society  solidly  constituted,  though  out  of  much  less  genial 
elements.  For  one  reason  or  other,  the  Italian  household  dis- 
cipline was  much  stricter  than  the  Greek  ;  while  there  was 
much  less  intercourse  between  men,  except  at  rarely  recurring 
festivals.  The  occupations  of  agriculture,  at  once  more  ab- 
sorbing and  more  profitable,  left  no  leisure  for  the  elaborate 
system  of  musical  and  gymnastic  training  which  more  than 
anything  else  gave  its  pecuh'ar  character  to  the  civilization  of 
historical  Greece. 

Italian  civilization  was  comparatively  advanced  long  before 
Italy  had  a  literature  worthy  of  the  military,  commercial,  and 
Latin  litera.  po^'^jcal  position  of  the  race.  The  training,  the  tem- 
*Tdenw.n  P^^'  ^^^^  Opportunities,  which  literary  display  requires, 
Greece:  its  wcrc  all  abscnt  alike.  On  holidays,  better  food,  more 
drink  and  company,  than  common  made  merriment 
enough  ;  on  great  days  the  State  provided  tumblers  and  horse 
and  foot  races  ;  and  at  any  feast  those  who  wished  could 
provide  a  masquerade  for  themselves,  and  bandy  satirical 
impromptus. 

Accordingly  we  find  that,  while  the  great  epochs  in  the  de- 
velopment of  Greek  literature  correspond  to  epochs  in  the 
internal  development  of  Greek  civilization,  the  epochs  in  the 
early  development  of  Latin  literature  correspond  to  the  succes- 
sive stages  of  the  intercourse  between  Italy  and  Greece.  In 
the  royal  and  early  republican  days  this  intercourse  may  have 
been  more  frequent  than  afterwards,  when  the  seaward  press- 
ure of  the  tribes  of  the  Southern  Apennines  had  separated  and 
weakened  the  Greek  towns  which,  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
fifth  century  B.C.,  seemed  likely  to  Hellenize  the  two  southern 
peninsulas  of  Italy  and  the  space  between  them.  But  all  is 
uncertain  about  this  intercourse:  we  never  know  whether  we 
are  dealing  at  second-hand  with  the  conjectures  of  the  first 
Latin  writers  after  its  renewal,  or  with  more  or  less  distorted 
echoes  of  theories  which  the  Greeks  mistook  for  traditions. 


INTRO  D  UCTION. 


II 


[ 


Certainty  begins  when  the  Greek  towns  on  the  Campanian 
coast,  hard   pressed  by  the  Sabellians,  who  had  established 
themselves  in  the  plain,  threw  themselves  into  the  arms  of 
Rome,  after  some  appeals  to  the  Sabellians,  who  were  still 
descending  from  the  hills.     Few,  if  any,  of  these  towns  shared 
the  literary   movement  of  Greece,  but  the  familiarity   which 
leading  Romans  gained  with  the  new  clients  of  the  State  made 
it  easier  for  the  culture  of  the  great  Greek  cities  of  the  south  to 
take  full  effect  after  the  conquest  of  Tarentum.    Thenceforward 
Rome  was  full  of  Greek  slaves  and  Greek  refugees,  anxious  to 
avail  themselves  of  their  one  superiority.     For  some  time  it 
was  uncertain  whether  the  process  of  Greeks  learning  Latin  or 
Latins  learning  Greek  would  prove  the  more  important.     It 
was  not   impossible   that  educated  Latins   would   be  simply 
Hellenized,  as  Macedonians  had  been,  and  address  their  first 
literary  efforts  to  the  great  Greek  public,  which  was  quite 
willing  to  be  informed  of  the  character  of  the  State  then  rising 
into  consequence  in   the  West.     As  yet  the  Roman   public 
made  no  demand  for  literature  of  a  kind  which  Romans  of 
position  could  think  it  worth  while  to  satisfy.     As  late  as  Lu- 
cullus  and  Cicero,  Roman  nobles  still  wrote  historical  works 
~-on  their  own  life  and  times  in  Greek.     As  late  as  Horace 
Roman  men  of  letters  were  still  tempted  to  continue  Greek 
literature  in  Greek,  instead  of  trying  to  naturalize  it  in  Latin. 
The  two  conditions  which  made  Latin  literature  possible  were, 
first,  the  stimulus  to  national  life  during  the  two  great  Punic 
wars,  which  carried  many  Italians  beyond  the  bounds  of  Italy, 
and  widened  the   national  horizon   without  transferring   the 
centre  of  national  interests;  and,  second  (and  this  was^even 
more  important),  the  good-will  with  which  for  about  a  century 
the  public  received  the  efforts  made  to  amuse  or  educate  it  by 
Latin  adaptations  or  imitations  of  Greek  plays.    This  literature 
was  carried  on  by  men  in  a  lower  social  position  than  most 
Greek  writers.     The  social  equals  of  the  old  Greek  writers 
wrote  nothing  at  Rome  during  this  period,  or  else  wrote  Greek. 
But  they  were  not  indifferent  to  the  vernacular  literature:  they 
patronized,  criticised  it,  read  it  perhaps  more  easily  than  its 
Greek  originals,  which,  if  they  knew  them,  they  thought  in- 


12 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


i 


comparably  superior.  Their  disdain  might  have  killed  Latin 
literature ;  but  vernacular  text-books  were  needed  for  the  liter- 
ary and  rhetorical  education  which  came  into  vigor  just  as  the 
dramatic  poets  (and  the  public)  were  getting  tired  of  their 
poetry.  All  who  profited  by  this  education  were  f;imiliar  with 
the  analysis  of  literary  eftects  in  their  own  language,  and 
naturally  turned  to  their  own  language  if  they  wished  to  pro- 
duce literary  elTects  of  their  own.  Soon,  too,  composition 
took  the  place  in  Latin  education  which  music  had  held  in 
Greek  ;  and  although  the  composition  which  it  was  imperative 
to  practise  was  in  prose,  composition  in  verse  was  practised 
also  (and  in  its  turn  became  imperative,  though  not  before  the 
future  of  Latin  literature  was  fixed),  because  the  pupils  in  the 
course  of  their  education  read  a  great  deal  more  verse  than 
prose.  Indeed,  much  Latin  poetry  bears  traces  of  this  train- 
ing;  something  like  a  glorified  school  exercise  seems  em- 
bedded in  not  a  few  passages  in  TibuUus,  Propertius,  and  even 
such  a  great  writer  as  Juvenal. 

During  the  last  century  of  the  republic,  especially  after  the 
reforms  of  Sulla,  the  influence  of  education  was  reinforced  by 
the  influence  of  foreign  travel ;  for  Romans  of  rank  who 
had  to  visit  the  Eastern  provinces  often  entered  into  inter- 
course with  the  literary  celebrities  whom  they  found  there. 
The  first  travellers  were  men  of  mature  years,  fixed  tastes  and 
position,  and  at  most  condescended  to  hear  a  philosopher. 
But  when  the  senate  regained  for  a  lime  the  control  of  the 
law-courts,  it  became  possible  for  governors  to  take  young 
men  of  good  family  in  their  train,  who  often  thought  that  to 
prosecute  their  education  was  to  further  their  career.  Even 
when  the  courts  were  no  longer  exclusively  filled  by  senators, 
the  fiishion  lasted  until  it  became  a  custom  to  reside  in  Ath- 
ens or  some  other  Greek  town,  simply  for  the  advantage  of 
lectures,  at  an  age  when  literature  was  more  interesting  than 
philosophy. 

It  was  this  change  which  brought  the  Romans  into  contact 
with  contemporary  Greek  books,  for  while  they  stayed  at  Rome 
nothing  later  than  Menander  was  imported  for  their  benefit. 
Alexandrian  literature  seems  to  have  proved  more  stimulat- 


INTRODUCTION. 


13 


i. 


I 


ing  than  the  Greek  literature  of  the  prime.    The  literature  of 
the  Scipionic  age  was  simply  dependent  on  the  literature  of 
the  Attic  age.     It  is  characteristic  of  the  poetry  of  the  Au^-us- 
tan  age  to  look  back  from  the  Alexandrian  age  to  the  pre- 
Attic  age.     Thus  Vergil  reaches  back  through  Nicander  to 
Hesiod,  through  Apollonius  to  Homer;  Tibullus  reaches  back 
througii  Callimachus  to  ]\Iimnermus.     Horace  is  more  origi- 
nal ;  he  owes  nothing  of  his  framework  to  the  Alexandrines, 
but  he  embroiders  the  simple  strains  of  Lesbos  with  Alex- 
andrian subtleties.     Ovid  borrows  his  framework,  at  least  in 
his  serious  writings ;  but  the  tone  of  Miem  is  half  due  to  Ro- 
man fashionable  society,  half  to  a  shallow  but  not  insincere  ro- 
manticism which  turned  fondly  to  the  simplicity  of  the  past. 
The  contrast  between  past  and  present  plays  a  larger  part  in 
Roman  literature  than  in  Greek,  for  in  Greece  there  was  never 
enough  accumulated  wealth  to  make  the  surroundings  of  life 
consistently  elaborate.     Even  Theocritus  does  not  dream  of 
readers  who  all  live  in  palaces,  or  of  cities  where  there  are 
more  splendid  buildings  than  the  temples.     Of  course  trav- 
elled literati  .\x^  apt  to  be  denationalized,  especially  when  the 
public  has  retained  a  prejudice  in  favor  of  homespun  poetry; 
but  the  immense   improvement  in  public   aflliirs   during  the 
early  part  of  Augustus's  reign  delayed  any  schism  between  the 
literary  class  and  the  community  at  large.    When  the  impulse 
which  Augustus  had  given  was  spent,  and  it  was  plain  that 
any  further  improvement  must  come  from  a  better  adjustment 
of  the  machinery  of  administration,  not  from  fresh  moral  ef- 
forts on  the  part  of  the  population  or  their  leaders,  the  liter- 
ary class  soon  got  to  be  as  isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  pop- 
ulation as  the  Accademie  Delia  Crusca  and  Degli  Arcadi  dur- 
ing the  Spanish  domination  in  Italy.     The  tendency  to  liter- 
ary stagnation  was  even  stronger  in  the  second  century  than 
in  the  sixteenth.     There  was  less  publicity,  and,  outside  Italy, 
very  little  literary  activity.     The  decline  was  retarded  partly 
by  the  irritation  with  w^iich  the  senatorial  families  and  the 
provincials  who  recruited  the  order  regarded  the  progress  to 
a  centralized  monarchy  and  the  objectionable  incidents  of  an 
inevitable  process;  partly  by  the  gradual  spread  of  Latin  civ- 


14 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


\ 


Wfj 


ilization  in  the  western  half  of  the  PJmpire  ;  so  that  fresh  races 
were   continually  coming  forward   to  appropriate    a    culture 
which  they  had  not  created  or  exhausted.     At  first  the  new 
recruits  paraded  at  Rome.     Seneca,  Lucan,  Tacitus,  Martial, 
represent  almost  all  that  is  excellent  in  the  literature  of  the 
Silver  Age,  and  they  are  all  Spaniards;  and  it  is  hardly  fanci- 
ful to  say  that  the  epigrammatic  grandiloquence  and  the  elab- 
orate courtesy  anticipate  something  of  the  character  of  Span- 
ish literature  when  Spain  was  a  great  power.     After  the  mid- 
dle of  the  second  century,  the  supremacy  passes  to  Africa; 
the  great  writers  are  Apuleius  and   Ter"tullian,  perhaps  St.' 
Cyprian.      Here   we   can   hardly  ascertain   the    influence  of 
race:  such  modern  African  literature  as  exists  is  Arabic;  and 
few  Arabic  scholars  know  Latin  literature  well,  while  few  Latin 
scholars  know  Arabic  at  all.    It  may  be  observed,  in  passing, 
that  the  Egyptians  regard  Barbary  as  the  land  of  enchanters 
and  enchantments,  and  that  the  founder  of  the  Hanbalite,  the 
straitest  of  the  four  orthodox  schools  of  Islam,  was  a  puri- 
tan countryman  of  Tertullian.     In  the  fourth  and  fifth  centu- 
ries there  are  two  changes  to  note :  most  of  the  great  writers 
are  religious,  and  superior  to  their  predecessors  both  in  style 
and  matter;  on  the  other  hand,  the  language  appears  to  have 
come  to  a  complete  standstill.     Up  to  Apuleius  both  syntax 
and  vocabulary  are  still  in  movement:    the  natural  way  of 
turning  a  sentence  or  a  paragraph  varies.     But  the  complete 
exhaustion  of  the  capital  as  a  literary  centre,  which  was  the 
natural  result  of  the  ascendency  of  the  army  and  of  the  ad- 
ministrative system  introduced  by  Diocletian  and  perfected 
by  Constantine,  naturally  threw  the  provincial  teachers  on  the 
fundamental  classics.     Fourth-century  prose  is  in  the  main  a 
more  or  less  corrupt  following  of  Cicero,  though  St.  Jerome  is 
a  conspicuous  if  doubtful  exception,  and  Martianus  Capella 
an  exception  less  doubtful,  if  less  conspicuous.     Fourth-cen- 
tury verse  is  founded  upon  Vergil  and  Ovid,  with  slight  traces 
of  Horace  and   Martial.     This  is  plainest  in   Claudian,  the 
greatest  poet  of  the  century.     He  is  a  happy  accident,  an  off- 
shoot of  the  poetical  school  of  Egypt  which  chanced  to  bloom 
in  Latin  rather  than  in  Greek.     But  the  great  western  seat  of 


\ 


k 


IN  TROD  UCTION 


fl 


15 


\ 


pure  literature  during  the  latter  half  of  this  period  was  Gaul, 
whose  political  activity  was  manifested  by  the  number  of  pre- 
tenders who  rose  and  fell  there.  Ausonius  and  Sidonius  Apol- 
linaris  have  much  of  the  spirit  of  French  literature  of  society; 
and,  trivial  as  they  are,  they  have  cleverness  enough  to  show 
that  if  the  frontier  had  been  effectually  guarded,  Gallic  society 
would  never  have  sunk  into  barbarism. 

The  last  epoch  of  Latin  literature  that- we  have  to  examine 
is  that  of  the  Ostrogoth  rule  in  Italy,  which  revived  the  intel- 
lectual industry  as  well  as  the  political  importance  of  the  Ro- 
man nobility,  the  only  trained  body  of  administrators  available. 
The  works  of  the  period  which  have  most  interest  and  value 
are  the  literary  recreations  of  old  men.    That  old  men  should 
amuse  themselves  with  literature  was  not  new;  it  was  new 
that  literature  should  be  left  to  them.    Like  the  literary  move- 
ment in  Gaul,  the  literary  movement  in  Rome  came  to  a  vio- 
lent end.     Theodoric's  character  broke  down  with  his  con- 
stitution, the  Ostrogoth  kingdom  never  recovered  itself;  and 
as  its  decline  tempted  the  ambition  of  Constantinople,  Haly 
was  exposed  to  a  series  of  devastating  campaigns  which  did 
far  more  mischief  than  the  raids  of  the  fifth  century.     Even 
then  a  recovery  was  possible,  but  the  ruin  was  completed  by 
the  mismanagement  that  permitted  the  invasion  of  the  Lom'- 
bards.      St.  Gregory,  the  only  considerable  writer  after  that 
calamity,  manifested  an  intellectual  activity  worthy  of  his  ec- 
clesiastical energy.     His  voluminous  works  lie   beyond  our 
limits ;   their  chief  literary  merit  is  their  style,  which  some 
think  better  because  more  consistent  than  that  of  the  great 
fathers  of  the  fifth  century,  who  are  never  clear  whether^they 
are  to  imitate  the  classics  or  the  translation  of  the  Bible.    For 
St.  Gregory  the  question  is  practically  decided ;  his  vocabu- 
lary and  his  syntax  are  still  pure  Latin  ;  there  are  Latin  anal- 
ogies for  what  is  incorrect  tried  by  the  standard  of  Cicero 
or  Livy;  but  the  structure  of  his  sentences  is  no  longer  de- 
termined by  Latin  precedents.      The  logical  arrangement  has 
superseded  the  rhetorical :  what  has  to  be  said  is  said  simply 
and  directly,  without  any  of  the  laborious  parade  of  demon- 
stration and  antithesis  which  w^e  still  find  in  St.  Augustine. 


i6 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


INTRODUCTION. 


Such  eloquence  as  remains  is  a  matter  of  feeling  rather  than 
of  skill  :  in  such  an  age  a  writer  must  be  reckoned  eloquent  if 
he  is  copious,  and  St.  Gregory  is  earnest  and  pathetic  as  well. 
Latin  literature  does  not  begin  with  ballads  ;  the  scanty 
legends  of  the  prehistoric  past  were  never,  that  we  know  of, 
The  actual     workcd  up  by  primitive  minstrels  into  anvthing  the 

beginning  of   i  i.  ii        t  i    txt  ^       i  i      i  t'l-        i 

Latin  litera  Icast  likc  Lord  Macaulav  s  superb  lays.  \\  e  do  not 
Amironiars^  ^^'^'"^  kuow  that  there  was  a  time  when  they  were 
Nsvius.  tQ](-i  ^^  continuous  stories  in  unsuspecting  good  f;iith. 
The  tradition  seems  to  have  been  fragmentary  and  conjectur- 
al ;  it  attached  itself  to  places  and  sites.  The  Sister's  Beam 
seems  to  have  kept  the  story  of  the  battle  between  the  Horatii 
and  Curiatii  alive  ;  every  generation  who  passed  under  the 
Beam  had  to  hear  the  legend  of  how  the  surviving  champion 
did  penance  there  for  slaying  his  sister,  who  reproached  him 
with  the  death  of  her  lover.  So,  too,  the  legend  of  the  devo- 
tion of  the  hero  who  leaped  with  horse  and  arms  into  the  gulf 
was  only  remembered  because  Curtius's  Pool  was  shown  in  the 
Forum.  Much  of  the  legends  of  the  reigns  of  Tullus  Hostilius 
and  Ancus  Martins  is  a  collection  of  precedents,  and  this 
guarantees  that  the  stories  are  in  a  way  trustworthy.  The 
tradition  of  the  colleges  of  heralds  and  pontifts,  though  sure 
to  be  much  perverted  by  later  practice,  had  more  chance  of 
retaining  a  hold  upon  facts  than  the  rumors  of  the  people  ;  but 
it  was  even  further  from  literature. 

When  literature  comes  to  deal  with  the  early  traditions,  it  is 
impossible  to  say  how  much  is  due  to  Greek  models.  Is  the 
story  of  Sextus  Tarquinius  at  Gabii  copied  from  the  story  of 
Zopyrus  at  Babylon?  Do  Brutus  and  his  cousins  journey  to 
Delphi  because  the  first  literary  historians  were  familiar  with 
the  name  of  no  other  oracle  t  The  visit  can  hardly  be  a  f;ict— 
it  would  have  left  some  memorial  at  Delphi ;  and  if  the  oldest 
legend  knew  of  a  visit  to  an  oracle,  there  were  oracles  at  Cumai 
and  Praeneste.  The  oldest  legends  of  all  do  not  seem  homo- 
geneous, .^ilneas  and  Anna  Perenna  seem  at  home  in  Italy  as 
water  deities ;  ^neas  is  transformed  in  or  into  the  river  Nu- 
micius;  Anna  is  identified  with  a  spring.  One  of  the  first 
reflections  that  the  Greeks  and  Latins  made  on  the  renewal 


17 


of  their  acquaintance  was  that  ^neas  of  Latium  must  be  the 
same  as  ^neas  of  Troy.     Anna  was  easily  understood  to  be  a 
Carthaginian  name,  and  then  the  tradition  that  Carthage  was 
tbunded  a  little  before  Rome  led  to  a  tale  of  ^neas's  visit  to 
Carthage  on  his  way  to  Italy.     Afterwards,  chronologists  re- 
flected that  Alba  was  much  older  than  Ron>e,  and  tha't  Rome 
was  not  founded  till  some  centuries  after  the  fall  of  Troy,  and 
interpolated  a  line  of  Alban  kings  (perhaps  not  wholly  the  coin- 
age of  their  own  brains)  as  well  as  they  could  between  /Eneas 
and  Romulus.     Here,  at  last,  we  come  to  a  figure  that  may  be 
said  to  live  in  popular  tradition,  though  the  death  of  Romulus 
is  suspiciously  like  the  death  of  Renulus,  an  earlier  scion  of 
the  line  of  ^neas  who  died  by  the  thunder  which  he  had  imi- 
tated.    Even  the  story  of  the  twins  nursed  by  the  wolf  is  not 
so  well  attested  as  to  exclude  a  growing  suspicion  that  it  is 
rather  an  imitation  of  the  story  Herodotus  tells  of  Cyrus  be- 
ing nursed  by  a  bitch  than  a  genuine  popular  tradition.     In 
general,  Roman  legend  seems  to  be  the  aftair  of  antiquarians, 
men  like  Cato  and  Varro  ;  it  is  only  later  that  poets  like  Ver- 
gil  and  Ovid  utilized   the  materials  thus  collected  to  their 
hands.     There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Ennius  possessed 
at  first  hand  greater  treasures  of  tradition  than  were  within 
the  reach  of  Vergil.     His  "Annals"  were  venerated  as  a  great 
national  monument,  but  they  were  not  popular  in  the  sense 
that  the  poems  which  have  come  to  us  under  the  names  of 
Homer  and  Hesiod  were  in  Greece  ;  it  is  doubtful  whether 
they  were  even  so  popular  as  the  poems  which  the  Alexandrian 
literati  collected  into  a  cycle. 

The  true  cradle  of  Roman  literature  is  the  theatre  and  the 
school ;  and  it  is  in  connection  with  these  that  we  must  say 
the  little  that  can  be  said  here  of  the  precursors  of  Father 
Ennius.  There  were  two  elements  in  the  earliest  Roman 
drama— the  solemn  mimic  dance  that  came  from  Etruria,  and 
the  firrcical  scenes  of  daily  life,  already  mentioned,  which 
seem  to  have  been  most  at  home  in  the  Oscan '  speech  and 

'  The  Oscans  seem  to  have  been  Sabellians  who  settled  early  and  peace- 
ably on  the  lower  Garigliano,  and  the  coast  south  of  the  Pomptine 
Marshes. 


i8 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


INTRODUCTION, 


country.  The  latter  dealt  with  stock  persons  and  situations, 
like  the  Italian  harlequinades,  which  still  kept  the  stage 
against  literary  comedy  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  char- 
acters were  free  to  extemporize,  for  the  story  contained  nothing 
that  they  could  spoil.  Incidentally  this  led  at  Rome  to  a 
special  division  of  the  art :  according  to  Livy,  the  Atellan 
farces  (so  called  from  a  little  town  where  the  scene  was  always 
laid)  were  first  imitated  and  then  monopolized  bv  youths  of 
good  family,  who,  having  no  poet  over  them,  requiring  no 
dresses  but  what  they  could  provide  for  themselves,  no  scen- 
ery, and  no  music,  were  perfectly  independent,  and  so  main- 
tained their  self-respect.  They  kept  that  particular  form  of 
farce  to  themselves  because  they  did  not  wish  their  persons 
or  their  performances  to  sink  to  the  level  of  ordinary  players, 
who  were  either  slaves  or  hirelings,  incapable  of  military  ser- 
vice or  civil  rights.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  this  form  of  art 
may  have  grown  on  another  side  into  the  "  Rhinthonian  trage- 
dies," which  were  a  burlesque  upon  tragedies,  and  may,  for  all 
we  know,  have  been  acted  by  the  same  companies  as  the  Atel- 
lance.  If  so,  we  should  be  able  to  understand  why  the  Rhin- 
thonian differed  from  the  Exodia,  which  were  also  very  often 
burlesques.  The  name  implies  that  the  Exodia  were  of  the 
nature  of  an  after-piece  ;  the  Rhinihonicce,  like  the  AteUance, 
were  an  independent  entertainment.  Both  have  many  points 
of  analogy  to  the  satyric  drama  of  Athens,  though  neither  can 
be  shown  to  have  been  directly  derived  from  it,  and  neither 
attached  itself  so  closely  as  the  satyric  drama  did  in  its  origin 
to  the  comic  side  of  the  legend  of  Dionysus.  If  Livy  is  to  be 
trusted,  there  was  a  closer  relation  between  the  satyric  drama 
and  Roman  satire,  which  grew,  as  he  says,  out  of  the  jests 
which  revellers  bandied  about  at  festivals.  Onlv,  when  these 
jests  began  to  receive  a  literary  polish,  no  company  at  Rome 
was  bold  enough  to  rehearse  them  in  public ;  and  so  written 
satires  were  from  the  first  written  to  be  read,  and  naturally 
tended  to  drop  the  dramatic  form  which  we  shall  see  was  not 
unfrequently  employed  at  first. 

The  literary  development  of  vernacular  fiirces  will  occupy  us 
later;  it  attained  most  importance  after  the  literary  imitation 


19 


} 


of  Greek  comedy  had  run  its  course.  The  serious  drama 
which  was  developed  out  of  the  mimic  dances  cf  the  Tuscan 
actors  passed  from  the  first  under  Greek  influences.  Most 
likely  the  stories  which  the  dances  illustrated  were  Greek  from 
the  time  they  were  first  introduced  into  Rome  ;  at  all  events, 
the  first  written  pieces  were  taken  from  the  Greek ;  and  even 
when  the  Romans  took  up  national  subjects,  the  treatment 
was  still  pretty  closely  conformed  to  Greek  models,  and  it 
was  not  uncommon  to  appropriate  large  portions  of  Greek 
plays. 

The  first  Latin  playwright,  the  first  schoolmaster  who  taught 
Greek  literature,  was  Titus  Livius  Andronicus.  He  was  a 
native  of  Tarentum  :  he  came  to  Rome  as  a  slave,  and  em- 
ployed himself  after  his  emancipation  as  a  schoolmaster  and 
an  actor.  In  the  latter  capacity  he  originated  the  curious 
division  of  labor  whereby  one  actor,  commonly  himself,  danced 
and  acted,  while  another,  whom  the  audience  were  not  sup- 
posed to  see,  sang  the  words  which  he  would  have  sung  him- 
self if  the  exertion  of  singing  and  dancing  at  once  had  not 
been  too  overwhelming.  Such  a  device  implies  that  the  pub- 
lic came  for  the  spectacle,  and  held  the  pantomime  more  im- 
portant than  the  song ;  so  it  is  not  strange  that  the  plays  of 
Livius  Andronicus  should  have  been  very  meagre,  and  that 
the  dialogue  should  have  been  very  little  above  the  level  of 
stage  directions,  just  serving  to  explain  to  the  audience  what 
was  going  on.  Besides  plays  of  mythology,  plays  of  Greek 
life,  plays  of  contemporary  Roman  history,  he  wTote  an  ofiicial 
thanksgiving  for  a  happy  turn  in  the  war  with  Hannibal.  Per- 
haps his  most  considerable  work  was  a  school-book,  an  abridg- 
ment of  the  "  Odyssey"  in  the  saturnian  metre,  which  served 
as  a  class-book  and  to  give  some  notion  of  the  story,  though 
hardly  any  of  the  poetry.  The  fragments  that  we  have  of  it 
are  like  the  explanations  that  an  impatient  teacher  might  give 
to  an  impatient  pupil.  For  instance,  "Homer"  enumerates 
the  provisions  with  which  Circe  furnishes  Ulysses  for  his 
voyage,  while  Livius  tells  us  that  they  (Circe's  handmaidens, 
whom  "  Homer  "  names)  brought  good  things  to  the  ships, 
and  ten  thousand  things  else  were  put  aboard  the  same.     Per- 


20 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


haps  his  choice  of  metre  may  be  taken  to  imply  that  the  sa- 
turnian  was  a  hexameter  pure  and  simple,  neither  dactylic  nor 
trochaic,  nor  anapastic  nor  iambic,  though  more  nearly  tro- 
chaic than  anything.  Still,  it  is  curious  to  find  a  very  smooth 
quatrain  ascribed  to  him  by  Terentianus  Maurus,  who  gives  a 
specimen  of  his  own  in  the  same  very  elaborate  metre:'  espe- 
cially as  Terentianus  tells  us  that  he  quotes  later  writers  by 
choice,  because  they  were  more  accurate  in  their  versification  ; 
and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  why  Terentianus  or  any  one  else 
should  have  been  at  the  pains  to  modernize  a  quatrain  of 
I^ivius.'^ 

His  successor,  N^evius,  wrote  in  saturnian  verse  as  a  matter 
of  national  pride.  Latin  was  his  mother  tongue  :  he  was  a 
native  of  Campania,  then  thoroughly  Latinized,  and  he  resented 
the  progress  of  Greek  at  Rome  with  all  the  pride  of  a  Cam- 
panian.  One  might  almost  gather  from  his  remains  that  a 
superb  and  reckless  character  served  him  instead  of  literary 
talent,  as  it  afterwards  served  Alfieri  ;  though  he,  with  a  great 
literature  behind  him,  had  opportunities  for  cultivating  fiistid- 
iousness  which  Na^vius  had  not.  Nasvius  was  fastidious  by 
nature  :  he  despised  everything,  from  the  Metelli  to  the  starve- 
ling Greeks  who  were  weaning  his  countrymen  from  their  na- 
tive speech  ;  yet  his  great  poem  was  addressed  to  Greeks.  It 
was  an  epic  on  the  origin  of  Rome  and  her  recent  achieve- 
ments in  the  first  Punic  war  :  it  told  exactlv  the  two  thinsfs 
that  foreiiiners  would  most  want  to  know  who  were  becominji 
curious  about  the  city  which  had  conquered  Sicily.  Cicero 
has  preserved  a  specimen  of  his  narrative,  which  deals  with 
the  battle  of  yEgusoe,  and  probably  does  him  full  justice,  as 
Cicero,  who  undervalued  nothing  in  Latin  literature,  ventures 
to  compare  it  with  Ennius.  We  find  plenty  of  fire  and  fulness 
in  the  fi-agment,  no  relief  or  climax — in  a  word,  nothing  artistic 
in  execution  or  intention.  To  judge  by  the  fragments,  the 
national  epic  was  not  superior,  if  it  was  equal,  to  the  spirited 

'The  niiuius,  consisting  of  hexameters,  with  every  other  line  ending  in 
an  iambus  instead  of  a  spondee. 

"^  Consequently,  the  reading  or  the  good  faith  of  Terentianus  has  been 
called  in  question. 


I, 


INTRODUCTION. 


21 


adaptations  of  Greek  plays,  of  which  Naevius  produced  sev- 
eral. His  true  glory  is  not  to  be  the  last  surviving  representa- 
tive of  an  imaginary  popular  literature  uncorrupted  by  Greek, 
but  to  be  the  precursor  of  Ennius  and  Accius.  of  Varius  and 
Vergil. 


ENNIUS:    THE  '' ANNALS:' 


23 


PART  I. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ENNIUS:    THE  '' ANNALSr 

The  position  of  Father  Enniiis  in  Latin  literature  seems  at 
first  sight  decidedly  in  excess  of  his  performance.  Through- 
out the  republican  period  he  was  recognized  as  the  great 
Roman  poet.  Cicero  appeals  to  him  as  summiis  poeta.  Lu- 
cretius speaks  of  the  doctrines  of  the  world  to  come  which  he 
has  enshrined  in  everlasting  verse.  Vargunteius  lectured  on 
him  to  large  audiences  ;  Vergil  imitated  him  to  commend  his 
own  poems  to  :i  populus  Etinianus.  Silius  in  all  probability 
imitated  him  too,  partly  in  honor  of  Vergil,  partly  because  he 
found  him  a  useful  guide.  The  poets  of  the  Augustan  age  in 
general  acknowledge  Ennius's  great  position,  though  some- 
times perplexed  and  irritated  by  it.  The  nearest  approach  to 
an  explanation  which  they  reach  is  given  in  Ovid's  neat  epi- 


gram- 


Ennius  ingenio  maximus,  arte  rudis. 


Quinctilian  is  more  sober  and  solid,  if  not  so  clear,  when  he 
compares  Einnius  and  the  other  luminaries  of  the  Scipionic  age 
to  the  venerable  trees  of  a  sacred  grove  that  have  lost  their 
beauty  but  are  impressive  still.  The  public  could  only  respect 
what  their  fathers  had  admired  and  enjoyed ;  the  chano-e  was 
in  the  public,  not  in  Ennius  and  his  contemporaries  :  so  far 
the  metaphor  is  inexact.  Nor  can  we  altogether  explain  the 
change  by  referring  to  the  finish  and  refinement  of  form  of  the 
great  works  of  the  Augustan  age,  as  if  these  had  created  a  taste 
which  the  founders  of  Roman  literature  were  too  untrained, 


r 


too  inexperienced,  to  satisfy.  Ovid's  antithesis  makes  us  think 
of  works  like  "  Voluspa "  or  the  "  Nibelungenlied,"  where 
there  is  much  imagination  and  passion,  but  not  the  instinctive 
or  acquired  skill  to  express  them  in  a  way  permanently  de- 
lightful. We  should  think  it  overstrained  to  say  that  Cicdmon 
was  of  the  greatest  in  genius  though  rude  in  art,  and  yet  Csed- 
mon  did  as  much  for  the  poetry  of  English  religion  as  Ennius 
for  the  poetry  of  Roman  history. 

The  fragments  of  the  "Annals"  are  enough  to  enable  us  to 
judge  of  the  poetry  of  Ennius,  and  certainly  our  first  impres- 
sion is  wonder  in  what  sense  he  is  a  poet  at  all.  We  natu- 
rally think  it  the  business  of  a  poet  to  transcend  experience, 
to  carry  us  to  a  world  lit  ujd  by 

The  light  which  never  was  on  sea  or  land, 

or  else  to  see  something  in  experience  which  we  did  not  see  till 
he  showed  it.  But  the  imagination  really  has  a  function  which 
is  quite  as  indispensable  as  these  ;  to  conceive  consciously  of 
ordinary  life,  especially  worthy  life,  as  a  whole,  without  ideal- 
izing it  in  any  way,  is  really  an  exercise  of  the  imagination. 
Experience  is  successive  and  simultaneous,  and  is  generally 
fragmentary  too  ;  and  memory  in  its  spontaneous  action  is 
more  fragmentary  still.  Imagination  is  needed  to  make  ex- 
perience a  whole,  and  this  kind  of  imagination  Ennius  pos- 
sessed in  full  measure.  He  lived  in  a  time  which  w^as  ^reat. 
and  knew  its  greatness,  and  was  glad  to  see  itself  mirrored  in 
the  pages  of  one  who  understood  and  appreciated  all  that  was 
best  in  it  with  a  manly,  generous,  disinterested  sympathy. 

Quintus  Ennius  was  not  a  Roman  or  even  a  Latin  ;  he  was 
born  at  Rudire,  in  Calabria,  a  town  which  Strabo  reckoned 
.Greek,  r.c.  239  ;  he  believed  himself  to  be  a  descendant  of 
Messapus,  the  king  or  the  patriarch  of  the  land;  he  said  that 
he  had  three  hearts  *  because  he  knew  three  languages — Latin, 
Oscan,  and  Greek.  Oscan  influence  has  left  no  traces  that 
we  can  identify  in  his  poetry;  but  Greek  culture  had  come  to 
him  more  easily  than  to  later  Roman  poets  and  been  more 

*  The  distinction  of  head  and  heart,  which  Plato  uses  as  if  it  were  famil- 
iar, does  not  appear  in  Latin  literature  even  much  later  than  Ennius. 


24 


LATIN-  LITERATURE. 


intimately  appropriated.  He  took  up  the  ideas  and  theories 
which  were  current  among  the  Itahote  and  Siceliote  Greeks 
without  much  discrimination,  or  the  need  of  it.  In  him  the 
mystical  and  rationalist  tendencies  were  still  at  the  early 
stage  of  development  in  which  they  only  represent  the  emo- 
tional and  the  speculative  side  of  the  same  eager  curiosity. 
This  is  illustrated  by  his  feeling  about  dreams — a  point  always 
attractive  to  the  gifted  minds  of  a  primitive  people,  and  there- 
fore possibly  to  the  commonplace  minds  of  an  instructive  peo- 
ple. He  does  not  doubt  their  importance.  His  great  work 
began  with  a  dream  in  which  Homer  appeared  to  him,  as 
Hector  appears  in  Vergil  to  /Eneas,  and,  as  critics  seem  to 
agree,  revealed  to  him  the  secrets  of  the  life  to  come.  The 
dream  of  Ilia  which  served  as  a  prototype  of  the  dreams  of 
Dido  is  too  like  a  real  dream  to  be  dismissed  as  a  poetical 
machine.  The  numerous  dreams  in  the  plays  translated,  with 
more  or  less  change,  from  the  Greek  serve  to  show  the  other 
side  of  the  question.  Though  these  are  still  treated  seriously, 
we  meet  already  with  the  reflections  that  because  some  dreams 
are  true  all  need  not  be,  and  that  dreams  frequently  contain 
nothing  but  a  confused  medley  of  the  experiences  of  waking 
life;  but  this  does  not  exclude  a  recognition  of  Ihe  special 
clearness  of  the  perceptions  which  come  in  sleep  when  the 
limbs  are  at  rest.  Even  here  criticism  comes  in  :  the  revela- 
tions in  the  visions  of  the  night  are  the  reward  of  the  diligence 
of  the  day. 

If  the  escape  which  dreams  offer  from  the  limits  of  com- 
monplace experience  is  less  complete  than  it  seems,  the  es- 
cape which  diviners  and  soothsayers  of  all  ranks  offer  is  no 
better  than  a  cheat.  They  promise  riches  to  others  and  have 
nothing  for  themselves,  except  what  the  dupes  of  their  prom- 
ises give.  They  have  missed  their  own  path  in  life  (for  they 
are  no  better  than  beggars),  and  yet  they  undertake  to  show 
others  the  road  to  fortune.  The  panegyrist  of  Scipio  who 
went  up  to  the  Capitol  to  converse  with  Jove  had  no  quarrel 
with  the  mystical  temperament;  he  was  content  that 

Each  should  see  according  to  his  sight. 
But  it  offended  his  masculine  common-sense  that  weak  and 


ENNIUS:    THE    '' ANNALSr 


25 


greedy  or  timid  natures  should  try  to  get  more  than  their 
share  of  good  things  by  the  help  of  more  or  less  conscious 
impostors.     Another  point  at  which  he  came  into  collision 
with  contemporary  pietism  was  the  question  of  a  particular 
providence,  which  he  rejected  on  the  strength  of  the  broad 
fact  that  it  by  no  means  always  goes  well  with  the  good,  or  ill 
with  the  bad.     The  substance  of  the  popular  religion  was  left 
nearly  untouched  by  these  audacities ;   for  what  the  people 
really  believed  in  was  the  ritual,  which  proved  its  value  by  ex- 
perience, having  been  established  because  it  contained  antici- 
pations of  sound  empirical  rules  of  hygiene  and  the  like,  and 
maintained  because  it  fostered  a  serious,  cautious,  and  atten- 
tive spirit.     Besides,  when  speculation  begins,  it  is  still  felt  to 
be  a  luxury,  and  is  not  mistaken  for  a  necessity  by  those  who 
indulge  in  it:  they  are  on  their  guard  against  the  harm  they 
might  do  by  setting  a  fashion  it  would  not  be  well  for  all  to 
follow. 

Ennius's  own  philosophy  was  very  simple  :  it  consisted  of  the 
belief  that  he  had  passed  in  his  own  person  through  all  expe- 
rience that  interested  him— a  belief  which  we  find  in  Pythag- 
oras and  Empedocles,  perhaps  in  Buddha,  and  later  in  tire 
Welsh  poets  of  the  sixth  or  seventh  century ;  of  a  recognition 
of  the  large  element  of  nature-worship  which  had  inspired  the 
popular  mythology  ;  and  of  the  adoption  of  a  conjecture  with 
which  the  opening  of  intercourse  with  India  had  inspired  a 
clever  Greek.     The  chief  objects  of  worship  in  India  had  been 
deified  men  ;    there  were  legends  of  the  death  of  gods  in 
Greece.     When  the  two  facts  were  brought  into  combination, 
It  was  a  plausible  conjecture  that  the  anthropomorphic  my- 
thology of  Greece  was  really  history  in  disguise.     We  are  told 
that  Ennius  not  only  translated  the  work  of  Euhemerus,  but 
extended  it ;  and  that  Lactantius,  who  reproduced  Euheme- 
rus's  story  under  the  impression  that  he  was  refuting  paganism, 
seems  to  have  quoted  Ennius.      It  is  inferred  that  we  may 
find  this  extension  in  the  adventures  of  Saturn  from  his  de- 
thronement to  his  settlement  in  Italy,  which  Lactantius  gives. 
This  need  not  exclude  Alommsen's  view,  that  the  history  up 
to  the  death  of  Romulus,  at  any  rate,  may  have  been  influ- 

I.--2 


26 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


enced  by  the  Euhemerism  of  Ennius.  Such  speculations,  when 
used,  were  not  unfavorable  to  religious  fervor.  Apotheosis 
seemed  the  sublimest  goal  of  aspiration  for  the  poet  and  his 
friends:  to  climb  within  the  regions  of  the  host  of  heaven  was 
the  reward  for  noble  deeds.  If  Jupiter  had  won  his  godhead 
by  going  five  times  over  the  world,  establishing  his  friends  in 
kin^-doms  and  taming  barbarians,  it  was  the  easier  to  worship 
him""  and  believe  that  he  had  put  off  his  mortality  to  put  on 
the  "lorious  life '  of  the  glow  overhead  which  all  call  upon  as 
Jove,  the  life  of  air  and  cloud  and  wind  and  shower  and  sun- 
shine which  is  called  "the  father  of  help"  "because  it  helps 
mortals."  Such  r^ationalism  may  end— it  generally  does— by 
lowering  both  the  conceptions  that  are  brought  together,  but 
it  begins  by  heightening  both. 

Ennius  only  came  to  Rome  in  middle  life,  and  was  not  at 
first  a  Roman  citizen  :  he  became  so  by  being  placed  on  the 
rolls  of  a  colony  conducted  by  a  son  of  Fulvius  Nobilior,  un- 
der whom  he  had  served  in  /Etolia.     Even  after  this  he  was 
poor,  for  Cicero  tells  how  merry  he  was  under  the  double 
burden   of  poverty  and   old-age.     Though  poor,  he   did  not 
think  austerity  necessary  to  dignity.     He   died  of  gout   at 
seventy.     He  had  said,  long  before,  he  was  never  a  poet  but 
when  he  had  the  gout:  he  translated  a  Sicilian  cookery-book 
and  a  Greek  work  on  the  extreme  of  voluptuousness.     His 
great  work  was  produced  at  intervals,  as  a  war  occurred  in 
which  a  patron  distinguished  himself.     Its  successive  instal- 
ments are  the  fruit  of  the  brightest  intervals  in  the  life  of  the 
father  of  Roman  letters,  when  he  could  escape  from  the  drudg- 
ery of  his  work  as  a  schoolmaster  and  playwright  to  the  free- 
dom of  a  parasite.     He  had  no  sordid  desire  to  make  a  profit 
of  his  patrons,  for  whom  he  glorified    and   transcended  the 
festal  songs  in  praise  of  men  of  old.     He  has  drawn  his  own 
portrait  as  the  model  client  with  great  insight  and  perhaps  a 
little  garrulity,  and  it  is  noticeable  that  there  is  not  a  utili- 
tarian trait  in  the  picture.     There  is  nothing  to  show  that  the 
client  makes  himself  of  use  to  his  patron  in  any  way.     His 
value  to  the  patron  is  that  he  is  absolutely  safe  with  him,  and 
»  Aspice  hoc  sublime  candens  quern  invocant  omnes  Jovem. 


4 

\ 


\ 


I- 


ENNIUS:    THE   '' ANNALSr 


27 


absolutely  at  ease;  he  can  tell  him  anything  good  and  bad; 
he  can  share  his  avowable  and  unavowable  pleasures  with  him  • 
all  his  secrets  will  be  kept,  nothing  will  ever  provoke  the  good 
client  to  be  thoughtless  or  spiteful:  the  good  client  knows 
when  to  speak  and  when  to  hold  his  tongue  ;  he  is  always 
pleasant  and  has  plenty  to  say,  and  can  be  entertained ;  he 
can  follow  up  his  patron's  ideas  at  the  right  lime,  but  he  is 
not  talkative  ;  he  has  old-world  knowledge  of  all  kinds,  but  it 
is  buried  in  his  mind  ;  he  does  not  overwhelm  his  company 
with  precedents. 

It  is  curious  to  turn  from  this  picture  of  discretion  to  the 
grand  self-assertion  of  P^nnius's  claim  to  be  hailed  as  the 
poet '  who  reaches  to  mortals  the  fiery  cup  of  heartfelt  song. 
The  contrast  seems  rather  characteristic  of  the  Italians,  and 
occurs  again  and  again  in  Latin  literature;  in  Greece  boast- 
fulness  and  prudence  do  not  seem  to  go  together.  Pindar 
perhaps  is  an  exception,  but  even  Pindar  praises  himself  less 
directly  and  less  audaciously  than  Ennius.  Another  great 
poet  of  whom  Ennius  reminds  us  is  Milton;  there  is  the  same 
late  maturity,  the  same  manliness,  if  not  the  same  austerity 
and  purity.  And  there  is  the  same  transition  from  the  roman- 
tic interest  in  poetry  to  the  ethical  and  political  interest. 
Nearly  everything  that  is  strictly  poetical  or  imaginative  in 
the  "Annals  "  belongs  to  the  earliest  books.  It  is  not  merely 
that  the  outline  of  the  story  ceases  to  be  poetical :  such  a  pict- 
ure as  the  goddess  swimming  swiftly  over  the  tender  marge  of 
gloom  might  have  been  introduced  anywhere,  but  in  fact  it 
comes  in  the  first.  There,  too,  we  have  the  first  appearance 
of  the  "azure  meadows"  of  the  sea;  in  the  second  we  have 
the  really  exquisite  line — 

OIH  lespondet  suavis  sonus  Egeriai,'' 

where  one  wonders  \i  sonus  is  really  used  for  vox,  or  whether 
Ennius  wished   to   suggest  that   the  favored  king  heard  the 

*  Enni  poeta  salve  qui  mortalibus 
Versus  propinas  flammeos  medullitus. 

'  Egeria  answered  him  with  soothing  sound. 


IZ 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


ENNIUS:    THE   ''ANNALS. 


i> 


29 


voice  of  ihe  nymph  in  the  sound  of  the  fountain.  In  the 
dream  of  Ilia  we  may  notice  the  pleasant  willow  beds,  and  the 
*'  new  places  "  over  which  the  fair  man  of  the  dream  hurries 
the  dreamer,  for  the  combination  of  two  ditTerent  kinds  of 
imagination  :  and  we  know  that  the  description  of  the  fall  of 
Alba  suggested  many  traits  in  the  fall  of  Troy.  In  the  war 
with  Pyrrhus  there  are  one  or  two  well-known  grandiloquent 
passages,  and  an  amusing  sneer  of  the  demi-Greck  at 

Stolidum  genus  ^neidarum 
Bellipotcntes  sunt  magis  quam  sapicntipotentes, 

which  suggests  an  inquiry  whether  Lucilius  would  have  con- 
sidered sapicntipotentes  a  legitimate  Latin  compound.  We 
know  that  he  criticised  another  phrase  which  passed  almost 
into  a  mannerism  with  Ennius.  Both  in  the  "Annals"  and  in 
the  tragedies  we  find  more  than  once  the  metaphor  of  bristling 
arms  :  one  line  in  which  it  occurred  ended  with 

splendct  ct  horrct. 
Lucilius  susfiiested  that  the  line  should  read 


•&a 


horrct  ct  algct, 


implying  that  nothing  but  a  strictly  intransitive  use  in  connec- 
tion with  cold  was  permissible.  Perhaps  his  criticism  suggests 
that  Ennius's  metaphor  was  taken  from  the  play  of  light  upon 
the  weapons,  which  gave  him  the  impression  of  shivering. 
There  is  no  trace  of  this  in  Vergil,  who  adopted  the  metaphor 
and  handed  it  on  to  a  long  succession  of  poets.  Another 
metaphor  of  Ennius  which  Vergil  adopted  too  has  been  less 

fortunate : 

Florentes  aere  catcrvas 

has  found  no  imitators  outside  the  literature  of  the  Latin  lands, 
and  it  is  only  Vergil's  imitation  which  has  preserved  to  us  the 
knowledge  of  Ennius'syf^/'^i",  a  formation  which  has  to  be  ex- 
cused by  the  remembrance  that  Ennius  was  a  Calabrian  poet. 
In  spite  of  these  questionable  audacities,  it  is  clear  that 
Ennius  valued  style  and  art  as  highly  as  the  poets  of  the  Au- 
gustan age.  When  he  begins  his  own  cursory  narrativ^e  of  the 
first  Punic  war,  he  says  that  the  story  has  been  told  already — 


t 


Versibus'  quos  olim  Fauni  vatesque  canebant 
Quum  neque  Musarum  scopulos  quisquam  superarat 
Nee  dicti  studiosus  erat. 

And  Cicero,  who  has  preserved  the  boast,  seems  to  admit  that 
though  ungraceful  it  was  not  unjustifiable.  What  is  perhaps 
more  remarkable,  a  Greek  rhetorician  of  the  second  century 
was  struck  by  the  sonorous  pomp  and  strength  of  his  hex- 
ameters. It  is  true  that  the  metre  is  imperfectly  mastered  : 
there  are  spondaic  lines  like 

Olli  respondet  rex  Albai  Longai, 

which  recall  the  old  saturnian  rhythm,  unless  we  are  to  assume 
that  its  prosody  was  much  more  fixed  than  is  probable.  And 
even  when  the  dactylic  movement  is  unmistakable,  the  want 
of  practice  makes  itself  painfully  felt;  he  writes  with  as  little 
restriction  as  Homer,  and  he  is  far  from  having  Homer's 
resources.     Such  a  line  as 

Aspcclabat  virtutem  Icgionis'  suai 

is  very  far  from  being  an  extreme  instance  of  the  harshness  of 
Ennius  :  it  is  at  least  as  hard  to  scan  as  an  averasre  Endish 
hexameter.  A  fixirer  example  of  Ennius's  latest  manner  may 
be  fhinid  in  the  description  of  the  tribune  in  the  Histrian 
war  : 

Undique  conveniunt  velut  imber  tela  tribuno, 

Configunt  parmani,  tinnit  liastilibus  umbo 

/Erato  sonitu  galeae  ;  sed  nee  pote  quisquam 

Undique  nitendo  corpus  discernere  ferro. 

Semper  obundantes  hastas  frangitque  quatitque. 

Totum  sudor  habet  corpus,  multumque  laborat, 

Ncc  rcspirandi  fit  copia,  praepetc  ferro 

Histri  tela  manu  jacientes  sollicitabant.' 

In  the  main,  these  lines  are  a  free  and  vigorous  translation  of 

»  All  around  the  weapons  came  in  upon  the  tribune  like  a  storm.  They 
pierce  his  buckler  :  the  boss  rings  with  darts  with  bronzed  clang  in  his 
helm.  But  yet  no  one  prevails  among  them  all  to  cleave  his  body  with 
steel.  Evermore  he  shatters  and  shakes  off  the  wave  of  lances.  All  his 
body  is  in  a  sweat ;  he  is  sore  put  to  it ;  he  has  no  leisure  to  draw  breath. 
The  Histrians  troubled  him  with  winged  steel,  easting  darts  from  their 
hands. 


30 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


II.  TT  103  sq.  The  double  ablative  in  the  second  and  third 
lines  is  an  immature  construction  :  even  in  English  the  boss  of 
a  helmet  ringing  with  darts  with  bronzed  clang  is  awkward. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  fifth  line  is  fine  and  original,  though 
not  quite  co.nsistent  with  the  statement  that  the  tribune's 
shield  is  pierced  with  darts.  A  similar  incongruity  occurs  in 
Ennius's  adaptation  of  the  simile  of  the  ararir^  JWor:  he  adds 
the  trait  of  the  horse  foaming,  which  implies  that  he  is  balked 
and  restrained  while  stimulated  to  violent  action. 

With  all  its  incongruities,  the  "Annals"  of  Ennius  was 
the  work  upon  which  his  reputation  rested.  His  comedies 
were  rated  very  low  in  antiquity.  Volcatius,  a  grammarian  of 
the  seventh  century  of  the  city,  who  drew  up  a  list  of  ten  co- 
medians in  order  of  merit,  placed  Ennius  at  the  end  of  it,  and 
only  placed  him  there  in  honor  of  his  antiquitv ;  which  is 
more  remarkable,  as  he  placed  the  haughty  and  free-spoken 
Naivius,  an  earlier  writer  than  Ennius,  a^nd'one  whose  come- 
dies are  otherwise  unknown,  above  Terence.  Ennius's  trage- 
dies were  better  esteemed,  though  both  Tacuvius  and  AccTus 
were  held  to  have  surpassed  him.  Still,  for  us  the  history  of 
Latin  tragedy  begins  with  him,  as  for  us  the  history  of  Latin 
comedy  begins  with.  Plautus. 


) 


I 


LATJ.V  TRAGEDY  UNDER    THE  REPUBLIC.  31 


CHAPTER  n. 
LATIN   7RAGEDY  UNDER   THE  REPUBLIC. 

According  to  an  ingeaious  theory  set  forth  by  Ladewig  in 
a  programme  published  thirty  years  ago,  the  Latin  drama  be- 
gan with  translation,  at  least  with  paraphrase,  and  in  Ennius 
hardly  ever  got  beyond  this,  while  Pacuvius  and  Accius  eman- 
cipated themselves.  For  instance,  he  observes  that  if  Ennius 
had  treated  the  legend  of  Antiope  as  Hyginus  said  he  did,  Cic- 
ero must  have  been  wrong  in  saying  that  Pacuvius's  "Anti- 
ope" was  a  translation  of  the  "Antiope"  of  Euripides.  It  is 
a  fair  reply  that  Hyginus  was  at  least  as  likely  to  be  mistaken 
in  the  name  of  the  poet  as  Cicero  in  the  nature  of  the  play, 
though  it  does  not  seem  to  have  been  noticed  on  either  side 
that  a  line  of  Pacuvius's  play,'  which  Persius  paraphrases,  is 
plainly  taken  from  ^schylus,  whom  Euripides  is  not  known 
to  have  copied.  This  is  nearly  decisive  against  the  literal 
truth  of  Cicero's  statement.  It  may  possibly  be  true  in  the 
main ;  it  would  be  like  Persius  to  sum  up  Pacuvius's  imitation 
of  the  shabby  pathos  of  Euripides  in  the  one  epithet  verrucosa^ 
as  if  she  had  been  covered  with  warts  in  consequence  of  the 
ill-treatment  on  which  Pacuvius  had  dwelt  at  length;  it  would 
be  as  like  him  to  use  this  coarse. epithet  to  express  his  sense 
of  the  roughness  of  the  play,  or  of  the  incorrectness  of  Pacu- 
vius's language,  who,  since  Cato  calls  a  hill  verruca,  may  have 
made  his  heroine  fly  to  her  sons/^/'  verrucosa  loca. 

Most  of  Ladewig's  instances  are  as  doubtful  as  the  "An- 
tiope," and  he  never  carried  his  system  beyond  the  first  sketch. 
In  philology  theories  which  are  put  forward  with  an  insufficient 
foundation  of  knowledge  seem  harder  to  revive  than  theories 

*  Antiopa  aeriimnis  cor  luctificabile  fulta. 
E/(T<V  (TTErayfioi  tCjv  ttovojv  tpeifffiara. 


32  LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 

of  like  character  in  natural  science.  For  in  natural  science 
materials  accumulate  far  more  rapidly,  and  a  problem  can  be 
reopened  as  often  as  fresh  evidence  has  been  made  accessible; 
in  philology  a  theory  which  takes  into  account  all  the  evidence, 
without  forcing  it,  may  easily  establish  itself  in  permanent  pos- 
session of  the  field.  The  accepted  theory  upon  which  the  lost 
tragedies  of  the  republic  have  been  reconstructed  in  outline  is, 
in  the  main,  the  work  of  two  men — Welcker  and  Ribbeck  ;  and 
the  younger  of  these,  though  often  differing  in  detail,  consist- 
ently treats  the  former  as  his  master,  and  adheres  to  his 
method.  This  method  is  so  adventurous  that  it  is  fortunate 
that  it  has  been  applied  by  scholars  of  remarkable  sobriety  of 
judgment  and  of  unwearied  diligence  in  collecting  materials. 
It  is  substantially  this.  We  know  from  Cicero  and  elsewhere 
that  more  than  one  famous  Roman  play  was  in  the  main  a 
translation  from  a  definite  Greek  original ;  it  may  therefore  be 
assumed,  when  there  are  any  fragments  of  a  Latin  play  which 
appear  to  be  translated  from  a  Greek  play,  the  whole  play  was 
a  translation  from  that  Greek  original.  Consequently,  it  is 
possible  to  reconstruct  the  Greek  play  (if,  as  generally  happens, 
it  is  lost)  and  the  Latin  by  piecing  the  fragments  of  the  two 
ether.  When  the  fragments,  Greek  and  Latin,  leave  the 
outline  of  the  play  uncertain,  recourse  is  had  to  Hyginus,  a 
grammarian  of  the  reign  of  Augustus,  who  wrote  a  hand-book 
of  mythology,  and  sometimes,  at  any  rate,  drew  his  materials 
from  Greek  plays  —  or  from  their  arguments,  which  are  not 
quite  the  same  thing.  It  is  frankly  admitted  that  Hyginus 
had  other  sources;  that  there  are  lines  in  the  Greek  fragments 
which  the  Latin  writer  could  hardly  have  used;  that  there  are 
lines  in  the  Latin  fragments  which  could  hardly  come  from  the 
Greek;  and,  lastly,  that  in  a  certain  number  of  plays  different 
Greek  sources  were  used.  But  none  of  these  admissions  are 
held  to  shake  the  assumption  that,  in  the  absence  of  evidence 
to  the  contrary,  the  Latin  poet  was  translating  the  Greek,  or 
at  most  paraphrasing  him.  The  assumption  is  worked  out 
with  so  much  detail  and  so  much  patience  and  so  much  learn- 
ing that  it  is  hard  to  remember  it  as  an  assumption,  and  that 
the  consent  of  scholars,  which  rewards  the  skill  employed  in 


LATIN  TRAGEDY  UNDER    THE  REPUBLIC. 


zz 


illustrating  it,  cannot  give  anything  like  the  certainty  which 
would  be  given  by  the  recovery  of  a  single  Greek  or  Latin 
play  fulfilling  the  anticipations  of  the  method.  This,  again, 
would  be  very  much  less  decisive  and  satisfactory  than  the  re- 
covery of  the  whole  lost  literature. 

We  are  fortunately  able,  in  some  measure,  to  test  Cicero's 
statement  that  the  "Medea"  of  P2nnius  was  a  verbal  transla- 
tion of  the  "Medea"  of  Euripides.  To  a  critical  reader  it 
was  something  less,  to  a  sympathetic  reader  it  may  have  been 
something  more.  How  much  less  and  how  much  more  will  be 
clearer  after  we  have  noticed  some  fundamental  changes  both 
in  form  and  spirit  which  distinguished  Latin  tragedy  as  a  whole 
from  Greek.  One  important  change  was  the  suppression  of 
the  choral  dance,  which  followed  the  removal  of  the  chorus 
from  the  orchestra  to  the  stage.  The  change  dates  from  the 
first  days  of  the  literary  drama  at  Rome,  and  there  were  better 
reasons  for  it  than  the  fact  that  the  senate  wanted  the  space. 
The  choral  dances  and  the  choral  rhythms  were  too  national 
to  bear  transplanting  well;  and  Euripides  had  pretty  well 
eliminated  them  from  the  later  tra^edv  of  Athens;  while  the 
monodies  to  which  he  gave  such  great  development  were  very 
near  akin  to  the  caiitica,  which  were  as  old  as  any  element  of 
the  Roman  stage.  The  lyrical  function  of  the  Latin  chorus, 
when  there  was  one,  was  to  supply  cantica  to  be  sung  by  many 
voices.  Besides,  Euripides  had  changed  the  function  of  the 
chorus  in  another  direction  :  he  had  made  it  the  confidant  of 
the  protagonist,  and  the  theory  of  Latin  tragedy  quite  accepted 
the  change.  Horace  has  the  air  of  expressing  a  commonplace 
when  he  tells  us  that  the  chorus  ought  thoroughly  to  sustain 
the  part  of  an  actor:  it  is  obvious  that  an  actor  ought  to  be 
on  the  stage.  The  chorus  in  plays  like  the  "Ajax"or  the 
"Eumenides"  would  be  more  naturally  placed  on  the  stage 
than  in  the  orchestra.  The  danger  of  overcrowding  the  stage 
was  easily  met  by  enlarging  it  beyond  Greek  precedent.  It  is 
true  that  the  Greek  arrangement  was  more  picturesque.  When 
the  chorus  was  placed  between  the  audience  and  the  actors, 
upon  lower  ground  than  both,  the  actors  could  turn  to  the 
chorus  without  turning  away  from  the  audience.     The  open- 

L-2* 


34 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


LATIN  TRAGEDY:   ENNIUS. 


35 


ing  scene  of  the  "Oedipus  Tyrannus"  would  lose  very  much 
of  its  dignity  as  a  spectacle  if  the  king  were  thrust  back  to 
the  far  end  of  the  staiie,  or  had  to  make  his  wav  to  the  front 
through  the  crowd  of  his  suffering  subjects,  instead  of  simply 
coming  out  of  his  palace  as  he  does  in  Sophocles,  and  speak- 
ing to  the  people  wliom  he  finds  in  front  of  it. 

The  metres  of  the  Latin  chorus  were  much  simpler,  and 
seem  to  have  fiillen  into  stanzas  which  were  repeated  with- 
out variation,  when  the  writer  aimed  at  any  regular  structure. 
Perhaps  it  was  commoner  to  have  no  structure  at  all,  but  to 
link  lines  together  in  the  fashion  which  the  Greeks  called 
monostrophic.  To  a  certain  extent  it  was  a  compensation  for 
the  monotony  of  tlie  choruses  that  the  dialogue  was  more 
varied  than  in  Greek ;  for  trochaics  were  much  more  freely 
employed,  partly,  perhaps,  because  the  undue  preponderance 
of  spondees  in  iambic  trimeters  required  to  be  corrected  by 
the  more  rapid  movement  of  the  tetrameter. 

The  energy  of  the  tetrameter  is  congenial,  because  energy 
is  the  prevailing  note  of  Roman  tragedy.  All  the  subtleties 
of  character  and  situation  which  culminate  in  Sophocles,  all 
the  subtleties  of  discussion  and  passion  which  culminate  in 
Euripides,  evaporated  ;  moreover,  the  circumstances  of  Roman 
life  excluded  the  spiritual  interests  of  Greek  tragedy.  In  the 
fifth  century  w.c.  \\\  (ireece,  life  was  very  uncertain,  full  of  ex- 
amples of  brilliant  ruin.  In  the  time  of  the  Punic  wars,  when 
tragedy  took  shape  at  Rome,  there  was  nothing  to  suggest  any 
limits  to  the  efficacy  of  courage  and  conduct :  there  was  much 
to  foster  sobriety,  nothing  to  foster  awe.  Roman  tragedy  de- 
veloped into  something  not  unlike  the  higher  kind  of  melo- 
drama— the  expression  of  strong,  manly  feeling  and  of  vigor- 
ous common-sense,  so  combined  as  to  unite  the  maximum  of 
excitement  and  edification. 

Subject  to  this,  it  might  be  said  that  a  play  of  Ennius  was 
generally  a  play  of  Euripides  simplified  and  amplified.  It 
contained  as  much  of  Euripides  as  he  understood 
sufficiently  to  commend  to  his  countrymen  ;  it  con- 
tained, also,  an  exposition  of  all  that  he  had  thought  or  felt  in 
reading  it :  the  thing  to  be  said  is  commonly  taken  direct  from 


Ennius. 


the  Greek,  but  Ennius  says  it  in  his  own  way.     For  instance, 
in  his  "iVIedea"  the  nurse  of  Medea  begins  the  play,  as  in 
Euripides,  with  regretting  the  Argonautic  expedition    as  the 
origin  of  her  mistress's  trouble.      But  in  Euripides  she  wishes 
that  the  Argo  had  never  sailed  through  the  crashing  rocks ;  in 
Ennius  she  wishes  that  timber  to  build  the  Argo  had  never 
been    cut,  and    considerately  informs  the   audience  that  the 
Argo  was  so  named  because  the  chosen  men  of  Argos  sailed 
in  her.     So,  again,  when  Medea  comes  forth  to  address  the 
dames  of  Corinth,  in  Euripides  she  begins  simply  "  Dames  of 
Corinth,"  but  Ennius  begins  "Puissant  illustrious  Corinthian 
dames;"  and  in  the  next  line   or  two  his  wish  to  raise  the 
tone  of  his  original  carries  him  into  downright  mistranslation. 
Then  in  the  scenes  between  Jason  and  Medea  all  the  subtlety 
and  finesse  of  Euripides  is  replaced  by  direct  passionate  em- 
phasis.   Where  the  Jason  of  Euripides  parries  Medea's  appeals 
to  his  gratitude  with  a  leisurely,  roundabout  reference  to  the 
power  of  Cypris,  the  Jason  of  Ennius  delivers  himself  of  the 
retort,  at  once  fierce  and  pragmatic, 

Tu  me  amoris  plusquam  honoris  servavisti  gratia. 

Always,  whenever  the  writing  is  meant  to  be  intense,  the  plays 
upon  words  of  all  kinds  multiply  ;  nor  is  this  to  be  set  down 
to  mere  bad  taste.  Alliteration  and  assonance  seem  to  be 
natural  luxuries  of  primitive  speech  when  it  becomes  more 
vehement.  They  are  almost  an  attempt  to  make  the  stutter  of 
passion  articulate;  or,  rather,  when  passion  has  found  a  tongue 
the  note  first  struck  goes  on  sounding  of  itself,  and  then  the 
artist  who  has  struck  a  note  that  pleases  him  holds  it  as  long 
as  he  can.  In  Ennius  and  other  early  writers  the  artifice,  to 
call  it  so,  is  exaggerated  into  a  vicious  and  provoking  manner- 
ism ;  although  it  often  produces  a  legitimate  effect,  as  in  the 
vigorous  trochaic  lines  in  which  Medea  announces  more  plain- 
ly than  in  Euripides  her  intention  to  slay  her  children  and 
bring  punishment  on  Jason,  banishment  on  herself  In  Eu- 
ripides she  is  thinking  and  feeling  aloud ;  in  Ennius  she  has 
thought  and  is  telling  the  result.  Ennius  found  the  process 
by  which  her  decision  was  reached  thought  out  for  him,  and 


f 


36 


LATIiV  LITERATURE. 


lived  with  men  who  still  decided  silently.  On  the  other  hand, 
Euripides,  whose  audience  were  familiar  with  the  legend, 
generalizes  his  traditional  subject;  he  makes  it  a  vehicle  for 
the  discussion  of  the  recurring  tragedy  of  a  cast-off  wife.  P'or 
Ennius  this  general  problem  had  little  interest ;  the  disinte- 
gration of  the  family  had  scarcely  begun,  though  the  burden  of 
keeping  it  up  was  felt  already.  His  main  concern  was  to 
familiarize  his  audience  with  an  excitins:  lejrend  of  an  alien 
race  and  a  distant  time.  The  pragmatical  interest,  though 
always  present,  does  not  affect  the  conception  of  a  subject  as 
a  whole  ;  it  shows  itself  in  a  constant  tendency  of  the  charac- 
ters to  say  something  edifying  whenever  occasion  can  be  found 
or  made.  For  instance,  in  the  "  Eumenides,"  one  of  the  two 
plays  which  we  know  P^nnius  took  from  yEschylus,  the  speech 
of  Orestes  about  the  time  for  silence  and  the  time  for  speech 
becomes  didactic  in  the  translation,  while  the  blessings  which 
the  Eumenides  promise  when  propitiated  are  amplified  in  a 
rather  earthly-minded  way. 

Most  of  the  plays  of  Ennius  belong  to  the  Trojan  cycle  ;  of 
these  the  "  Iphigenia  "  is  noticeable  because  a  strong  scene  is 
introduced  from  Sophocles,  though  most  of  the  play  is  taken 
from  Euripides,  who,  of  course,  could  not  borrow  from  his  rival. 
Of  the  plays  outside  the  Trojan  cycle  we  may  mention  the 
"Erechtheus"  and  the  "  Melanippa."  The  former  was  cer- 
tainly a  translation,  with  little  change,  from  Euripides  ;  and, 
like  Euripides,  Ennius  made  the  mother  who  gave  her  daugh- 
ter for  her  country  more  courageous  and  devoted  than  the 
father.  In  the  "  Melanippa "  all  the  perplexities  mentioned 
above  are  at  their  height,  and  so  is  our  dependence  on  the 
doubtful  help  of  Hyginus.  The  subject  is  interesting.  The 
wise  wife  of  .4^:olus,  the  wise  daughter  of  Chiron,  was  the  organ 
of  some  of  the  boldest  scepticism  of  Euripides,  and  in  both 
plays  much  turned  upon  the  question  what  was  to  be  done 
with  her  children,  who  had  been  nursed  by  a  cow,  as  the  twin 
founders  of  Rome  were  nursed  by  a  wolf.  AVere  they  to  be 
burned  as  monsters  to  purify  the  land,  or  was  theirs  a  case 
for  rational  explanation  t  In  both  cases  the  same  explanation 
had  to  serve.      Poseidon  had  been  too  strong  for  Melanippa, 


PA  CU  VI  US. 


37 


as  Mars  had  been  too  strong  for  Ilia.  The  polemic  is  not 
against  supernaturalism,  but  against  superstition.  Melanippa 
is  imprisoned  at  last  until  she  can  burst  the  rock  which  shuts 
her  in  ;  but  her  mother  appears  in  glory  and  promises  deliver- 
ance.    Ennius's  rationalism  is  never  carried  throuirh. 

Tragedy  passed  from  the  hands  of  Ennius  to  those  of  his 
sister's  son,  M.  Pacuvius,  who  continued  the  work  of  his  uncle 
in  other  directions  too.  He  wrote  satires,  which 
shall  be  treated  with  the  other  miscellaneous  works  '^'^"^•"s. 
of  his  uncle  when  we  come  to  speak  of  Lucilius.  Accordino- 
to  one  account,  where  the  reading  is,  to  say  the  very  least, 
doubtful,  he  wrote  Annals  too.  In  addition  to  this,  he  was  a 
painter.  His  life  was  long,  but  it  does  not  appear  that  it  was 
very  productive  ;  he  wrote  very  much  less  than  Ennius,  and 
does  not  appear  to  have  had  to  work  as  a  schoolmaster.  Per- 
haps we  ought  to  esteem  his  artistic  performances,  like  those 
of  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  as  the  occasional  exercise  of  a  man  of 
the  world  who  practises  difficult  accomplishments  conscien- 
tiously. 

It  is  certain  that  he  and  Accius  were  the  two  tragic  poets 
who  excited  most  literary  interest  at  Rome.  Cicero  at  first 
seems  an  exception  to  the  caprice  which  rested  the  fame  of 
Ennius  on  his  "Annals ;"  but  when  Cicero  praises  Ennius's  trans- 
lations of  fine  Greek  plays,  he  is  really  influenced  by  the  same 
loyalty  to  the  language  which  makes  him  read  and  recommend 
poor  Titinius's  translation  of  the  masterpieces  of  Sophocles, 
although  even  Cicero  could  not  quote  Titinius  as  he  quoted 
Ennius.  But  when  the  Romans  compared  their  own  stage 
with  the  Greek,  they  thought  of  the  learned  Pacuvius  and  the 
lofty  Accius,  and  in  later  days  of  Varius,  whose  "Thyestes," 
according  to  Quinctilian,  was  worthy  of  the  best  days  of 
Greece.  The  admiration  for  the  older  dramatists  was  perhaps 
better  founded  as  well  as  more  spontaneous.  The  period  be- 
tween the  victories  over  Syria  and  Macedonia  and  the  Social 
AVar,  during  which  Pacuvius  and  Accius  chiefly  worked,  was 
really  more  fiivorable  to  tragedy  than  most  other  periods  of 
Roman  history.  The  old  national  discipline  still  existed  ;  its 
authority  was  not  questioned  ;  it  was  still  in  a  sense  obeyed, 


38 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


but  the  virtue  was  jrone  out  of  it.  Life  was  becomins:  dark 
and  hard,  and  Roman  tragedy  was  a  dramatized  sermon  on 
the  characteristic  Roman  virtues,  which  had  been  most  visfor- 
ous  when  they  could  be  practised  in  silence,  but  were  still 
practised  sufficiently  to  be  preached  effectively. 

There  was  still  a  public  interested  in  prudence  and  virtue, 
while  the  most  powerful  and  most  successful  individuals  had 
already  learned  to  make  their  way  to  the  highest  places  in 
fashions  that  could  not  be  avowed.  And  this  public  listened 
with  interest  both  to  the  counsels  of  prudence  and  virtue  and 
to  the  description  of  the  sufferings  of  heroes  who  had  found 
these  counsels  unprofitable  to  themselves.  Another  point 
which  aided  the  achievements  of  Accius  and  Pacuvius  was 
that  a  real  literary  knowledge  of  Greek  was  still  rare  :  if  there 
had  been  a  large  public  capable  of  enjoying  their  originals  and 
comparing  them  with  the  copies,  the  copyists  would  have  been 
depressed.  As  it  was,  they  undertook  the  work  of  reproduc- 
tion and  adaptation  with  a  fervor  proportionate  to  their  interest 
in  Greek  tragedy. 

It  is  difficult  from  the  fragments  and  notices  to  ascertain  in 
what  the  superiority  of  Pacuvius  and  Accius  over  Ennius  lay. 
The  fragments  of  the  plays  of  the  Trojan  cycle  of  Ennius  are 
certainly  fresh  and  brilliant  compared  with  anything  of  his 
successors  that  has  come  down  to  us.  To  be  sure,  they  are 
selected  partly  for  their  merits  as  well  as  for  their  a  propos 
by  an  admirable  judge  of  style;  but  it  is  still  curious  that 
Cicero  had  nothing  so  good  to  select  from  Pacuvius  or  Ac- 
cius. It  is  possible  that  the  real  advance  was  that  the  later 
poets  were  able  to  keep  on  a  higher  level,  and  .that  Ennius 
was  often  bald  when  he  was  not  passionate  or,  in  his  sober- 
hearted  way,  imaginative.  It  is  also  possible  that  the  specula- 
tive interest  was  more  completely  subdued  to  the  dramatic  ; 
although  we  know  that  Pacuvius  introduced  riddles  pretty 
freely,  which  is  a  sign  that  the  dramatic  movement  cannot 
have  been  very  active,  and  his  verses  are  overloaded  with 
long  words— especially  words  like  tcuentudo,  which  have  no 
foundation  in  the  general  usage  of  the  language.  In  fact,  it 
scarcely  seems  as  if  he  had  been,  or  been  esteemed,  a  poet  of 


PACUVIUS. 


39 


genius  :  his  praise  was  that  he  was  ''learned."    He  introduced 
all  kinds  of  little-known  legends  to  his  countrymen  ;  he  trav- 
elled freely  beyond  the  Theban  and  Trojan  cycles  ;  and  even 
when  within  them  he  brought  forward  the  tales  that  were  new. 
Even  after  Ennius,  it  was  impressive  to  be  told  that  ^ter  was 
the  father  and  Earth  the  mother — all  the  more  perhaps  be- 
cause this  was  put  forth  quite  simply  and  without  enthusiasm. 
In  general,  he  seems  to  have  refined  upon  Ennius  rather 
than  introduced  any  new  spirit  into  poetry ;  he  was  the  smooth- 
est and  most  careful  in  his  metres  of  the  classical  tragedians: 
he  continues  all  the  discussions  of  Ennius.     He  is  not  tired, 
as  we  have  seen,  of  the  physical  philosophy  which  Ennius  first 
introduced  ;  in  his  "  Chryses,"  if  Ribbeck  be  right  in  thinking 
he  followed  Sophocles  in  the  plot,  it  is  significant  that  the  pas- 
sage which  described  the  ether  as  the  beginning  and  end  of 
all  things  should  present  so  many  parallelisms  to  a  passage 
in  Euripides  on  the  most  fruitful  of  all  physical  themes — the 
marriage  of  heaven   and  earth.     Another  point  in  which  he 
imitated  Euripides  was  in  introducing  Orestes  as  a  beggar,  for 
the  story  simply  required  that  he  should  land  by  some  acci- 
dent or  other  on  the  island  where  Chryses  was  priest,  and  be 
preserved  by  Chryseis,  who  recognized  in  him  the  brother  of 
her  own  child   by  Agamemnon.      Perhaps  it   is  an   advance 
upon  Ennius  that,  where  Ennius  denies  Providence,  Pacuvius 
denies  fortune  ;  it  is  admitted  on  both  sides  that  there  is  no 
perceptible  connection   between  men's  lot  and  their  desert; 
and  the  only  question  is  whether  this  result  is  due  to  a  blind 
power,  or  is  to  be  conceived  as  the  uncaused  issue  of  accident. 
Pacuvius  inclines  to  the  latter  alternative.     His  view  differs 
perceptibly  from  the  high  fatalism  of  ^schylus  or  even  Soph- 
ocles.    They  treat  calamity  as  something  mysterious  and  in- 
evitable, incurred  either  by  the  sins  of  the  father  visited  upon 
the  children  or  by  a  taint  in  the  nature  of  the  sufferer  himself. 
In  Euripides  this  doctrine  has  lost  as  much  in  depth  of  mean- 
ing as  it  has  gained  in  breadth  of  application.     It  resolves  it- 
self simply  into  the  statement  that  circumstances  are  beyond 
our  power,  and  this  is  made  the  foundation  for  a  tearful  view 
of  life  ;  even  heroism  where  it  appears  (and  it  generally  ap- 


40 


LA  TLV  LITER  A  TURE. 


pears  among  the  weak  ;  indeed,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  real 
hero  or  heroine  in  Euripides,  apart  from  his  one  male  and 
many  female  virgin-martyrs)  is  something  to  be  cried   over 
rather  than  to  be  imitated  or  even  admired  with  hearty  cheer- 
fulness.   This  kind  of  pathos  was  anything  but  Roman.    The 
vigor  of  national   life  was  still   unimpaired   by  the   obvious 
inequalities  of  fortune,  and  it  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to 
find  that  even  Sophocles  is  not  manly  enougli  for  Pacuvius. 
Iw  the  "Niptra"  of  Sophocles  the  dying  Ulysses  did  not  ex- 
ert any  self-control  when  there  was  no  more  use  for  it.     Pacu- 
vius, whether  he  borrowed  from  Sophocles  or  Apollodorus  or 
aimed  at  originality,  was  resolved  that  his  Ulysses  should  be 
heroic  to  the  end.     His  comrades  rebuke  him  for  the  first  and 
mildest  expression  of  feeling,  and  remind  him  of  what  he  has 
borne  as  a  pledge  of  what  he  can  bear.     At  last  he  is  perfectly 
calm,  and  can  rebuke  others  for  giving  way  to  wailing,  which 
should  be  left  to  women.     Looking  to  the  very  Roman^'charac- 
ter  of  the  alliterative  caresses  of  the  serving-maid,  who  recog- 
nizes her  unknown  master  by  his  scars  as  she  washes  his  fee't, 
It  is  possible  that   Pacuvius  made  the  opening  scene  softer 
than  the  Greek,  as  he  made  the  last  scene  sterner. 

Pacuvius  seems  to  Iiave  been  given  to  accumulate  horrors 
in  a  mechanical  way  to  compensate  the  want  of  natural  pathos 
or  supernatural  awe.  Madness  plays  a  great  part  in  his 
scenes ;  the  Bacchic  frenzy  is  introduced  in  the  "  Peribcea '' 
(which  dealt  with  the  restoration  of  (Eneas  by  Diomed  on  his 
return  from  the  war  of  the  Epigoni)  and  in  the  "  Anliopa,"  as 
w^ell  as  in  the  "  BacchiE."  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  Pacu- 
vius was  a  contemporary  of  the  Bacchanalian  excitement  in 
Italy.  He  declines  to  take  a  mystical  view  of  it :  in  Euripides, 
Dionysus  himself  is  the  prisoner  of  Pentheus;  in  Pacuvius  he 
is  replaced  by  an  insignificant  Acoetes.  On  the  other  hand, 
Pentheus  is  haunted  by  the  Furies,  which  is  an  addition  to 
Euripides. 

There  is  a  general  desire  to  complicate  the  story.  In  the 
"Antiopa"  there  was  not  only  the  Bacchic  interlude,  but  a 
long  debate  between  Zethus  and  Amphion  as  to  whether  the 
speculative  or  practical  life  was  better,  besides  the  proper  sub- 


ACCIUS. 


41 


ject — the  deliverance  of  their  mother  from  the  oppression  of 
Dirce.  In  the  *' Dulorestes,"  according  to  the  most  recent 
theory,  there  was  an  elaborate  underplot  about  Electra's  mar- 
riage with  CEax  (one  of  the  sons  of  Caphareus,  who  destroyed 
the  Greek  fleet  on  its  return  from  Troy  by  false  beacons),  be- 
sides the  main  subject  of  the  matricide.  In  the  "  Electra  "  of 
Euripides  the  heroine  is  married  already,  and  her  sufferings 
serve  to  fill  up  the  measure  of  her  mother's  crimes  without 
complicating  the  action.  Nor  is  it  certain  that  the  authorities 
were  wrong  who  hold  that  the  '' Dulorestes  "  contained  the 
most*mmous  and  effective  passage  in  Pacuvius,  the  contest  of 
self-devotion  between  Orestes  and  Pylades.  If  so,  Pacuvius 
brought  together  in  one  play  three  subjects,  any  of  which 
would  have  been  enough  for  a  play  of  Sophocles.  After  this 
it  is  not  strange  that  the  *'  Armorum  Judicium  "  carries  on  the 
story  to  the  funeral  of  Ajax,  though  ^schylus  was  content  to 
end  his  play  with  the  contest  for  the  arms  of  Achilles. 

The  frenzy  of  Hesione  may  have  done  something  to  com- 
plicate the  plot  of  the  comparatively  simple  play  which  told  of 
the  return  of  Teucer  and  his  banishment  bv  Telamon.  The 
despair  and  rage  of  the  old  man,  under  a  calamity  which 
broke  down  his  f^iith  in  everything,  were  very  effective  ;  the 
dispute  between  father  and  son  was  interesting  to  an  audience 
who  lived  under  \.\\e  patn'a  potesfas,  and  it  was  part  of  rhetor- 
ical training  to  commit  it  to  memory.  The  conflict  between 
youth  and  age  appeared  in  another  form  in  the  rivalry  between 
Hermione  and  Andromache,  which  formed  the  subject  of  an- 
other play. 

Pacuvius  himself  lived  to  be  old,  and  had  the  good  fortune 
to  be  honored  by  his  successor  as  he  had  honored  his  prede- 
cessor. Accius  introduced  himself  to  Pacuvius  with 
his  first  play,  which  the  elder  poet  approved  as  ad- 
mirably fiery,  though  harsh  and  obscure.  The  younger  said 
these  were  faults  which  time  would  mend,  and  it  was  better  to 
start  with  too  much  impetuosity  than  too  little.  The  promise 
was  hardly  fulfilled  ;  Accius  was  never  as  finished  a  versifier 
as  Pacuvius :  we  should  not  have  guessed  from  his  fragments 
that  he  was  regarded  as  "  loftier"  than  his  "  learned  "  prede- 


Accius. 


42 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


ACCIUS. 


43 


cesser.     The  polemic  against  soothsayers  reappears  without 
change  or  progress;  the  parade  of  alliteration  reappears  too; 
verbal  distinctions  after  the  manner  of  Prodicus  or  Ennius  are 
elaborated  with  sophistical  precision.      There   is    the  same 
striving  after  superior  manliness;  the  Philoctetes  of  Sopho- 
cles, like  his  Ulysses,  has  to  take  lessons  in  self  control  before 
addressing  a  Roman  audience.     Perhaps  Accius  is  a  shade 
less  sceptical,  a  shade  more  romantic,  than  Pacuvius.     In  his 
fragments  there  is  no  trace  of  the  polemic  against  Providence  ; 
one  of  his  characters  even  expresses  a  firm  belief  that  there  is 
no  human  virtue  without  the  help  of  the  immortal  gods.     This 
is  the  first  sign  of  the  pietistic  reaction  which  henceforward 
accompanies  almost  every  political  revival  at  Rome.     Again, 
in  the  "  Bacchai  "  of  Accius  there  are  some  sounding  lines  on 
the  revels  of  the  iMoinads,  which  perhaps  anticipate  something 
of  the  modern  passion  for  nature.     The  passion  for  the  past  of 
Rome  was  more  to  him.     His  "  Praitextai''  (in  which  the  char- 
acters wore   the  Roman  official   dress)  were  apparently  his 
most  fomous  works;  at  least,  they  stood  out  more  from  his 
other  writings    than   those   of  Naivius,  Ennius,  or  Pacuvius. 
They  seem  to  have  been  superseded  by  Livy,  as  the  few  his- 
torical plays  of  Greece  were  superseded  by  the  historians  and 
orators:   they  were  so  completely  forgotten  that  we  do  not 
know  how  much  of  the  story  of  the  fall  of  the  Tarquins  was 
included  in  the  "Brutus."     Horace  is  almost  the  only  writer 
who  expresses  a  critical  interest  in  the  "  Prxtextse  "  as  a  whole, 
because  he  approved  all  experiments  tending  to  independence 
of  Greece.     After  all,  he  only  says  they  did  not  deserve  the 
least  share  of  such  praise  as  was  due  to  the  old  poets. 

AVith  Accius  Roman  tragedy  terminated  :  perhaps  it  was  a 
form  of  art  only  suitable  to  untravelled  poets.  Ennius,  in- 
deed, had  served  out  of  Italy,  but  that  was  when  Roman  litera- 
ture was  young  and  when  criticism  was  still  a  thing  of  the 
future,  except  so  flir  as  each  poet  sat  in  judgment  on  his  pred- 
ecessor. Writers  who  had  seen  Greek  dramas  performed  in 
Greek  theatres,  or  even  writers  whose  acquaintances  had  trav- 
elled in  Greece,  could  not  approach  the  work  of  adaptation 
with  enthusiasm  ;  and  though  the  theatre  continued  to  flourish. 


this  was  due  to  the  reputation  of  individual  actors,  which  rose 
as  the  eqnitcs  insisted  on  having  special  j^laces  assigned  to 
them.  There  were  no  great  Roman  actors  before  Roscius 
and  ^sopus,  and  it  is  only  when  the  tradition  of  the  stage  has 
been  handed  down  through  a  long  series  of  actors  that  the 
reigning  actor  encourages  poets  to  supply  him  with  new  parts. 
Besides,  learning  and  philosophy  were  beginning  to  be  studied 
for  themselves,  and  the  stage  could  no  longer  monopolize  in- 
tellectual life.  Satire  had  begun  to  compete  with  it  already 
as  an  expression  of  the  reflections  of  cultivated  men  ;  and 
Lucilius  criticised  Accius  on  the  strength  of  superior  "urban- 
ity." But  although  there  was  an  end  of  tragedy,  there  remain- 
ed "a  mob  of  gentlemen  who  wrote  with  ease,"  and  who,  as 
it  happened,  wrote  tragedies,  very  much  as  the  Marquess  of 
Welleslev  wrote  Latin  elegiacs.  Trasfedies  had  formed  a 
large  part,  if  not  the  largest,  of  the  reading  of  a  Roman  noble 
who  felt  at  all  inclined  to  practise  eloquence  ;  and  to  com- 
pose a  tragedy  was  a  natural  employment  if  he  cared  for 
literature  for  its  own  sake.  Down  to  the  close  of  the  Repub- 
lic this  movement  seems  to  have  got  more  and  more  active, 
till  at  last  Quintus  Cicero,  in  his  winter-quarters,  turned  out 
four  tragedies  in  sixteen  days.  Of  course  they  must  have 
been  very  characterless  and  probably  very  slipshod  para- 
phrases from  the  Greek;  but  even  so,  they  are  a  marvellous 
proof  of  fiicility  almost  worthy  of  his  brother.  Quintus  Cicero 
was  enterprising  as  well  as  fluent ;  he  experimented  upon  two 
satiric  dramas  of  Sophocles:  his  brother  disliked  the  result, 
whether  because  the  satiric  drama  itself  was  objectionable  or 
because  Quintus  had  made  the  playfulness  of  Sophocles  gro- 
tesque. Julius  Caesar  the  elder,  who  had  weak  health,  wrote 
tragedies  which  the  grammarians  occasionally  quoted.  Ac- 
cording to  Cicero,  they  w^ere  like  his  speeches,  "smooth  with- 
out strength."  The  last  of  the  line  wms  the  "  Ajax"  of  Octa- 
vian,  which,  in  the  words  of  the  author,  "  fell  upon  the  sponge." 
In  the  latest  plays  whose  fragments  have  reached  us,  the 
laniruaire  and  the  versification  are  decidedlv  archaic  in  char- 
acter,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Cicero's  translations  from 
Greek  plays  which  he  introduces  in  his  philosophical  works. 


44 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


EARL  V  LA  TIN  CO  MED  V. 


45 


The  metre  and  syntax  are  not  perfectly  fused ;  words  are  put 
where  the  metre  requires,  not  where  the  natural  structure  of 
the  sentence  requires ;  and  the  sentence  itself  is  kept  upon  a 
level  of  artiticial  simplicity,  just  as  it  might  be  in  a  modern 
ballad.  'J  his  may  be  tested  very  simply  in  two  wavs  :  we  may 
compare  Cicero's  iambics  with  his  prose ;  or,  if  this  is  unfair, 
we  may  compare  his  iambics  or  those  of  Julius  Caisar  with  the 
fragments  of  Crassus,  who  was  an  elder  contemporary  of 
Caesar,  and  preceded  Cicero  by  a  whole  generation  :  and  com- 
pared to  the  verse  of  either,  the  prose  of  Crassus  is  finished 
and  modern. 

Immature  or  affected  as  it  was,  republican  tragedy  never 
became  so  empty  or  so  preposterous  as  the  tragedies' written 
simply  for  recitation  in  the  imperial  period,  which  were  eaten 
up  by  rhetoric,  and  in  the  judgment  of  Quinctilian  were  very 
inferior,  so  far  as  plan  and  structure  went,  to  the  elder  drama, 
which  had  its  life  on  the  stage,  and,  at  the  worst,  always  suc- 
ceeded in  telling  a  story  and  placing  possible  human  beings 
before  the  audience. 


/ 


CHAPTER  in. 

EARLY  LATIN  COMEDY. 

Latin  comedy  was  much  more  a  national  form  of  art  than 
tragedy  :  a  half-trained  public  prefers  amusement  to  elevating 
excitement.  Besides,  even  the  latest  literary  comedy  of  Greece 
was  nearer  than  Greek  tragedy  to  the  popular  impromptu  per- 
formances that  grew  up  independently  in  Greece  and  Rome, 
and  this  made  it  easier  for  Roman  imitators  of  Greek  comedy 
to  keep  close  to  the  popular  source.  The  company  were  still 
very  familiar  with  the  poet  and  the  public  when  the  leading 
dramatist  was  Plautus,  whose  popularity  survived  him  in  a  way 
that  preserved  and  corrupted  his  works.  They  long  remained 
in  the  hands  of  the  players,  who  originally  purchased  them, 
and  until  the  time  of  Varro  did  what  they  liked  with  them. 

AVhen  Varro  began  his  examination  of  Plautus's  writings,  he 
found  a  mass  of  acting  editions  of  popular  plays,  all  under  his 
name,  which  seems  to  have  had  a  higher  commercial  value 
than  Shakespeare's  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  Only  six  or 
seven  spurious  plays  were  fathered  on  Shakespeare  by  the 
booksellers  : '  forty-two  were  fathered  by  the  players  on  Plau- 
tus, or  so  Varro  believed.  Besides  these,  there  were  nineteen 
that  might  be  genuine,  and  twenty-one  that  were  above  dis- 
pute. The  twenty-one  "Varronian"  plays  were  preserved 
into  the  Middle  Ages,  but  the  last  two  disappeared  altogether, 
and  the  quotations  of  grammarians  show  that  even  existing 
MSS.  of  the  rest  are  incomplete.  Ritschl  has  traced  the  la- 
cunar and  transpositions  in  them  to  accidents  which  happened 
partly  to  the  oldest  MS.  we  have,  the  Ambrosian  palimpsest, 
and  partly  to  the  lost  archetype  of  that  and  the  Calliopean 

*  Interested  mistakes  in  the  matter  were  easier,  because  there  are  faint 
traces  of  a  certain  Plautius,  whose  name  on  his  pieces  would  only  appear 
in  the  genitive,  and  so  be  undistinguishable  from  that  of  Plautus. 


46 


LA  T/.V  LITER  A  TURE. 


I  - 


recension,  from  which  last  all  the  other  MSS.  appear  to  be 
derived. 

All  the  "  Varronian  "  comedies  seem  to  belong  to  Plautus's 
later  years  ;  none  can  be  dated  before  202  b.c.  (552  u.c);  and 

piautus.      ^^^  "^'^"^  ^^  ^'^^  ^^^  of  seventy,  184  b.c.  (570  u.c). '  Cic- 
ero tells  us  that  the  ''  Pseudulus  '^  and  the  "  Truculen- 
tus  "  were  works  of  his  old-age.    According  to  tradition,  he  came 
to  Rome  to  work  for  hire  in  a  mill,  and  meanwhile  wrote  plays 
with  such  success  as  to  set  up  in  trade  with  the  proceeds. 
\\\\t\\  his  business  fldled,  he  returned  to  the  old  combination 
of  taskwork,  and  wrote  hurriedly  in  order  to  bring  in  money 
fast.     None  of  the  plays  which  have  reached  us  look  as  if  the 
writer  was  growing  old,  though,  if  the  accepted  dates  can  be 
trusted,  they  are  all  the  work  of  a  man  over  fifty ;  but  it  is  to 
be  remembered  that  a  comic  writer  could  hardly  do  his  best 
during  the  war  of  Hannibal.     Piautus,  we  know,  was  an  Um- 
brian  ;  and  if  we  suppose  that  the  Celts  and  Sabellians  only 
parted  company  on  the  threshold  of  Italy,  we  shall  be  tempt- 
ed to  fancy  that  Piautus  in  Rome  was  almost  like  an  Irish- 
man in  London,  undertaking  hard  work  and  at  the  same  time 
keeping  up  high  spirits.     I'he  prevailing  mood  of  his  come- 
dies is  a  combination  of  gayety  and  grumbling;  the  gayety  is 
a  matter  of  temperament,  the  grumbling  comes  of  reflection 
upon  the  course  of  things.     Sons  are  extravagant,  wives  are 
querulous  and  overbearing ;  the  most  thrifty  cannot  keep  out 
of  debt.     Obviously  hard  times  had  left  their  traces  behind 
them,  and  even  on  holidays  Plautus's  public  could  not  foro-et 
their  dull  lives.  ^ 

Piautus  does  not  draw  from  life  at  large;  he  keeps  mostly 
within  the  narrow  circle  of  the  New  Comedy,  which  finds  afl 
its  interests  in  the  passions  of  a  few  years',  and  seldom  the 
best  years  of  life.  At  Athens,  when  the  New  Comedy  arose 
civilization  was  exhausted ;  and  the  competition  of  well-to-do 
young  men  with  soldiers  of  fortune,  in  amours,  which  observers 
could  hardly  admire,  was  almost  the  only  subject  sufficiently 
exciting  for  poetical  discussion.  At  Rome  serious  matters, 
which  were  shortly  discussed  in  society,  were  not  yet  ripe  for 
the  irresponsible  discussion  of  the  comic  stage.     The  Intel- 


PLAUTUS. 


47 


lectual  range  of  Philemon  and  Menander  was  as  wide  as  that 
of  Euripides,  and  their  emotional  range  was  nearer  his  than 
we  should  judge  by  their  imitators.  The  range  of  Latin  com- 
edy as  we  know  it  is  decidedly  narrower;  the  one  element  upon 
which  it  fastened  was  the  element  that  came  into  daily  Roman 
experience — the  discord  between  father  and  son,  master  and 
slave,  husband  and  wife,  which  was  the  result  of  the  passions 
of  the  young. 

Piautus  treats  the  matter  lightly,  without  caring  to  make 
things  end  well.  Young  men  will  be  young,  but  they  cannot 
be  young  forever;  a  stage  of  life  that  has  to  be  left  behind 
may  be  wound  up  anyhow ;  the  poet  is  not  anxious  that  every 
Jack  should  have  his  Jill.  His  lover — one  cannot  speak  of  a 
hero  in  Latin  comedy — when  he  marries  at  all,  has  to  take  a 
wife  of  his  father's  choosing  as  often  as  not ;  if  he  is  left  in 
possession  of  his  mistress  at  the  end  of  the  play,  there  is  sel- 
dom a  prospect  that  the  possession  will  be  permanent.  The 
lover  always  means  well,  but  Piautus  never  makes  him  inter- 
esting :  even  the  helpless  maiden  fallen  among  thieves  is  a 
more  respectable  figure,  though  she  reluctantly  anticipates 
that  circumstances  will  be  too  strong  for  her  lover's  protec- 
tion and  her  own  dispositions  to  virtue.  But  Piautus  spends 
more  pains  and  more  sympathy  upon  the  slave  who  helps  the 
lover ;  the  spirit  of  gay  bravado  in  which  his  slaves  treat  the 
tyranny  under  which  they  live  is  the  nearest  approach  to  an 
ideal  picture  which  he  ever  draws.  He  is  fond  of  insisting 
upon  the  greater  freedom  with  which  they  were  treated  in 
Greece  and  Africa,  and  even  other  parts  of  Italy. 

As  the  slave  is  Plautus's  favorite,  the  matron  is  his  pet  av^er- 
sion.  Matrons  did  not  visit  theatres,  so  attacks  on  them  did 
not  divide  the  audience ;  the  law  of  property  gave  a  woman 
who  had  brought  a  dower  with  her  so  much  power  that  hus- 
bands fretted  under  it ;  the  harshness  of  the  times,  perhaps 
we  should  say  of  the  race,  which  had  long  been  used  to  a  narrow 
life,  made  it  difficult  for  man  and  wife  to  grow  old  together 
peaceably.  The  contrast  of  the  sexes  strikes  Piautus  as  more 
unmanageable  than  the  contrast  between  youth  and  age  ;  writ- 
ing when  he  was  old  himself,  he  could  understand  the  old 


1 


48 


LA  TIN"  LITER  A  TURE. 


PLAUTUS. 


49 


man  who  liked  to  have  his  youth  over  again  by  helping  the 
young. 

More  than  once  the  strict  and  the  indulgent  elder  debate  on 
the  stage  the  proper  way  to  treat  youth,  and  Plautus  is  always 
on  the  side  of  indulgence  ;  only  he  is  inclined  to  insist  that, 
when  an  old  man  is  indulgent  to  himself,  at  any  rate  he  shall 
not  be  found  out.  Half  the  fun  of  the  "Mencechmi"  is  that 
Menajchmus  of  Epidamnus,  who  is  always  robbing  his  wife  to 
make  presents  to  his  mistress,  has  to  do  penance  for  his  own 
misdeeds  and  for  the  feats  of  Mennechmus  of  Syracuse,  who 
cheats  his  brother's  mistress  out  of  his  brother's  presents,  and 
is  constantly  being  mistaken,  to  his  own  great  profit,  for  the 
unlucky  brother  whom  he  set  out  to  seek.  Instead  of  drawing 
the  obvious  inference,  when  he  finds  himself  involved  in  a 
protracted  case  of  mistaken  identity,  that  the  long-lost  brother 
must  be  close  at  hand,  Mencechmus  of  Syracuse  only  thinks 
how  to  get  off  clear  with  his  booty,  which  properly  belongs  to 
his  sister-in-law.  Even  when  the  brothers  meet  after  a  series 
of  adventures  amusing  and  not  unnatural  (if  Menaechmus  of 
Syracuse  had  not  been  looking  for  his  brother),  they  do  not 
know  one  another.  The  slave  identifies  them,  and  is  so  proud 
of  his  acuteness  that  he  will  not  allow  either  to  speak  except 
in  answer  to  his  questions.  The  meeting  itself  happens  by 
accident  when  it  is  time  for  the  play  to  end.  In  most  of 
Plautus's  other  plays  the  plot  is  still  more  random  ;  half  his 
plays  are  really  a  parabasis;  some  character  or  characters  are 
on  the  stage,  and  the  plot,  or  what  there  is  of  it,  having  sup- 
plied them  with  something  to  say,  has  to  stand  still  while  they 
talk  at  the  audience,  air  their  views,  and  make  jokes.  In  a 
play  like  the  "  Stichus,"  which,  according  to  Ritschl,  is  unu- 
sually well  preserved,  and  according  to  Weise  is  plainly  spu- 
rious, there  is  scarcely  a  plot  at  all  ;  one  is  tempted  to  see  a 
transition  to  the  mimus.  The  scenes  succeed  each  other  with- 
out connection,  and  disappear  without  consequence.  Two  sis- 
ters are  married  to  two  spendthrifts,  who  have  gone  abroad  to 
make  their  fortune.  The  father  thinks  of  taking  them  away 
from  their  husbands  and  making  better  matches  for  them  ; 
the  sisters  are  alarmed  at  the  prospect,  but  at  the  first  coaxing 


the  father  gives  way.  They  send  a  parasite  to  the  port  for 
news ;  the  confidential  slave  announces  the  return  of  the  hus- 
bands, who  have  made  their  fortunes,  and  prove  the  genuine- 
ness of  their  reformation  by  flouting  the  parasite,  while  the 
slave  is  rewarded  by  being  allowed  a  day's  holiday  to  feast 
with  a  friend  and  their  common  mistress.  It  is  true  that  the 
scenes  in  which  the  sisters  appear  are  pretty,  and  the  parasite 
is  as  laughable  as  his  name.^  Even  where  there  is  plenty  of 
action  there  is  less  than  in  the  Greek  ori^rinal  ;  Terence  in 
the  "Adelphi"  appropriated  a  scene  and  a  set  of  characters 
which  Plautus  had  not  used  in  the  lost  play  of  the  "Conmori- 
entes."  Probably  the  "Persa"  is  an  amplification  of  half  a 
Greek  play,  for  when  Sagaristio  comes  on  to  borrow  money  to 
help  a  friend,  we  expect  to  hear  of  his  master's  love  affair; 
but  nothing  comes  of  the  loan  and  we  hear  nothing  of  the 
love  affair.  The  diminution  of  action  is  compensated  by  an 
increase  of  bustle  ;  Plautus  is  quite  equal,  as  we  see  in  the 
"  Rudens,"  to  spinning  out  "touch  if  you  dare"  through  one 
scene  of  horseplay,  and  "  move  if  you  dare  "  through  another. 
There  is  plenty  of  coming  and  going  even  in  the  "  Stichus." 
Plautus  everywhere  justifies  the  boast  of  his  admirers  that  he 
"  hurries  "  after  the  pattern  of  Epicharmus  of  Sicil3\  Only 
the  hurry  is  at  the  expense  of  progress  :  whoever  comes  with 
a  message  has  to  announce  an  intention  of  knocking;  whoever 
hears  a  knock  has  to  take  a  line  or  two  to  ask  or  guess  who 
the  visitor  can  be.  When  one  of  the  characters  is  on  an  errand, 
he  talks  to  himself  all  the  way  ;  if  another  sees  him,  he  tells 
the  audience  he  must  listen  and  see  what  the  first  is  after; 
and  then  comes  a  barren  and  lively  scene  of  double  asides. 
The  comic  business  leaves  no  room  for  the  orderly  develop- 
ment of  the  story.  In  the  "Casina"  the  denouement  is  an- 
nounced as  ready  to  be  accomplished  behind  the  scenes  with- 
out having  been  prepared  on  the  stage;  though  the  play  must 
have  been  shortened  by  the  sacrifice  to  decorum  which  Plau- 
tus made,  by  leaving  the  son  all  day  in  the  country  that  he 
might  not  come  into  collision  with  his  father,  who  was  his  rival. 

^  Gelasimus. 

I.-3 


50 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


« 


PLAUTUS. 


51 


*i 


A  carefully  prepared  denouement  implies  a  story  with  some 
serious  interest,  and  all  Plautus's  stories  are  farcical.  The 
"MenoEchmi,"  which  perhaps  has  the  best  story,  turns  on  mis- 
taken identity  ;  the  "  Aulularia,"  on  the  successes  and  failures 
of  a  miser  in  hiding  a  pot  of  gold  ;  the  "  Mostellaria  "  is  about 
a  counterfeit  ghost;  in  the  "Asinaria"  a  man  plots  to  cheat 
himself,  or  rather  his  wife,  out  of  the  price  of  some  asses,  to 
get  pocket-money  for  a  joint  love  affair  of  himself  and  his 
son.  Such  plots  are  suitable  to  a  company  too  intimate  with 
the  audience  to  lose  themselves  in  the  storv.  Plautus  is  au- 
daciously  frank,  and  puts  the  joke  in  the  *'  Critic  "  that  ex- 
planations are  for  the  audience,  not  for  the  actors,  both  ways  ; 
sometimes  the  characters  make  explanations  that  the  audience 
need  and  they  do  not,  sometimes  they  postpone  explanations 
for  which  they  are  eager  because  the  audience  knows  all. 
When  a  slave  is  hatching  some  device  as  simple  as  the  con- 
spiracies that  Euripides  had  an  odd  taste  for  weaving  on  the 
stage,  some  crony  bids  us  remark  his  acting — "  he  is  as  good 
as  a  slave  in  a  play."  Too  often  the  slaves'  jokes  are  grim- 
mer than  this :  they  jest  on  the  cross  as  their  family  grave. 
Even  the  parasite  is  a  little  bitter  in  his  justification  of  his 
career.  We  get  purer  fun  out  of  the  Eastern  swaggerers  who 
boasted  of  their  position  in  the  military  service  of  Egypt  or 
Syria.  The  Persian  reminds  us  a  little  of  the  "king's  eye" 
in  Aristophanes  ;  and  we  are  reminded  of  Aristophanes  again  * 
when  another  soldier  tests  the  credulity  of  the  pander  with  a 
monstrously  exaggerated  description  of  a  quail  fight,  where 
the  quails  figure  as  winged  men  who  are  caught  with  bird- 
lime. This  is  nothing  to  the  glorious  history  which  the  Boast- 
ful Soldier  makes  of  picking  up  his  parasite  when  he  was 
being  teased  by  a  hornet — as  he  puts  it  himself,  "saving  him 
in  the  battle  of  Wretchedhovelland,  where  his  highness  Ap- 
bullybuttock  Mauroy  Fitzbourdonneur  des  batailles  command- 
ed in  chief  in  virtue  of  his  descent  from  Neptune.'"*    Even  when 


*  **  PaEn."ii.  26  sq. 

'  Hornets  were  supposed  to  spring  from  horses,  as  bees  were  supposed 
to  spring  from  bulls  ;  and  Neptune  was  the  creator  of  the  horse,  and  so,  at 
one  remove,  of  the  hornet. 


the  soldier  in  his  own  person  is  respectable,  the  parasite  can- 
not prove  his  acquaintance  with  him  better  than  by  fathering 
a  monstrous  romance  upon  him  about  a  solid  statue  of  pure 
gold  seven  feet  high,  which  he  is  going  to  erect  in  honor  of 
his  exploits  in  subduing  the  Persians,  Paphlagonians,  Sino- 
peans,  Arabians,  Carians,  Cretans,  Syrians,  Rhodia  and  Lycia, 
Eathardia  and  Drinkhardia,  Nightmarewarria  and  Amazonia, 
Fleetlandia,  and  Libya  and  all  the  coast  of  Browbruiseria,  sin- 
gle-handed within  twenty  days.' 

One  finds  the  same  riotous  merriment  in  the  "  Amphitruo," 
which  is  taken  up  with  the  misadventures  and  mischief-makins: 
of  the  king  of  gods  in  masquerade.  There  is  nothing  like  it 
in  any  Greek  play  that  we  know ;  the  ill-luck  of  Bacchus  in 
the  "  Frogs  "  comes  nearest ;  but  there  is  much  less  story  in 
the  "Frogs"  than  in  the  "  Amphitruo,"  and  the  indecorous 
mishaps  of  Bacchus  on  his  way  to  the  Shades  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  selection  of  a  successor  to  the  throne  of  traji- 
edy.  But  all  the  confusion  between  Mercury  and  Sosia,  and 
the  more  important  mistake  of  Jupiter  for  Amphitruo,  are  of 
the  substance  of  the  play  in  Plautus.  One  might  fancy  that 
we  have  at  second-hand  a  solitary  specimen  of  the  "  Tragoedia 
Rhinthonica,"  as  we  have  a  solitary  specimen  of  the  satyric 
drama  in  the  "Cyclops"  of  Euripides.  In  any  case,  Plautus 
shows  a  good  deal  of  his  special  humor  in  the  way  he  dwells 
on  the  comic  amazement  of  Alcmena's  waiting-woman  when 
Jupiter  first  reveals  his  glory,  and  in  the  way  that  Mercury 
and  Sosia  sneer  at  their  masters,  who  have  much  less  impor- 
tance for  the  business  of  the  play  than  they  have.  The  irrev- 
erence is  not  meant  for  profanity;  the  bluff  good-humor  of 
Jupiters  final  explanation  to  Amphitruo  is  not  what  we  should 

Quemnc  ego  servavi  in  campis  Gurgustidonii.s, 

Ubi  Bombomachides  Cluninstaridysarchides 

Erat  impcrator  summus,  Neptuni  nepos  ? — Mil.  Glor.  I.  i.  13  sq. 

Quia  enini  Persas,  Paphlagonas, 
Sinopeas,  Arabas,  Caras,  Cretanos,  Syros, 
Khodiam  atque  Lyciam,  Perediam  et  Perbibesiam, 
Centauromachiam  ct  Classiam  Unomammiam, 
Libyamque  et  oram  omnem  Conterebroniam, 
Subcgit  solus  intra  viginti  dies. — Cure.  III.  69. 


*u 


52 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CALCILIUS. 


i 


expect  from  an  unbeliever ;  and  there  is  not  a  trace  in 
Plautus  of  the  polemic  against  soothsayers  and  omens  which 
is  so  prominent  in  Ennius  and  his  successors.  In  no  sense  is 
Plautus  a  revolutionary  writer;  he  believes  in  prudence  and 
respectability  ;  his  very  slaves  preach,  and  sometimes,  like  the 
slave  in  the  "  Menx'chmi,"  practise,  them  simply  as  a  matter 
of  foresight,  because  one's  interest  and  one's  reputation  last, 
and  one's  pleasures  do  not.  Besides,  a  convinced  preacher  of 
conventional  morality  has  always  the  resource  of  censorious- 
ness,  and  a  dramatist  can  always  raise  a  laugh  at  the  expense 
of  a  degenerate  world.  Plautus's  conception  of  morality  does 
not  rise  very  high  ;  he  scarcely  emancipates  himself  from  the 
antithesis  between  duty  and  pleasure,  which  coincides  with 
the  antithesis  between  business  and  love.  He  is  aware,  how- 
ever, that  a  well-brought-up  young  man  is  really  happier  while 
he  continues  dutiful  than  when  he  has  launched  himself  on 
the  inclined  plane  of  idleness,  love,  and  debt.  His  highest 
flight  perhaps  is  the  "  Captivi,"  where,  as  he  boasts  in  his  prol- 
ogue, all  discreditable  motives  are  carefully  avoided,  and  the 
result  is  a  rather  tame  contest  of  self-sacrifice  between  two 
model  young  men  who  are  prisoners  of  war,  with  their  ransoms 
already  arranged,  and  play  Orestes  and  Pylades  over  the 
question  which  is  to  take  advantage  of  the  devotion  of  the 
slave  who  has  a  safe-conduct  to  fetch  the  ransom,  and  is  will- 
ins:  to  let  his  own  master  chancre  clothes  with  him  so  as  to  be 
free  and  safe  a  week  sooner.  'J'he  slave  runs  a  little  risk,  but 
not  much,  and  the  substitution  leads  to  some  amusing  situa- 
tions of  a  semi-farcical  kind ;  but  the  play,  though  noticeable 
for  its  intention,  is  not  one  of  Plautus's  best.  He  succeeds 
better  in  the  "Trinummus,"  the  oldest  extant  version  of  the 
legend  of  the  "  Heir  of  Lynne ;"  where,  beside  the  desperate 
prodigal,  we  find  a  model  young  man,  happy  in  a  virtuous  love, 
with  whom  Plautus  is  so  well  pleased  that  he  strains  proba- 
bilities a  little  to  let  him  love  in  his  own  class.  This  is  an 
exceptional  picture:  what  is  really  commoner  according  to 
Plautus  is  a  certain  degree  of  generosity  and  faithfulness 
among  women ;  and  in  this  he  is  faithful  to  the  tradition 
which  the  New  Comedy  inherited  from  Euripides.     All  his 


53 


Caecilius. 


characters  depreciate  women  ;  his  women  depreciate  them- 
selves; and  yet  his  best  w^omen  are  better  than  his  best  men, 
unless  we  count  his  best  slaves. 

Caecilius  Statins,  one  of  the  three  greatest  comic  writers  of 
Rome,  is  only  known  to  us  by  fragments,  of  which  the  most 
extensive  are  preserved  by  Gellius.  Volcatius  puts 
him  at  the  head  of  his  canon,  above  Plautus,  who 
came  second,  and  Terence,  whom  he  placed  low;  in  Horace's 
time  Caecilius  and  Terence  were  recognized  as  equals;  Caecil- 
ius excelled  in  ''  gravity,"  as  Terence  excelled  in  "  art."  It 
agrees  well  with  this  that  Gellius,  who  quotes  Caecilius  to  illus- 
trate his  inferiority  to  Menander,  observes  that  half  a  dozen 
lines  of  Menander,  which  are  quiet  and  matter-of-fact,  are 
turned  into  four  which  have  a  look  of  tra^jic  solemnitv.  Per- 
haps  we  may  guess  that  Menander's  gentle  irony  was  replaced 
by  outspoken  bitterness,  which  need  not  have  excluded  the 
comic  vigor.  There  was  a  whole  side  of  Menander  which 
Terence  did  not  give,  and  for  this  perhaps  Caecilius  gave  the 
best  equivalent  possible.  He  was  coarse,  but  this  was  not 
wholly  a  loss  ;  the  contemporaries  of  Wycherley  admired  him 
for  his  utter  frankness  and  plain-dealing,  and  these  were  really 
inseparable  from  the  brutalities  which  shock  posterity.  Cicero 
still  speaks  of  Caecilius  with  respect  as  an  effective  writer  whom 
it  is  well  for  an  orator  to  study,  in  spite  of  grave  grammatical 
imperfections,  excusable  in  one  born  and  bred  beyond  the 
Po.  It  is  likely,  under  the  circumstances,  that  Caecilius  was 
of  Gallic  descent,  as  Statins  is  a  slave's  name  :  and  after 
the  days  of  Cicero  his  linguistic  imperfections  weighed  more 
heavily  upon  him  ;  for  Quinctilian,  who  takes  a  severe  view 
of  Latin  comedy  in  general,  treats  his  reputation  as  obsolete  ; 
nor,  as  we  have  seen,  did  he  fare  much  better  when  the  anti- 
quarian revival  of  the  second  century  was  busy  with  his 
name. 

He  did  not  succeed  upon  the  stage  as  spontaneously  as 
Plautus,  who  could  profit  by  his  experience  as  an  actor,  while 
audiences  were  impatient  of  Caecilius  till  the  fine  performances 
of  Ambivius  Turpio  converted  them.  Still,  his  plays  had 
enough  literary  merit  to  gain  a  position  for  their  author,  which 


54 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


TEREiXCE. 


55 


^ 


made  his  approbation  a  valuable  introduction  for  Terence, 
who  gave  him  his  first  phiy  to  read. 

His  method  seems  to  have  been  half-way  between  the 
method  of  Plautus  and  that  of  Terence  ;  he  did  not  deliberate- 
ly seek,  as  Plautus  did,  to  be  amusing  by  confounding  or  con- 
trasting Greek  and  Roman  manners  ;  he  did  not  set  himself, 
like  Terence,  to  get  rid  of  everything  in  the  original  which  did 
not  correspond  to  Roman  usage.  His  characters  are  not  ex- 
actly Romans  with  Greek  names,  but  they  are  Romanized  in 
their  tone  of  feeling  and  speech.  They  do  not  seem  to  be 
changed  deliberately  :  the  author  probably  aimed  at  making 
his  adaptations  as  close  as  possible. 

It  is  easier  to  judge  Terence  than  either  of  his  predeces- 
sors ;  we  have  all  his  work  as  he  left  it :  although  he  trans- 
Terence  ^''^^cd  ninety  Greek  plays,  chiefly  from  Menander,  he 
only  adapted  six  to  the  stage.  He  died  young,  and 
was  not  very  successful  as  a  playwright.  His  reputation 
spread  gradually  from  the  circle  of  the  younger  Scipio  to  the 
grammarians  of  the  seventh  century  of  the  city,  who  drew 
up  the  notes  from  which  Varro  compiled  the  "  Didascalia." 
When  Cicero  and  Caisar,  with  the  prestige  of  their  genius  and 
position,  took  up  the  cultivation  of  the  Latin  language  as  a  fine 
art,  Terence  became  generally  popular.  The  reading  public 
had  been  gradually  educated  up  to  his  level  of  refinement  and 
elegance  and  cosmopolitan  humanity ;  the  play-going  public 
no  longer  went  to  see  what  new  plays  an  author  could  provide 
for  them  ;  they  went  to  see  what  a  fimous  actor  could  make 
of  old  ones.  Such  readers  and  such  audiences  forgave  Ter- 
ence for  being  only  half  a  jNIenander,  because  he  was  a  lover 
of  pure  style. 

Compared  with  his  predecessors,  he  has  less  freedom  and 
originality  and  moj-e  pretension  ;  he  is  much  more  of  a  trans- 
lator than  Plautus,  probably  than  Ccecilius,  and  much  more 
inclined  to  treat  his  work  as  a  fine  art.  He  does  not  think  it 
impeaches  his  originality  to  borrow  tVom  the  Greek  ;  he  is 
very  jealous  of  any  imputation  of  borrowing  from  the  Latin. 
Audiences  always  wished  to  hear  something  they  had  not 
heard  before,  and   were   impatient  of  being  referred  to  the 


sameness  of  the  characters  and  incidents  of  the  Greek  drama. 
Wittily  as  Terence  urged  the  plea,  he  felt  the  force  of  the 
criticism,  and  put  many  Greek  plays  under  contribution  for 
the  six  that  have  reached  us.  But  here  he  came  in  conflict 
with  another  prejudice  ;  a  certain  old  poet,  Luscius  Lavinius, 
or  Lanuvinus,  whom  we  only  know-  from  Terence  and  his  com- 
mentators, told  the  public,  to  Terence's  great  annoyance,  that 
''  it  was  not  proper  that  plays  should  be  muddled  up  together;" 
though  Nasvius  and  Plautus  had  used  two  Greek  plays  for  one 
Latin,  they  had  not  done  so  upon  system,  and  very  likely  their 
stricter  successors  had  not  done  so  at  all. 

Narrow  as  the  range  of  the  New  Comedy  was,  it  was  too  wide 
for  Terence  ;  he  shrank  from  the  romantic  element  which  was 
certainly  there,  and  laughed  very  properly  at  the  clumsy  attempt 
of  Luscius  to  convey  it  by  scenes  where  an  enamoured  young 
man  fancied  his  mistress  a  hunted  hind  taking  refuse  in  his 
arms.  Then  he  was  afraid  of  everything  in  Greek  life  which 
would  be  improbable  at  Rome,  of  the  good-humor  of  a  crowd 
that  would  make  way  for  a  slave  in  a  hurry,  of  the  irregularity 
of  a  court  where  the  defendant  could  make  a  speech  in  favor 
of  his  claim  to  keep  a  treasure  before  the  plaintiff  had  made 
his  in  favor  of  his  claim  to  recover  it.  He  was  much  too  fas- 
tidious to  explain  the  different  customs  of  different  countries 
with  the  freedom  of  Plautus,  and  so  he  had  to  limit  himself  to 
so  much  of  Greek  and  Roman  life  as  coincided  or  corresponded 
exactly.  Naturally  he  laid  himself  open  to  the  charge  that  he 
did  not  know  Greek  life,  though  he  professed  to  represent  it, 
and  it  seems  he  felt  it,  as  he  travelled  in  Greece  to  study 
Greek  ways  on  the  spot  towards  the  close  of  his  short  life. 

One  result  of  this  is  a  tendency  to  double  the  plot;  there 
are  almost  always  two  pairs  of  lovers,  and  only  one  looks  to 
marriage,  or  rather  attains  to  it,  for  the  catastrophe  by  which 
one  of  the  heroines  turns  out  to  be  an  Attic  citizen  is  often 
unexpected  and  unhoped  for,  like  the  intervention  of  a  deus 
ex  machuid  in  Euripides.  In  all  the  plays  except  the  "  Heau- 
tontimoroumenos "  (and  perhaps  the  "Hecyra")  there  are 
scenes  and  characters  which  did  not  belong  to  the  Greek 
original,  which  furnished  the  main  plot.     In  the  treatment  of 


56 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


the  main  plot  there  are  changes ;  what  passes  upon  the  stage 
in  Menander  is  turned  into  narrative,  or,  as  at  the  close  of  the 
"  Hecyra,"  we  learn  that  the  necessary  arrangements  will  be 
finished  behind  the  scenes.     Now  and  then  we  notice  that 
the  opening  scene,  as  in  the  "Andria,"  has  no  influence  on 
the  play  which  it  serves  to  introduce.     In  this  case  we  know 
that  the  opening  scene  is  taken  from  another  play  of  Menan- 
der's,  the  "  Perinthia,"  which  Terence,  perhaps  too  fastidious, 
took  for  a  mere  repetition  of  the  "  Andria.''     So  too,  when  we 
know  that  in  the  "Adelphi"  a  scene  from  Diphilus  has  been 
inserted  in  a  play  of  Menander,  it  seems  possible  to  detect  a 
slight  incoherence  in  the  difterent  stages  of  the  quarrel  between 
the  lover  and  his  natural  enemy.     But  all  such  criticisms  are 
suggested  not  by  the  look  of  the  plays  as  they  stand,  but  by 
our  extraneous  knowledge  ;  and,  considering  this,  we  have  only 
the  more  reason  to  admire  the  great  neatness  and  skill  of 
Terence's  workmanship.     Varro,  who  could  compare  him  with 
Menander,  remarks  more  than  one  change  that  he  took  for  an 
improvement;  for  instance,  in  the  ''  Eunuch"  the  confidant  is 
introduced  to  save  the  audience  the  fatigue  of  listening  to  a 
soliloquy,  and  the  opening  scene  of  the  ''Adelphi"  struck 
Varro    as    better    in    some    undefined    way.     More    doubtful 
changes  were  the  alterations  of  the  names  of  the  persons  in 
the  drama,  to  make  them,  as  it  seems,  more  obvious  clews  to 
the  characters  ;  the  attempt  to  make  the  metres  more  lively 
by  passing  to  and  fro  between  the  iambic  trimeter  and  the 
trochaic  tetrameter ;  and  the  conversational  redundances  re- 
tained on  a  reduced  scale  from   the  days  of  Plautus.     The 
characters  find  it  hard  to  begin  talking  quietly;  they  have  to 
hail  each  other,  and  to  spend  some  lines  looking  for  each 
other,  when  both  are  in  full  view  of  the  audience.     If  it  were 
not  that  Terence  has  often  to  apologize  to  his  audience  for 
allowing  his  characters  to  stand   still   and  talk  quietly,  we 
might  perhaps  think  that  these  devices  for  promoting  tame 
bustle  were,  after  all,  a  survival  from  the  slow  stateliness  of  the 
Attic  stage.     Apart  from  this,  Terence  is  not  so  terse  as  the 
Greek  writers  whom  he  follows;  pure  and  beautiful  as  his 
Latin  is,  its  clauses  are  a  little  more  solid,  not  to  say  cum- 


TERENCE. 


57 


brous,  in  their  structure.     In  one  thing,  perhaps,  his  language 
gives  him  an  advantage:  famous  lines  like 


and 


Amantium  irx  amoris  intcgratio  est, 

Homo  sum  :  humani  nihil  a  me  alienum  puto, 


have  more  weight  and  point  than  their  Greek  equivalents. 

One  notices  another  difference  —  the  view  of  marriacre  is 
harsher.  In  the  '' Andria"  the  flither  discusses  his  son's  love 
affair  with  a  confidential  freedman  instead  of  with  his  wife,  as 
in  Menander.  A  Roman  was  more  at  ease  with  a  freedman; 
but  the  freedman's  despairing  ejaculations  look  as  if  they  be- 
longed by  rights  to  the  mother.  Terence  quotes  matronly 
goodness  as  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  the  stage,  but  he 
makes  no  use  of  it  himself.  By  a  similar  inconsistency  he 
treats  a  stolen  love-match  as  a  thoroughly  blissful  consumma- 
tion ;  while  old  men,  it  seems,  are  invariably  impatient  of  their 
wives,  and  a  marriage  arranged  in  the  ordinary  way  is  an 
appropriate  punishment  for  a  wild  young  man,  as  we  see  in 
the  "  Heautontimoroumenos,"  where  both  the  young  men  are 
married  at  the  end  of  the  play  to  reward  one  and  punish  the 
other. 

In  the  "  Adelphi  "  there  is  more  than  one  sign  that  Terence 
is  afraid  of  his  original.  Demea  does  not  really  exa^-o-erate 
the  strictness  of  average  Roman  respectability,  and  conse- 
quently Terence  is  resolved  that,  though  the  play  on  the  whole 
condemns  him,  the  last  scene  shall  justify  him,  and  convince 
heedless  youths  that,  if  their  fathers  treat  them  harshly,  it  is 
for  their  good  in  the  end.  The  speech  in  which  he  sets  forth 
this  theory  fiills  very  flat,  and  the  proposal  to  marry  his 
brother  to  an  old  woman  is  turned  into  a  trap,  because  the 
brother  naively  objects  to  the  age  of  the  bride.  In  the  origi- 
nal, Demea's  conversion  to  the  doctrine  of  indulgence  was  sin- 
cere though  tardy,  and  his  zeal  to  outdo  his  brother  in  gener- 
osity was  a  well-meant  and  not  misplaced  contribution  to  the 
general  jollity  with  which  the  play  doubtless  ended  in  Greek. 

It  is  curious  that  the  "  Hecyra,"  a  far  bolder  play  than  the 
"  Adelphi,"  is  not  watered  down  in  any  wav,  especially  as  its 


58 


LATIX  LITERATURE. 


TERENCE. 


59 


relation  to  the  Greek  is  uncertain.  According  to  the  "  Didas- 
calia,"  it  is  taken  from  Menander;  according  to  Donatus,  from 
Apollodorus.  Menander's  tniTinTroirer  seems  to  have  been 
similar  in  subject;  and  if  it  was  drawn  upon  freely  for  ihe 
tlOououa  (whicii  includes  both  tiie  drawing  of  individual  charac- 
ter and  the  general  tone  of  feeling),  we  should  be  able  to  ac- 
count for  both  traditions,  and  should  have  more  reason  to  ad- 
mire both  the  courage  and  the  tact  of  the  author.  From  one 
end  to  the  other  the  play  is  a  protest  against  conventionality; 
all  the  relations  are  false,  and  all  the  conduct  is  true;  the 
characters  misconceive  the  situation,  but,  given  their  concep- 
tion of  it,  they  behave  perfectly.  All  the  proprieties  of  Greek 
life  are  accepted  and  respected,  only  it  is  shown  that  the  as- 
sumi)tions  about  character  which  they  act  upon  are  quite  un- 
founded ;  all  the  antagonisms  which  propriety  takes  for  granted, 
and  sets  itself  to  regulate,  are  present,  but  they  are  overcome 
by  good  sense  and  good  feeling  in  the  most  unlikely  places: 
one  finds  a  courtesan  upright  and  generous;  one  finds  (what, 
according  to  Donatus,  was  quite  as  marvellous)  a  mother-in- 
law  affectionate  and  a  daughter-in-law  dutiful. 

Perhaps  in  virtue  of  these  paradoxes  the  "Hecyra"'  is  the 
most  cheerful  of  Terence's  plays,  for,  though  he  is  quite  free 
from  bitterness  or  cynicism,  few  writers  give  a  sorrier  report 
of  the  world.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  care  for  anybody  in 
his  plays  but  the  unprotected  ingenue's  in  ambiguous  positions, 
who  hardly  ever  appear,  and  yet  interest  us  so  much  more 
than  their  lovers.  These  hardly  ever  know  their  own  mind, 
and  are  in  a  state  of  abject  dependence  upon  their  slaves, 
whom  they  bully  at  every  moment  of  difticulty.  The  old 
gentlemen  are  no  better;  they  are  made  up  of  querulous, 
crabbed  self-will,  or  else  of  cautious,  sceptical  good -nature, 
and  recover  their  missing  daughters  without  any  sign  of  feel- 
ing except  a  little  irritation  with  their  wives  for  not  having 
carried  out  the  infanticide  as  ordered. 

Next  to  the  ingenue,  the  best  character  we  meet  with  in  Ter- 
ence is  the  serviceable  rogue,  who  has  come  to  the  end  of  his 
means  and  lives  by  his  wits,  and  never  does  an  ill  turn  except 
to  an  oaf.     He  ditfers  a  good  deal  from  the  parasites  of  Plau- 


tus,  who  are  chiefly  humorous  by  reason  of  their  insatiable 
hunger.  The  parasite  whom  Terence  copied  more  closely 
from  Menander  has  a  taste  for  luxury  in  general,  and  hugs 
himself  on  the  discovery  that  it  can  be  enjoyed  without  sub- 
mitting to  insult.  It  is  needless,  he  thinks,  to  offer  one's  self  in- 
discriminately as  the  butt  of  prosperity,  when  it  pays  better  to 
dupe  credulity,  to  play  upon  suspicion,  to  flatter  vanity. 

There  is  the  same  contrast  in  the  treatment  of  the  soldier, 
who  is  often  the  patron  of  the  parasite  and  the  rival  of  the 
lover,  riautus's  soldiers  are  made  up  of  cowardly  bragga- 
docio or  manly  frankness;  in  Terence  the  braggadocio  is 
much  less  exuberant,  the  cowardice  less  outrageous,  the  affec- 
tation of  military  prowess  subtler.  Instead  of  boasting  of  his 
exploits,  the  bravo  gives  himself  the  air  of  military  instincts; 
when  he  is  setting  his  slaves  to  break  open  a  door  (from  which 
he  retires  at  the  first  challenge),  he  talks  as  if  he  were  ma- 
noeuvring an  army.  His  parasite,  instead  of  entertaining  him 
with  a  fabulous  list  of  killed  and  wounded,  demurely  observes 
in  answer  to  a  platitude  that  he  never  meets  him  without 
going  away  the  wiser.  He  does  not  even  venture  to  congrat- 
ulate his  master  on  his  prowess  as  a  toper,  in  which  Menan- 
der's  bravo  surpassed  Alexander  the  Great.  The  slaves,  too, 
are  toned  down  like  the  parasites;  they  bring  out  the  fact  that 
their  young  masters  are  unreasonable  and  cowardly,  and  their 
old  masters  as  stupid  as  they  are  suspicious,  without  indulging 
in  eloquent  buffoonery  about  the  material  incidents  of  their 
own  lot.  The  pander  also  ceases  to  be  a  buffoon ;  instead  of 
flouting  the  lover  boisterously  as  in  Plautus,  he  is  as  polite 
and  reasonable  as  a  tyrant  in  F.uripides,  who  explains  in  the 
most  affible  manner  that  he  only  acts  in  defence  of  his  own 
interests,  and  has  no  pleasure  in  gratuitous  cruelty. 

Terence's  relation  to  the  society  of  his  time  explains  both 
his  refinement  and  his  lack  of  popularity.  He  was  not,  like 
his  predecessors,  a  native  of  Italy  (for  Cisalpine  Gaul  was 
practically,  if  not  politically,  a  part  of  Italy),  he  was  not  even 
of  Aryan  race  ;  he  was  of  mixed  African  and  Phoenician  blood, 
for  his  good  looks  prove  that  he  cannot  have  been  a  pure 
negro.     These  made  him  a  pet  of  the  younger  Africanus  and 


6o 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Other  nobles  of  the  period,  who  took  some  share  in  the  com- 
position of  his  plays.  He  boasted  of  their  help;  his  rivals 
taunted  him  with  it.  Modern  critics  have  thought  that  they 
corrected  his  style,  but  this  would  have  been  a  laborious  task, 
and  its  uniform  excellence  proves  rather  that  he  profited  by 
the  good  company  he  certainly  kept.  It  is  more  likely  that 
his  distinguished  friends  liked  to  air  their  good  writing,  and 
good  sense,  and  good  feeling,  and  knowledge  of  life,  by  filling 
up  one  or  more  of  the  scenes  of  a  play  which  had  been  already 
arranged  by  Terence.  AVhen  a  young  writer  in  P>ance  works 
with  one  or  more  veteran  playwrights,  the  actual  dialogue  is 
left  to  the  novice.  We  may  be  certain  that  the  young  nobles 
did  what  they  liked,  and  were  tiianked  and  praised  by  the  au- 
thor, who  had  to  do  the  rest. 

The  result  of  the  whole  was  much  more  acceptable  to  a  cul- 
tivated circle  which  anticipated  the  judgment  of  posterity  than 
to  the  public  of  the  day,  who  missed  their  own  likeness  and 
their  own  grievances;  "comity"  and  "sweetness"  were  for 
their  betters;  for  themselves  they  preferred  "salt." 

The  next  stage  of  literary  comedy  at  Rome  is  more  imper- 
fectly known.  It  began  to  manifest  itself  even  before  the 
Afranius.  ^''"^  ^^  Tercucc,  but  its  great  representative  was 
Afranius,  who  flourished  a  whole  generation  later. 
As  Terence  had  reached  the  point  of  working  on  the  common 
element  of  Greek  and  Latin  life  with  Greek  characters,  and 
had  reached  the  utmost  possible  perfection  of  style  and  plot 
and  sentiment  on  these  terms,  it  only  remained  to  treat  the 
same  element  a  little  more  realistically  with  Latin  characters. 

Ambivius  Turpio,  the  same  whose  acting  saved  a  play  of 
Caecilius  Statins,  had  shown  the  way,  but  there  are  few  re- 
mains of  his  plays.  Hostius,  who  seems  to  have  succeeded 
him,  is  extensively  quoted  by  grammarians,  but  literary  writers 
do  not  speak  of  him  as  Horace  and  Quinctilian  do  of  Afranius. 
The  dependence  on  Greek  comedy  was  not  thrown  off  by  the 
transfer  of  the  scene  from  Greek  towns  to  Latin  towns.  When 
Horace  says  that  in  the  opinion  of  many  the  toga  of  Afranius 
fitted  Menander,  this  means  that  Menander's  speeches  came 
very  well  from  the  characters  of  Afranius. 


AFRANIUS. 


6i 


Though  they  wore  the  toga,  they  belonged  for  the  most  part 
to  the  lower  orders :  they  were  either  Latins,  or  Romans  who 
were  below  equestrian  rank.  To  bring  knights  and  senators 
on  the  stage  would  still  have  been  inconceivable  at  Rome; 
and,  apart  from  this,  the  humors  of  the  Latin  towns  were  sup- 
posed to  be  ridiculous  at  the  capital.  The  titles  show  that  the 
scene  of  the  story,  if  not  of  the  action,  commonly  lay  there. 
It  is  obviously  impossible  to  reconstruct  the  story  to  the  same 
extent  that  has  been  done  for  Latin  tragedy,  as  the  plots  were 
fictitious,  not  traditional,  and  there  were  no  Greek  parallels  in 
an  equally  fragmentary  state  to  eke  them  out  with.  Here  and 
there  two  or  three  scraps  of  the  dialogue  throw  enough  light 
upon  each  other  to  make  out  a  piece  of  the  story  by,  but  this 
may  belong  just  as  well  to  the  underplot  as  to  the  plot.  The 
fragments  make  a  more  definite  impression  in  another  way. 
Afranius  seems  to  be  rather  a  superficial  realist  explaining  to 
his  public  the  ins  and  outs  of  a  shabby  world  of  which  they  all 
know  something,  so  that  each  could  recognize  and  applaud  the 
trait  that  corresponded  to  his  own  experience.  The  jollity  of 
riautus  seems  to  be  passing  into  voluptuousness;  the  subtle 
kindliness  of  Menander  is  replaced  by  a  sickly  sentimentalism. 
This  last  seems  to  have  been  the  reason  that  Afranius  did  not 
become  a  school-book,  in  which  case  his  works  would  have 
reached  us.  It  was,  of  course,  difficult  to  ":o  on  idealizins:  the 
love  affiiirs  with  which  Plautus  and  Terence  dealt  to  the  ex- 
tent to  which  Plautus  and  Terence  idealize  them ;  the  position 
of  Aspasia  or  even  Lais  was  impossible  at  Rome.  Such  pas- 
sions as  the  passion  of  Catullus  for  Lesbia,  and  even  Proper- 
lius  for  Cynthia,  appear  at  a  later  stage;  and  in  the  interval  it 
was  natural  for  poetry  and  life  to  go  further  and  fare  worse, 
all  ihe  more  because,  as  Plato  points  out  in  the  "  Symposium," 
friendship,  even  when  perverted  by  passion  between  a  man 
and  a  boy,  does  not  interfere  with  a  man's  ordinary  interests 
to  the  same  extent  as  "love"  in  the  sense  of  the  New  Comedy. 
As  the  covicedia  togata  was  always  more  or  less  a  comoedia  fa- 
bcrnaria,  it  naturally  prepared  the  way  for  the  transition  to  the 
period  when  the  stage  was  practically  abandoned  to  the  Atel- 
lanjK  and  the  Mimi,  and  comic  writers  had  to  adapt  themselves 
to  the  conditions  of  a  lowered  form  of  art. 


62 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


CHAPTER  IV. 

SA  TIRE. 

Roman-  satire  was  the  last  fruit  of  the  age  of  the  Scipios.  At 
first,  in  the  hands  of  Ennius,  it  seems  to  be  poetry  at  large; 
it  covers  the  whole  range  of  Horace's  satires  and  epistles  and 
of  the  fables  of  Phaidrus.  According  to  the  general  opinion, 
he  wrote  six  books  of  satires,  and  of  these  the  best  known  bv 
the  fragments  that  have  reached  us  is  the  third,  devoted  to  the 
praise  of  the  elder  Scipio.  Hence  come  the  passages  of  self- 
praise,  one  of  which  was  quoted  above,'  and  here  we  may  sus- 
pect a  dialogue.  Scipio  seems  to  address  the  poet  in  the  first, 
and  the  poet  to  answer  in  the  second.  The  metre  in  both 
seems  to  be  iambic,  but  most  of  the  fragments  are  hexameters, 
and  there  are  four  very  smooth  trochaic  tetrameters  on  the 
great  calm  which  fell  on  nature  when  the  gods  took  council  to 
give  Scipio  the  victory.  Scipio  himself  was  introduced  ad- 
dressing Rome.  Ennius,  too,  put  on  record  his  belief  that 
such  exploits  could  not  be  worthily  sung  by  any  writer  but 
Homer.  There  is  a  lively  fragment  of  the  sixth  book,  which 
treats  in  satirical  style,  in  trimeters,  the  disgust  of  the  host 
whose  guest  has  too  good  an  appetite. 

Of  the  other  fragments  the  most  important  cannot  be  placed. 
One  is  an  amusing  jingle  upon  the  word  "frustra*' — in  vain — 
to  the  effect  that  it  is  lost  labor  to  take  a  man  in  who  takes 
in  your  intention  to  take  him  in.  We  learn  from  Quinctilian 
that  Ennius  wrote  a  dialogue  between  "  Life  and  Death,"  which 
figured  in  his  satires,  and  from  Gellius  that  he  gave  a  version 
of  the  fable  of  the  farmer  and  the  lark  who  only  fiew  away 
when  the  farmer  began  to  reap  himself  Here,  too,  the  form 
is  more  or  less  dramatic  :  the  greater  part  of  the  Hible  passes 

»  P.  27. 


LUCILIUS. 


(^Z 


in  dialogue  between  the  lark  and  her  young.  There  is  noth- 
ing in  the  tone  of  the  fragments  of  the  satires  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  "  Protrepticon,"  or  book  of  good  advice,  except 
that  we  know  that  the  satires  were  more  or  less  dramatic.  In 
fact,  it  would  fit  all  we  know  of  the  latter  to  suppose  that  they 
were  a  kind  of  closet  drama,  without  plot,  dealing  with  most 
of  the  interests  of  the  stage  drama,  in  a  spirit  rather  lighter 
than  tragedy  and  more  serious,  perhaps,  than  comedy ;  and 
this  agrees  with  the  tradition  of  the  Romans  themselves,  who 
always  hold  that  satire  originated  in  the  license  of  festivals. 

There  is  little  to  be  said  of  the  satires  of  Pacuvius,  except 
that  they  seem  to  have  been  imitations  of  his  uncle's,  like  his 
continuation  of  the  "Annals,"  and  the  fragments  doubtfully 
attributed  to  Accius  (though  the  MSS.  fluctuate  between  many 
names,  including  those  of  Caecilius  and  Lucilius)  need  not  be 
discussed. 

The  later  shape  of  Latin  satire— the  satire  of  Horace,  Persius, 
and  Juvenal — owes  its  origin  to  Lucilius,  who  was  born  574 
u.c.  (St.  Jerome  placed  his  birth  thirty-two  years  too 
late,  having  pitched  upon  the  wrong  Albinus  and  Qualms. 
Calpurnius,  by  whose  consulship  his  birth  was  dated);  he  died 
652  u.c.  He  was  a  Campanian,  like  Ncevius,  born  at  Suessa 
Aurunca,  and  served,  thirty  years  before  his  death,  in  the  cam- 
paign of  Numantia  under  his  friend  the  younger  Africanus;  he 
died  at  Naples,  and  was  buried  at  the  expense  of  the  public. 
He  was  of  good  fiimily,  for  on  the  mother's  side  the  f^reat 
Pompey  was  descended  from  his  brother  or  sister,  and  in  his 
own  lifetime  he  was  in  a  position  to  acquire  the  house  built  at 
the  public  expense  for  Anliochus  Epiphanes  when  a  hostage 
at  Rome. 

He  wrote  thirty  books  of  satires;  probably  each  book  in- 
cluded more  satires  than  one.  It  is  agreed  upon  all  hands 
that  the  first  twenty  were  written  entirely  in  hexameters,  and 
that  the  thirtieth  was  in  hexameters  too;  the  fragments  of  the 
twenty-second  are  in  elegiacs;  the  twenty-sixth  and  twenty- 
seventh  were  in  trochaic  tetrameters;  the  twenty-eighth  and 
twenty-ninth,  if  we  can  trust  our  authorities,  were  a  medley  of 
iambic  and  dactylic  and  trochaic  metre  in  the  old  stvle.     The 


64 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


twenty-sixth  book  has  a  separate  prefiice,  in  which  the  author 
wishes  for  readers  cultivated  enough,  and  not  too  much;  and 
it  has  been  conjectured  that  the  last  five  books  are  earlier  than 
the  rest,  although  the  argument  on  which  most  stress  is  laid 
admits  of  being  retorted;  and  it  is  just  as  likely  that  Lucilius 
started  a  new  form  of  art  while  his  energies  were  fresh,  and 
fell  back  upon  old  ones  when  they  began  to  fail. 

We  are  told  that  he  learned  from  Rhinthon  the  notion  of  a 
comedy  in  hexameters,  and  it  is  quite  certain  that  he  was  the 
first  to  make  satires  a  systematic  criticism  of  literature  and 
life.  The  one  element  upon  which  he  seems  to  rely  for  amus- 
ing his  reader  is  that  he  always  shows  that  somebody  else  is 
wrong.  It  is  impossible  to  detect  any  charm  in  his  fragments  ; 
yet  we  learn  that  late  in  the  Empire  those  who  could  read 
nothing  else  made  a  shift  to  read  him,  which  is  perhaps  as  se- 
vere a  criticism  of  contemporary  taste  as  if  there  should  come 
a  time  in  England  when  nothing  was  readable  except  "Gam- 
mer Gurton."  When  we  try  to  guess  at  what  his  attraction 
may  have  been,  we  come  upon  two  things.  He  was  perfectly 
frank,  never  afraid  of  saying  plainly  what  he  had  to  say  ;  and, 
as  Persius  tells  us,  there  is  always  a  public  to  applaud  any- 
body who  taunts  a  man  with  one  eye  for  not  having  two. 
Moreover,  he  was  the  earliest  writer  that  we  know  of  since  the 
days  of  the  nineteenth  dynasty  who  saw  that  macaronics 
would  be  amusing  ;  and  his  reliance  upon  this  primitive  arti- 
fice was  all  the  more  effective  because  it  was  as  naive  as  that 
of  his  unknown  Egyptian  prototype.  Then,  too,  his  immense 
fiicility  was  not  lost  upon  his  public.  A  man  who  can  dictate 
a  couple  of  hundred  Latin  hexameters  in  the  hour  without 
shifting  his  weight  from  one  foot  to  the  other  is  always  a 
remarkable  phenomenon,  though  no  dozen  lines  saved  by  ac- 
cident from  the  shipwreck  awake  the  grateful  regrets  of  pos- 
terity. As  often  happens,  we  owe  the  neatest  specimen  of  his 
skill  to  Cicero,  who  tells  us  how  Lucilius  made  ScjEvola  greet 
Albucius,  who  carried  Hellenizing  too  far  (Cic.  "  Fin."  i.  3,  8) : 

Graeciim  tc,  Albiici,  qiiam  Romanum  atque  Sabinum, 
Municipem  Ponti,  Tritanni,  centurionum, 
Pracclaroriim  liominum  ac  primoi  urn,  signiferumque, 


LUCILIUS.  6- 

Maluisti  dici.     Graece  ergo  praetor  Athenis, 
Id  quod  uialuisti,  tc,  quiim  ad  me  accedis,  saluto. 
Xoi/j',  inquam  Tite  !  lictorcs,  turma  omnis,  cohorsque 
Xa7/jf,  Tite,  hinc  hostis  mi  Albucius,  hinc  inimicus. 

One  remembers  that  Scx^vola  was  a  man  of  good  f^imily, 
and  it  is  a  i\\x  joke,  though  a  cheap  one,  that  he  gives  Albucius 
credit,  if  he  would  only  take  it,  for  being  on  a  level  by  birth 
with  the  most  respectable  and  eminent  centurions,  instead  of 
which  he  has  too  meanly  condescended  to  naturalize  himself 
at  Athens  (which,  no  doubt,  was  proud  to  be  permitted  to  con- 
fer its  citizenship  on  a  popular  outgoing  propraetor),  and 
thereby  lost  the  friendship  of  Scaevola  and  ranked  himself 
with  prospective  enemies  of  the  Roman  people. 

The  other  good  fragments  are  as  hard  to  place.  Here  is  a 
definition  of  Virtue : 

Virtus,  Albaue,  est  pretium  persolvcre  vcrum, 

Qucis  in  versamur,  quels  vivimus  rebus  potcsse  ; 

Virtus  est,  homini  scirei  quo  qux>que  abcat  res  : 

Virtus,  scirei,  homini  rectum,  utile,  quid  sit  honestum  ; 

Quai  bona,  quae  mala  item,  quid  inutile,  turpe,  inhonestum  : 

Virtus,  quxrendac  tinem  re  scire  modumque: 

Virtus,  divitiis  pretium  persolvere  posse: 

Virtus,  id  dare  quod  re  ipsa  debetur  honor!  ; 

Hostcm  esse  atque  inimicum  hominum  morumque  malorum, 

Contra  dcfensorem  hominum  morumque  bonorum  ; 

IIos  magnifacere,  his  bene  vellc,  his  vivere  amicum  ; 

Commoda  praeterea  patriai  prima  putare, 

Dcinde  parentum,  tcrtia  jam  postrcmaquc  nostra. 

Here  is  plenty  of  the  redundancy  that  Horace  disliked  in 
his  predecessors,  and,  after  all,  it  is  only  in  the  last  two  lines 
that  we  get  anything  beyond  illustrations  of  the  tautological 
proposition  that  virtue  consists  in  doing  right,  respecting  the 
rights  of  wealth  and  office,  seeing  the  right  view,  taking  the 
right  side.  If  a  "public  spirit"  in  the  puritan  sense  is  vTrtue, 
his  general  experience  is  that  a  selfish  spirit  prevails,  and  with 
it  a  base  belief  that  money  makes  the  man. 

The  direction  which  he  gave  to  satire  was  a  voluble  and 
outspoken  criticism  of  everything  sacred  and  profane,  the 
whole  public  and  literary  life  of  the  time.    The  first  two  books 


66 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


LUC  I  LI  US. 


67 


li 


are  held  to  have  contained  invectives  against  luxury,  and  per- 
haps a  description  of  a  tavern  brawl.  In  the  third  there  was  a 
great  deal  about  his  journey  to  Sicily,  with  plenty  of  passing 
attacks  on  contemporary  poets.  The  fourth  was  an  attack 
upon  the  rich,  put  perhaps  mainly  into  tiie  mouth  of  Lnelius. 
The  fifth,  we  know,  made  fun  of  rhetorical  artitices,  and  the 
si.xth  of  the  shabby  ways  of  the  rich  and  the  noble.  The  sev- 
enth and  eighth  appear  to  treat  of  the  many  quarrels  of  the 
two  sexes.  The  ninth  was  full  of  grammatical  criticism,  and 
also  contained  the  original  of  Horace's  immortal  colloquy  with 
the  bore.  The  tenth  book  set  Persius  upon  attacking  the 
world,  under  pretence  of  attacking  himself.  The  eleventh 
dealt  with  the  lax  discipline  of  the  young  nobles  in  the  cam- 
paign of  Numantia.  I'he  twelfth  is  held,  on  very  slight  evi- 
dence, to  have  been  devoted  to  the  stage.  The  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  were  on  elaborate  cookery  and  on  ambition.  The 
later  books,  especially  the  seventeenth  and  perhaps  the  fif- 
teenth, criticised  Stoicism  and  mythology.  The  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  had  much  to  say  on  avarice,  and  the  twentieth 
on  superstition  in  low  life  and  luxury  in  high.  The  elegiac 
satires  were  devoted  to  love,  and  the  last  five  are  chiefly  re- 
markable because  they  often  brought  up  the  question  between 
old  and  young,  man  and  wife,  father  and  son,  which  we  are  fa- 
miliar with  in  Latin  comedy.  His  favorite  method,  upon  the 
whole,  seems  to  be  parod)-.  For  instance,  in  the  first  book  he 
gives  us  a  council  of  the  gods  upon  the  lot  of  man,  and  wishes 
that  men  had  been  properly  represented  at  an  earlier  meeting, 
for  then  they  would  all  have  been  gods  too,  of  the  highest 
rank,  choosing  their  personality  according  to  taste.  Apollo 
objected  to  be  called  beautiful,  because  it  was  treating  him 
like  a  pet  boy;  but  this  is  a  mild  piece  of  audacity  compared 
to  the  insinuation  that  the  gods  have  taken  an  unfair  advan- 
tafre,  and  carried  their  measures  bv  a  stolen  division  in  a 
thin  house.  He  has  plenty  of  jests  at  superstition,  but  they 
none  of  them  cut  very  deep.  \Vhen  he  tells  of  the  formida- 
ble bugbears  instituted  by  a  Faunus  or  a  Pompilius  Numa,  at 
which  one  of  his  butts  trembles,  and  takes  it  for  an  omen  to 
look  upon  (just  like  children  before  they  can  speak,  who  be- 


lieve every  brazen  statue  is  a  live  man);  of  men  as  silly  who 
lake  feigned  dreams  for  truth,  and  believe  that  there  is  sense 
in  brazen  statues,  though  it  is  just  like  a  gallery  painted  in 
perspective  outside  a  house,  all  feigning  and  no  truth  —  he 
does  not  really  commit  himself  against  the  popular  creed  ;  he 
only  satirizes  the  predecessors  of  the  class  who  spread  the 
fame  of  winking  Madonnas  and  the  like.  Again,  it  takes  little 
audacity  to  tell  us  that  the  Cyclops  in  Homer  two  hundred 
feet  high,  with  a  stick  bigger  than  the  mast  of  any  vessel,  is  a 
fictitious  monster.  There  is  not  a  hint  of  the  thorough-going 
discussion  of  providence  which  we  find  in  the  tragedians.  His 
political  criticisms  are  equally  superficial;  he  stops  at  a  quaes- 
tor being  "  a  man  who  skulks  from  the  day,  a  shady  character, 
just  that  sort ;"  or  at  the  nuisance  of  having  a  praetor  on  his 
hands,  "  w^ho  himself  is  enough  to  turn  him  inside  out ;"  or  at 
the  early  reputation  of  Opimius,  the  father  of  the  friend  of 
Jugurtha,  who,  when  young,  was  too  pretty  for  his  credit,  and 
mended  both  ways  afterwards  ;  or  at  Gaius  Cassius,  the  man 
of  all  w'ork,  the  thievish  auctioneer  widi  the  big  head,  who  was 
made  heir  by  the  judgment  of  Tullius  to  the  exclusion  of 
everybody. 

The  poetical  criticism  is  often  painstaking;  for  instance,  a 
dozen  lines  are  devoted  to  a  distinction  between  poetry  and  a 
poem.  A  poem  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  poetry  of  a  poet. 
The  poetry  of  Homer  is  above  attack,  though  it  is  possible  to 
pick  out  a  line  or  a  thought  for  blame.  And  most  of  his  crit- 
icism is  of  the  same  painstaking,  pettifogging  kind,  dealing 
with  strictly  grammatical  points,  often  mere  minutiae  of  proso- 
dy, like  the  puzzle  which  the  Romans  were  not  tired  of  long 
after  the  davs  of  Lucilius,  that  the  Greeks  could  cnan^ie  the 
quantity  of  the  first  syllable  of  ''A/)/;c.  It  is  true  that  Lucilius 
seems  duller  and  paltrier,  because  he  has  been  principally 
quoted  by  grammarians,  often  at  second-hand.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  many  of  them  quoted  from 
some  selection  which  would  include  his  best  works,  and  that 
he  would  have  been  quoted  by  other  writers  than  grammarians 
if  he  had  been  generally  quotable.  He  wrote,  however,  for  the 
public  of  his  own  day,  and  had  no  pretension  to  perfect  purity 


68 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


of  style  :  he  said  that  he  wrote  for  the  people  of  Tarentum, 
Consentia,  and  Sicily,  none  of  whom  knew  the  best  Latin.  In 
general,  he  was  indifferent  to  his  own  reputation,  and  immor- 
talized his  own  amours  while  satirizing  those  of  other  men. 
He  told  his  readers  almost  all  that  he  knew  of  himself,  from 
the  adventures  of  his  journey  to  Sicily  to  his  refusal  of  differ- 
ent lucrative  speculations  in  public  contracts.  It  was  of  a 
piece  with  this  that  he  was  quite  indifferent  to  style,  and  filled 
up  his  lines  freely  with  stop-gaps,  though  Quinctihan  did  not 
endorse  the  severe  criticism  of  Horace. 


THE  ''ANNALSr 


69 


CHAPTER  V. 

EARLY  ROMAN  HISTORY. 

Roman  history  begins  with  the  *'  Annales  Maximi,"  and  they 
begin — when  they  were  finally  published  by  Quintus  Mucius 
Scasvola,  in  133  i?.c.,  in  eighty  books — with  the  foun-  The 
dation  of  the  city.  That  Sca^vola  discontinued  them  "^^""a^s." 
w-as  a  proof  of  his  tact,  which  Cicero  praises  upon  the  authority 
of  other  writings  in  the  custody  of  the  pontiffs  ;  he  saw  that  the 
collection  was  growing  too  bulky  to  be  continued.  It  is  not 
clear  when  the  Pontifex  Maximus  began  to  keep  a  record  of 
the  events  of  each  year  upon  a  white  board  in  his  official  res- 
idence ;  that  he  had  done  so  for  some  considerable  time  be- 
fore the  series  was  closed  by  Scxvola  is  proved  by  the  testi- 
mony of  both  Cicero  and  Servius;  both  also  agree  that  there 
was  some  kind  of  publication  of  the  record,  but  their  agree- 
ment goes  no  further.  According  to  Cicero,  the  Pontifex 
waited  till  the  year's  record  was  complete  before  he  exposed 
it  at  the  door  of  his  house  ;  according  to  Servius,  he  put  up 
the  blank-board  at  once,  at  the  beginning  of  the  year,  and 
added  the  events  as  they  occurred,  so  that  the  record  served 
some  of  the  purposes  of  an  official  newspaper.  Each  year's 
record  was  laid  up  in  the  house  of  the  Pontiff  for  future  refer- 
ence, and  was  accessible  to  the  public.  Of  the  two,  Servius  is 
likelier  to  be  right  as  to  the  practice  which  prevailed  when 
the  "Annals  "  were  discontinued.  It  would  be  hard  to  under- 
stand what  the  publication  at  the  year's  end  can  have  come 
to,  and  whether  last  year's  news  was  left  to  edify  the  public 
for  a  twelvemonth.  We  have  no  authority  whatever  to  tell 
us  when  the  publication  in  any  form  began  ;  and  the  first  pub- 
lication may  have  been  intermittent.  There  was  not,  and  had 
never  been,  any  reason  for  keeping  the  citizens  in  ignorance 


7^ 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


of  current  history,  as  there  was  for  keeping  them  in  ignorance 
of  legal  proceedings  and  of  the  calendar;  in  which  last  the 
college  of  pontiffs  had  a  special  interest,  because  they  were 
able  to  manipulate  the  machinery  of  intercalation  so  as  to 
lengthen  or  shorten  the  terms  of  office,  as  might  suit  their 
friends.  Still,  the  official  publication  of  events  was  of  a  piece 
with  the  publication  of  the  "  Legis  Actiones  ''  and  the  calendar 
by  Cn.  Flavins,  and  a  publication  which  gratified  curiosity  is 
not  likely  to  have  been  earlier  than  a  publication  which  was 
almost  indispensable  to  daily  business.  It  is  even  doubtful 
whether  the  annual  register  of  events  was  separately  kept,  be- 
fore it  was  separately  published,  though  our  authorities  as- 
sume that  both  the  compilation  and  the  publication  went  back 
to  the  commencement  of  the  Republic,  if  not  to  the  founda- 
tion of  the  college,  l^eside  the  "Annals,"'  the  pontiffs  had  two 
sets  of  records  in  their  possession — the  "  Libri  Pontificales," 
which  wx*re  a  manual  of  rules  and  ceremonies,  and  the  "  Com- 
mentarii  Pontificum,"  which  were  a  collection  of  the  cases  which 
the  pontiffs  had  had  to  decide  from  time  to  time ;  among  these 
would  be  included  the  prodigies  which  had  occurred  and  the 
rites  rcconnnended  to  avert  their  eftects.  These  would  in- 
clude everything  that  the  pontiffs  required  for  their  own  use; 
as  thev  had  the  control  of  the  calendar.  The  State  mi;2:ht 
have  required  them  to  register  the  names  of  magistrates,  and 
the  official  who  had  to  do  this  would  naturally  add  short  notes 
of  whatever  struck  him  as  important. 

It  is  certain  that  any  annals  which  had  been  kept  before 
the  Gallic  invasion  perished  when  the  city,  with  the  exception 
of  the  Capitol,  was  captured  ;  nor  were  any  measures  taken  to 
restore  the  loss.  The  military  tribunes  collected  the  laws 
and  treaties  which  had  survived,  and  restored  copies  of  those 
which  had  been  lost,  but  we  hear  nothing  of  any  endeavor  of 
the  pontitTs  to  do  the  same.  The  confusion  of  the  earlier 
Fasti,  which  more  than  once  provokes  Livy  to  outbursts  of 
despair,  proves  that  the  early  part  of  the  "Annals  "  of  the  Re- 
public did  not  rest  upon  anything  so  certain  as  a  record  kept 
from  year  to  year  by  the  Pontifex  Maximus,  and  restored  at 
once  after  the  fire. 


THE  ''  ANiXALSr 


71 


Yet  there  are  many  passages  in  the  second  book  of  Livy 
which  seem  to  imply  that  materials  were  used  for  the  recon- 
struction of  the  "Annals"  quite  as  trustworthy  as  those  availa- 
ble for  the  beginning  of  the  "  Saxon  Chronicle."    Wherever  the 
events  of  the  year  are  compressed  into  two  or  three  lines,  it  is 
a  presumption,  not  that  the  entry  is  necessarily  correct,  but 
that  it  represents  the  sober  belief  of  well-informed  officials, 
and  is  not  necessarily  corrupted  by  anything  but  simple  errors 
of  memory;  though  it  is  impossible  to  read  any  military  his- 
tory without  seeing  that  this  of  itself  is  a  fruitful  source  of  er- 
ror.    And  it  WMS,  of  course,  a  more  fruitful  source  of  error 
Avhen  writing  was  so  rare  as  we  know  it  to  have  been  in  the 
beginning  of  the  Roman  Republic.     When  it  was  the  duty  of 
the  highest  official  (consul,  dictator,  interrex,  as  the  case  might 
be)  to  drive  a  nail  into  the  door  of  a  temple  on  the  Ides  of 
September,  it  is  obvious  that  this  was  the  only  way  to  inform 
the  community  at  large  of  the  passage  of  time,  of  which  they 
were  in  danger  of  losing  count ;  and  as  September,  if  no  tricks 
were  played  with  the  calendar,  was  the  unhealthiest  month  in 
the  year,  it  was  quite  intelligible  that,  if  an  especially  unhealthy 
September  followed  the  accidental  omission  of  this  precaution 
against  losing  count  of  time,  some  punctual  persons  should 
think  that  an  offence  had  been  committed  against  some  deity, 
who  had  to  be  propitiated,  and  even  that  enough  people  should 
be  affected  by  this  scruple  for  the  public  health  to  improve 
perceptibly  when  such  scruples  were  appeased.     Still,  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  practice  of  writing  was  ever 
confined    to   the   pontiffs ;   whatever   records   they   kept,  it   is 
likely  that  the  records  of  private  families  went  back  as  far. 
But  these  would  be  from  the  first  much   worse  authorities: 
they  were  the  expression  of  individual  or  family  pride;  and 
assuming  that  they  did  not  begin  with  the  beginning  of  the 
fiimily,  the  beginning  would  be  completed  by  a  free  use  of  im- 
agination.    A  family  which  had  kept  records  for  two  or  three 
generations,  and  wished   to  carry  them  back  to  its  reputed 
founder,  would  have  a  fragmentary  legend  of  the  intervening 
stages  ;  and  whoever  undertook  to  piece  the  fragments  together 
would  hardly  know  whether  he  was  remembering  or  inferring 


72 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


FABIUS.—CINCIUS. 


n 


or  inventing.  And  the  first  record  would  receive  continual 
additions,  for  a  legend  grows  rapidly  where  it  has  some  frame- 
work to  give  it  coherence,  and  would  spread  through  the  cli- 
ents of  a  family  to  the  people  and  become  the  source  of  new 
confusions. 

The  Valerii  and  Fabii  seem  to  have  contributed  largely  in 
this  way  to  Roman  history,  especially  the  latter;  for  we  hear 
of  their  actions  even  when  not  in  office,  and  it  is  seldom  that 
either  of  these  houses  are  in  office  without  something  more 
interesting  happening  than  in  ordinary  years.  Still,  it  would 
be  a  mistake  to  set  down  all  the  details  in  early  history  to  this 
source.  We  hear  much  of  heroes  like  Cincinnatus  and  Corio- 
lanus,  who  did  not  belong  to  Rimilics  that  played  a  great  part 
for  many  generations.  We  have,  too,  copious  legends  to  illus- 
trate the  relative  position  of  dictator  and  master  of  the  horse, 
and  the  history  of  Melius  docs  not  owe  much  to  the  house- 
hold records  of  the  heirs  of  his  destroyer,  for  it  is  not  even 
clear  whether  Q.  Servilius  Abela,  who  struck  the  decisive  blow, 
was  in  office,  or  simply  a  private  citizen  zealous  in  the  cause 
of  authority.  ^Moreover,  it  is  certain  that  the  beginning  of  all 
cannot  have  been  recorded  by  the  f;imilies  of  the  Republic, 
and  the  legend  of  the  beginning  of  all  was  comparatively  full. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  it  was  first  written  down  by  Greeks. 
Plutarch  speaks  of  Fabius  Pictor  following  Diodes  of  Pepare- 
thus  in  his  account  of  Rhea  Sylvia's  twins,  and  Diodes  of  Pepa- 
rethus  would  follow  the  story  current  in  the  Greek  towns  of 
Campania  or  Tarentum,  which  would  be  a  distortion  of  the 
popular  traditions  of  Rome.  Another  reason  to  suspect  Greek 
influence  is  that  all  the  history  of  the  younger  Tarquin  is  so 
like  the  history  of  a  Greek  tyrant,  and  that  the  treason  of  Sex- 
tus  at  Gabii  might  almost  be  copied  from  Herodotus,  though 
how  such  anecdotes  get  repeated,  with  variations,  from  one 
period  to  another  and  one  nation  to  another  has  still  to  be 
explained. 

Whatever  the  sources  of  the  "Annals,"  their  manner  was 
studiously  plain  and  archaic;  so  that  Cicero,  who  generally 
was  disposed  to  venerate  antiquity,  complains  again  and  again 
of  the  mischievous  precedent,  which  later  historians  imitated 


[ 


too  closely  to  please  him,  even  after  Cxlius  Antipater  had  set 
a  new  one. 

The  first  two  Roman  historians,  Q.  Fabius  Pictor  and  L. 
Cincius  Alimentus,  wrote  immediately  after  tlie  war  with  Han- 
nibal; towards  the  close  of  which  Cincius,  v;ho  had  Fabius;  cin- 
been  commanding  as  propraetor  in  Sicily,  was  taken  *^'^'^- 
prisoner,  and  had  an  interview  with  Hannibal,  and  received 
information  from  him  as  to  the  forces  with  which  he  crossed 
the  Alps.  Both  wrote  in  Greek,  and  neither  made  very  much 
use  of  the  "Annals."  Dionysius,  who  almost  always  quotes 
them  together,  says  that  they  told  the  legend  of  the  foundation 
of  the  city  pretty  fully,  and  that  they  also  told  fully  what  they 
had  been  personally  concerned  with,  while  the  long  interval 
was  filled  by  a  cursory  recapitulation,  which  need  not  have 
been  cursory  if  they  had  gone  regularly  through  the  "Annals," 
using  all  the  materials  at  their  disposal  to  amplify  them.  Fa- 
bius, at  least,  must  have  had  access  to  family  archives  going 
back  to  the  first  days  of  the  Republic;  and,  in  fiict,  it  was  the 
possession  of  these,  as  well  as  the  recent  achievements  of  his 
great  kinsman,  which  led  him  to  continue  in  a  new  way  the 
work  of  his  ancestor,  the  first  Roman  painter.  Neither  seems 
to  have  been  equal  to  a  critical  narrative  of  even  contemporary 
events — the  testimony  of  Dionysius  is  to  be  taken  strictly  of 
what  came  under  their  personal  knowledge.  Cincius,  although 
he  was  able  to  question  Hannibal  on  some  important  matters, 
was  capable  of  following  a  Greek  historian  who  had  attached 
himself  to  the  fortune  of  the  great  adventurer,  and  apparently 
retailed  all  the  incredible  gossip  of  his  camp-followers;  for 
then,  as  now,  southern  countries  were  hotbeds  of  rumors,  where 
malice  and  the  love  of  excitement  engendered  an  odd  mixture 
of  suspicion  and  credulity,  which  led  Polybius  to  parody  Plato, 
and  despair  of  history  till  men  of  aff.\irs  became  historians,  or 
historians  became  men  of  affairs. 

Fabius  was  translated  bv  another  Fabius  about  a  hundred 
years  after  his  work  was  completed,  and  otherwise  seems  to 
have  been  little  read.  His  Greek  cannot  have  been  delight- 
ful; his  legends  were  more  picturesquely  told,  though  it  may 
be  with  less  sincerity,  by  Ennius,  who  was  a  classic  down  to 

I.-4 


is 

i 


74 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


the  Augustan  age.  The  history  of  the  Republic  was  told  at 
jireater  lencrlh  bv  later  annalists,  and  he  does  not  seem  to  have 
thou^^ht  of  dwellinir  on  the  numerous  points  of  constitutional 
history  on  which  Nicbuhr  wished  to  make  him  an  authority. 
Although  he  did  commit  himself  to  a  theory  of  the  number  of 
the  tribes  under  Servius  and  the  number  of  able-bodied  citi- 
zens at  the  time  of  the  original  constitution  of  the  centuries, 
he  is  never  quoted  for  antiquarian  details,  which  were  only 
collected  upon  a  large  scale  in  the  seventh  century.  He  gave 
the  legends  of  the  foundation  of  the  city  and  of  the  monarchy 
more  simply  than  some  of  his  successors,  v;ho,  however,  agreed 
with  him  in  the  main  outlines.  It  is  generally  thought  that 
the  very  full  account  which  Dionysius  gave  of  the  education 
of  the  sons  of  Rhea  Sylvia  is  supplemented  from  without,  but 
it  had  not  yet  been  adorned  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  mother  and 
her  marriajie  to  Father  Tiber.  Again,  his  narrative  of  the 
House  of  Tarquin  was  quite  unperplexed  by  artificial  chronol- 
ogy; he  made  Aruns  and  Tarquin  the  proud  sons,  not  grand- 
sons, of  the  older  Tarquin,  wlience  it  naturally  followed,  as 
Dionysius  pointed  out,  that  Tanaquil  must  have  been  a  hun- 
dred and  fifteen  vears  old  when  her  heart  was  broken  by  the 
death  of  Aruns,  always  assuming  that  the  "Annals,''  as  they 
finally  existed,  were  trustworthy.  Fabius,  as  the  oldest  writer, 
seems  to  have  been  used  with  a  certain  predilection  by  Dion. 
Acilius  Glabrio  was  another  writer  of  the  same  period,  who 
was  qux^stor  551,  and  wrote  a  history  in  Greek;  which  may  be 
c.  Acilius  explained  by  the  fact  that  he  was  interpreter  to  Car- 
p''t:orueiius  ^'^^adcs  and  the  other  philosophers  who  came  with 
Scipio.  i^jni  to  Rome.     As  he  must  then  have  been  at  least 

seventy  years  old,  it  is  obvious  the  knowledge  of  Greek  was 
rare.  He  is  the  authority  for  the  legendary  interview  between 
Hannibal  and  Scipio  at  Ephesus,  which  took  place  560  u.c, 
whence  it  is  inferred  that  he  carried  his  historv  at  least  to  that 
date.  He  is  quoted  also  for  the  fact  that  several  of  Hannibal's 
prisoners  tried  to  evade  their  parole,  and  for  the  rather  im- 
probable statement  that  the  censors  contracted  to  have  the 
sewers  cleared  and  repaired  at  the  expense  of  240  talents; 
and  for  a  rationalistic  legend  of  the  origin  of  the  Lupercalia, 


CA  TO  AND  HIS  IMITA  TORS. 


75 


which  commemorate  the  way  Romulus's  companions  ran  about 
naked  after  supplication  to  Faunus  to  find  their  missing  cattle. 
He  is  also  the  earliest  Roman  writer  to  deal  in  precise  and 
monstrous,  numbers.  He  makes  C.  Marcius,  who  rallied  the 
wrecks  of  the  army  of  the  Scipios  destroyed  in  Spain  by  Has- 
drubal,  storm  two  camps — one  by  day,  one  by  night — put  37,000 
to  the  sword,  take  1530  prisoners,  a  great  deal  of  spoil,  and  a 
silver  shield  of  the  weight  of  138  pounds.  It  is  obvious  that 
here  we  have  a  story  exactly  like  those  that  were  circulated  on 
the  French  side  during  the  war  of  1870,  inserted  by  a  grav'e 
official,  twenty  years  after  the  facts,  in  a  history  addressed  to 
the  civilized  world.  It  does  not  originate  even  in  the  gossip 
of  the  camp  of  Marcius;  it  is  made  up  of  contemporary  and 
distant  rumors  of  what  Marcius  was  doing.  One  Roman  his- 
torian who  wrote  in  Greek  still  remains  to  be  commemorated; 
he  was  P.  Cornelius  Scipio,  the  son  of  the  elder  Africanus,  the 
adoptive  father  of  the  younger,  who  wrote  a  history  which 
Cicero  had  not  seen,  for  he  does  not  give  the  subject;  but  he 
vouches  for  the  fact  that  it  was  written  very  sweetly. 

Cato  was  as  original  in  history  as  in  oratory.  He  rebelled 
against  the  trivialities  of  the  "Annals"  with  their  recurring  rec- 
ords of  scarcities  and  eclipses,  and  he  determined  to  q^^^  a^d  his 
write  instead  upon  the  Origines  of  the  Roman  world.  »™"atois. 
His  work  was  divided  into  seven  books;  and,  as  we  know 
from  Fronto  that  it  had  passed  through  the  hands  of  the 
grammarians  who  divided  Naevius  into  seven  books,  it  has 
been  conjectured,  though  with  little  certainty,  that  Cato's  work 
was  not  divided  into  books  by  the  author.  Tiie  w-ork  was 
influenced  throughout  by  Cato's  preoccupation  with  Greece. 
He  disliked  the  Hellenizing  party  among  the  high  aristocracy, 
and  he  protested  with  energy  and  temporary  effect  against  the 
introduction  of  Greek  philosophy  as  a  fatal  solvent  to  the  Ro- 
man theory  of  discipline  and  civil  duty.  But  he  was  far  from 
indifferent  to  Greek  culture:  he  learned  Greek  himself  in  his 
old-age ;  in  his  speeches  he  was  given  to  figures  of  rhetoric ; 
in  his  history  he  seems  to  have  been  set  upon  showing  that 
the  Latins  were  genuine  Greeks  of  an  older  and  more  uncor- 
rupted  stock  than  the  degenerate  Greeks  of  contemporary 


76 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Hellas.  The  aborigines,  whom  the  Phrygians  found  in  the 
land  when  they  came  with  .4uieas,  were  Greeks,  and  spoke 
^olic.  The  amiable  Plutarch  fairly  pointed  out  that  if  the 
Greeks  were  to  be  expected  to  believe  this  story  of  a  prehis- 
toric migration  from  their  own  shores  earlier  than  the  ^olic 
or  Doric  or  Ionic  migrations  which  they  thought  they  knew, 
it  was  only  reasonable  that  some  Cireek  evidence  should  be 
produced  in  support  of  it;  but  the  absence  of  such  evidence 
itself  suggests  that  the  stories  must  have  had  some  foundation 
in  local  traditions.  How  slight  the  foundation  might  be  is 
shown  by  his  inclination  to  identify  the  Sabincs  with  the  Lace- 
daemonians, on  the  ground  of  the  simplicity  of  manners  which 
prevailed  among  both,  and  the  similarity  of  certain  unnamed 
institutions.  He  is  the  oldest  authority  we  have  for  the  pov- 
erty and  frugality  of  the  Sabines.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
know  whether  the  economic  changes  which  followed  the  war 
of  Hannibal  told  differently  upon  the  region  of  the  Apennines 
and  upon  the  region  of  the  coast.  We  know  that  the  small 
farmers,  who  had  nothing  to  depend  upon  but  their  home- 
steads and  the  labor  of  their  fiimilies,  were  ruined  ;  while  large 
farmers  like  Cato  himself,  who  had  efficient  slave  gangs,  were 
making  money  and  perfecting  their  system  of  cultivation. 
The  grazing  tribes  of  the  highlands,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
simply  cut  off  from  many,  if  not  most,  of  their  former  sources 
of  profit,  especially  as  the  Greek  towns  of  the  south,  with 
which  they  alternately  traded  and  fought,  were  impoverished 
and  reduced  to  political  insignificance. 

lie  is  also  our  oldest  authoritv  for  much  of  the  detail  of  the 
war  between  ^4uieas  and  Turnus  and  Mezentius,  which  he  re- 
lates with  a  naive  absence  of  effect.  There  is  no  attempt  to 
concentrate  the  interest  such  as  we  find  in  Vergil ;  there  is  no 
real  victory  for  /Eneas  at  any  time,  and  the  foundation  of  the 
Trojan  settlement  in  Latium  is  really  the  work  of  his  son.  In 
the  legend  of  Romulus  and  Remus  he  is  the  authority  for 
Faustulus  and  Acca  Larentia.  After  the  monarchy  his  narra- 
tive became  much  more  summary;  he  protested  against  the 
uncertainty  of  the  "Annals"  and  the  vanity  of  noble  houses 
by  omitting  all  names  in  his  history  of  the  Republic,  while 


CATO  AND  HIS  IMITATORS. 


77 


his  own  performances  were  narrated  at  length,  and  even  his 
speeches  inserted.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  narrative 
was  very  uneven  in  the  distribution  of  the  matter.  For  in- 
stance, the  story  of  a  tribune  who  sacrificed  himself  and  the 
four  hundred  men  under  his  command,  in  order  to  cover  the 
retreat  of  the  consul  and  his  army  from  an  unfavorable  position, 
is  told  in  full,  because  Cato  thinks  the  tribune  and  his  four 
hundred  are  fully  equal  to  Leonidas  and  his  three  hundred  at 
Thermopylae.  It  is  characteristic  that  he  congratulates  him- 
self and  the  reader  that  the  valiant  tribune  survived  his  com- 
mand, having  fainted  under  his  wounds,  and  being  found 
among  the  dead,  as  he  lived  to  earn  new  distinctions  and  dec- 
orations in  future  wars.  A  Spartan  of  the  age  of  Leonidas 
would  have  felt  himself  disgraced  for  life,  but  Cato  was  not 
sensitive  to  the  point  of  honor;  he  was  at  once  thoroughly 
conscientious  and  vainglorious.  He  began  his  histories  with 
the  aphorism,  which  always  sent  a  thrill  through  Cicero,  that 
great  men  owed  the  world  a  reckoning  for  their  leisure  as  well 
as  for  their  work:  this  was  implying  at  starting  that  he  too 
was  great,  and  he  praised  himself  quite  as  lavishly  and  less 
ingeniously  than  Cicero.  His  services  in  the  campaign  of 
ThermopylaL'  were  set  forth  with  no  squeamish  reticence  about 
the  effusive  self-gratulation  with  which  he  repaid  himself  for 
them.  Cato  is  the  first  Roman  of  really  high  character  whom 
we  have  reason  to  accuse  of  vainglory.  Being  a  self-made  man 
who  had  pushed  his  own  way  to  the  front,  he  had  no  respect 
for  any  of  his  contemporaries.  That  he  attempted  no  chro- 
nology in  the  Early  Republic  is  less  revolutionary  than  it 
looks.  He  only  carried  to  its  logical  issue  the  method  of  all 
the  early  Latin  historians.  Every  Roman  historian  began 
with  the  foundation  of  Rome,  and  then  has  very  little  to  give 
till  he  came  to  the  Samnite  wars,  or  an  even  later  period. 
Cato's  originality  was  that,  as  a  native  of  one  of  the  oldest  and 
proudest  of  the  Latin  towns,  which  wms  also  among  the  first 
to  be  forcibly  incorporated  in  the  Roman  State,  he  gave  the 
origins  of  all  or  most  Italian  states,  and  that  he  omitted  en- 
tirely the  mass  of  meagre  and  uncertain  padding  which  most 
writers  before  and  after  thought  it  necessary  to  interpolate. 


78 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


The  whole  work  consisted  of  seven  books,  and  was  carried 
down  to  the  accusation  of  Galba  for  his  cruelties  in  Lusitania, 
603  U.C.,  which  the  author  inserted  a  few  days  before  his  death. 
Another  speech  of  Cato's,  for  the  freedom  of  the  Rhodians, 
delivered  in  the  year  586  u.c.,was  inserted  in  the  fifth  book: 
so  it  appears  that  the  last  two  books  dealt  with  the  events  of 
nineteen  years  at  most,  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  opinion  in 
favor  of  the  view  that  the  first  five  books,  at  any  rate,  were 
published  separately.  The  third  book  still  dealt  with  "ori- 
gins" in  the  strict  sense,  for  we  are  told  that  Ameria  was 
founded  964  years  before  the  war  of  Persius.  In  the  same 
way,  he  doubtless  fixed  the  date  of  the  foundation  of  every 
city;  and,  though  he  did  not  profess  to  give  the  succession  of 
events  precisely,  acquired  a  high  reputation  as  a  chronological 
authority.  It  appears  that  he  quotetl  little  from  Greek  writers, 
and  so  did  not  pose  for  learned,  but  he  inquired  diligently  into 
institutions  and  local  traditions.  He  had  much  to  say  about 
Spain,  where  he  had  served  with  success,  and  also  about  the 
war  in  Macedonia;  the  fourth  book  contained  the  first  Punic 
war;  the  fifth  contained  the  second,  and  much  else. 

Cato  was  imitated  by  Cassius  Hemina,  who  treated  of  the 
second  Punic  war  in  the  fourth  book  of  his  "Annals,"  the 
latest  quoted,  and  had  much  to  say,  not  only  of  other  Italian 
towns  besides  Rome,  but  of  trees  and  other  points  of  natural 
history.  Lucius  Calpurnius  Piso,  who  was  censor  634  u.c, 
wrote  also  seven  books  of  "Annals"  from  the  foundation  of 
the  city  to  his  own  time.  Livy  and  Dionysius  quote  him  in 
the  early  history,  generally  in  support  of  some  rather  dull  bit 
of  rationalism.  He,  like  Cassius,  is  a  good  deal  quoted  by 
Pliny:  fortunately  we  are  able  to  judge  of  his  style,  which 
Cicero  thought  meagre,  by  two  specimens  preserved  by  Gel- 
lius.  He  had  none  of  Cato's  pretensions  to  eloquence,  and 
he  was  not  on  the  way  to  the  elegant  Latin  of  the  age  of  Cic- 
ero and  Livy.  Even  among  his  contemporaries  he  must  have 
affected  simplicity  which  seemed  delightful  to  antiquarians. 
Here  is  the  shorter  of  the  two : 

Eundem  Romulum  dicunt  ad  cocnam  vocatum,  ibi  non  multum  bibisse 
quia  postridie  negotium  haberet.     Ei  dicunt  Romule,  si  istuc  omnes  homi- 


C^LIUS  ANT/PA  TER. 


79 


ncs  faciant,  vinum  vilius  sit.     Is  rcspondct,  immo  vero  carum,  si  quantum 
quisquc  volet  bibat,  nam  ego  bibi  quantum  volui. 

The  inlluence  of  Cato  is  still  traceable  in  C.  Fannius,  quxs- 
tor  u.c.  615  and  praetor  617,  who  adopted  his  new  fashion 
of  inserting  speeches  in  the  history  as  well  as  the  letters  of  C. 
Gracchus,  his  friend;  and  in  C.  Sempronius  Tuditanus,  consul 
625,  who  followed  Cato's  antiquarian  tendency,  telling  us 
about  the  foundation  of  Caieta  and  the  institution  of  market- 
days  and  tribunes  of  the  commons.  He  is  the  oldest  author- 
ity for  the  legend  of  the  death  of  Rcgulus,  which  he  gives  in  a 
very  unimpressive  form.  Rcgulus,  it  seems,  believed  that  he 
was  poisoned  and  sure  to  die  when  he  exhorted  the  senate  not 
to  consent  to  an  exchange  of  prisoners,  and  so  his  sacrifice 
came  to  nothing.  He  goes  on  to  add  that  on  his  return  the 
Carthaginians  would  not  allow  Rcgulus  any  sleep,  and  says 
nothing  of  other  tortures.  Plutarch  was  under  the  impression 
that  Tuditanus  was  a  principal  authority  among  the  writers 
he  had  consulted  about  Flamininus,  the  conqueror  of  Philip. 

The  first  historian  after  Caio  who  had  any  intention  of  style 
was  Ci-elius  Antipater,  of  whose  person  little  is  known  except 
that  he  heard  the  anecdote  about  C.  Gracchus  dream-  c^iius  An- 
in^  of  his  brother,  while  Gains  was  still  alive.  He  "''•'**^'- 
was  regarded  as  the  most  painstaking  writer  on  the  war  w^th 
Hannibal,  having  used  the  works  of  his  Greek  followers,  and 
was  patronized  rather  contemptuously  by  Cicero,  while  his 
rhetorical  account  of  Scipio's  passage  to  Africa  aroused  Livy 
to  one  of  his  rare  and  mild  outbreaks  of  criticism. 


-sX!:-m- 


THE  LAST  rOETRY  OF  THE  REPUBLIC. 


8i 


PART  II. 


CHArTKR  I. 

THE  LAST  POETRY  OF   THE  REPUBLIC. 

The  deaths  of  the  younger  Gracchus  and  the  younger 
Scipio  made  a  considerable  change  in  the  conditions  of  Ro- 
man literature.  Hitherto  it  had  been  in  the  hands  of  the 
clients  of  an  aristocratic  circle  ;  Ennius  was  the  friend  of  the 
elder  Africanus,  Terence  and  Lucilius  were  the  friends  of  the 
younger;  and  it  was  part  of  the  dignity  of  Pacuvius  to  be  the 
successor  of  Knnius — part  of  the  dignity  of  Accius,  who  over- 
lived the  good  days,  to  be  the  successor  of  Pacuvius  ;  even 
Terence  appealed  to  the  memory  of  his  predecessor  CTcilius. 
But  the  liberal  circle  of  the  nobility  is  henceforward  only  rep- 
resented by  good-natured  egotists,  like  Lucullus,  and,  to  a 
certain  extent,  Sulla,  who  had  no  literary  influence  except 
upon  their  Greek  fiimily  philosophers,  physicians,  and  gram- 
marians, who  encouraged  them  to  write  their  memoirs  in  col- 
loquial Cireek.  And  there  was  as  yet  no  public  to  take  their 
place.  The  theatre  was  still  alive,  although  it  was  rapidly 
passing  into  farce,  for  which  educated  men  were  willing  to  write 
brilliant  dialogue  ;  but  there  was  no  audience  for  such  works 
as  the  "Annals"  or  the  "Satires"  of  Ennius.  And  the  laroe 
horizons  which  seemed  to  be  open  while  men  like  the  Africani 
guided  the  State  were  closed;  petty  intrigue  and  factious  vio- 
lence at  home,  and  doubtful  and  inglorious  conflicts  abroad, 
had  taken  the  place  of  the  glorious  strife  with  Carthage,  of  the 
profitable  enthusiasm  to  liberate  the  Greeks  of  the  Levant  by 
substituting  the  authority  of  the  Senate  for  the  dominion  of 


the  successors  of  Alexander,  and  of  the  noble  leisure  filled 
with  dreams  of  Greece. 

There  came  a  period  of  some  forty  years  when  poetry  was 
in  abeyance,  and  grammarians  flourished  instead.  The  lib- 
eral nobles  had  set  a  fashion  of  culture  which  gradually  dif- 
fused itself.  Learned  Greeks  who  found  themselves  at  Rome, 
like  Crates  Mallotes,  the  ambassador  of  Attains,  or  who  had 
been  attached  to  great  houses,  became  each  the  centre  of  a 
circle  of  his  own.  'i'hey  were  known  as  literati ;  they  lectured 
upon  the  writings  of  their  friends,  reading  them  aloud  and  in- 
terpreting them.  In  this  way  Archelaus  lectured  on  Lucilius 
to  Pompeius  Santra,  and  Philocomus  to  Valerius  Cato  ;  as 
Vargunteius  had  lectured  on  Ennius.  Later  on,  men  of  good 
Italian  firmily  were  willing  to  teach  what  they  knew,  like  L. 
/Elius  Stilo,  who  accompanied  Q.  Metellus  Numidicus  into 
exile,  and  Servius  Clodius.  The  time  was  still  distant  when  it 
was  a  matter  of  course  for  every  boy  of  gentle  birth  to  study 
under  a  grammarian  till  he  was  old  enough  to  study  under  a 
rhetorician.  For  grown  men  the  forum  supplied  the  place 
both  of  literature  and  journalism  ;  and  oratory  developed  rap- 
idly. The  general  level  of  speaking  rose,  though  there  was  no 
orator  of  such  a  natural  genius  as  the  younger  Gracchus. 
One  form  of  the  poetical  tradition  maintained  itself.  Men  of 
rank  still  amused  themselves  with  erotic  or  satirical  quotations 
at  their  feasts,  and  the  grammarians  who  read  poetry  and 
taught  the  rules  of  metre  occasionally  practised  them. 

Besides,  the  course  of  history  had  familiarized  the  Romans 
with  Greek  philosophy,  and  Greek  philosophy  had  begun  to 
adapt  itself  to  the  demands  of  Roman  piety.  Panaitius,  the 
family  philosopher  of  the  younger  Africanus,  had  adopted  the 
orthodox  doctrines  of  omens  and  oracles  instead  of  the  con- 
sistent and  simple  fatalism  of  the  earlier  Stoics,  who  held  that 
man  did  not  need  to  be  warned  in  advance  of  the  decrees  of 
destiny  in  order  to  prepare  his  heart  to  obey  them. 

At  the  same  time,  their  Levantine  protectorate  had  brought 
the  Romans  into  contact  with  a  new  aspect  of  Greek  mythol- 
ogy. Hitherto  they  had  only  known  the  classical  legends  of 
Homer  and  the  tragedians,  the  legends  of  Argos  and  Attica,  of 

I.-4* 


(fl 


82 


LATIX  LITERATURE. 


THE  LAST  POETRY   OF   THE  REPUBLIC. 


8.^ 


Thessaly  and  the  Troad.  But  every  island,  every  hill-top  on 
both  sides  of  the  ^:gean  and  far  inland,  had  its  legend  :  every 
rock  that  was  a  little  like  a  human  f^ice  in  the  twilight  was 
some  victim  of  enchantment  turned  to  stone.  These  legends 
were  often  little  but  repetitions  of  more  famous  ones  ;  but  they 
were  racy  of  the  soil :  the  imagination  of  the  common  people, 
doubtless  assisted  by  the  invention  of  a  few,  had  put  the  story 
into  shape  by  degrees:  and  in  more  than  one  town  the  proc- 
ess was.  only  just  finished  when  the  learned  poet — Callima- 
chus  or  Philetas — pounced  upon  his  prey.  The  business  of  a 
poet  was  to  know  as  many  and  as  fresh  legends  as  possible, 
and  either  pick  them  out  for  picturesque  treatment  one  by  one 
in  graceful  little  poems  as  tender  as  possible,  and  on  no  account 
tedious  ;  or  else  they  might  link  all  the  stories  they  knew  to- 
gether, or  remind  the  reader  of  more  than  they  told.  'I'his  last 
view  of  the  poet's  mission  generally  puzzled  the  reader,  who 
found  Lycophron  obscure  not  so  much  because  he  was  crabbed 
as  because  he  was  learned,  and  could  designate  everybody  by 
an  epithet  which  was  an  allusion  to  a  legend  saved  from  obliv- 
ion ;  and  describe  everything  in  a  vocabulary  which  had  put 
every  Greek  locality  and  every  Greek  book  under  contribution 
for  quaint,  sonorous  words  which  seemed  expressive  to  their 
first  discoverer.  The  poets  of  the  days  of  Augustus  had  learned 
that  I^ycophron  was  a  beacon  to  be  avoided  ;  but  in  the  days 
of  Cicero  he  still  seemed  a  guiding  star  to  be  followed.  The 
"Snivrna"  of  Cisena  was  as  learned  and  difficult  as  the 
"  Alexandra  "  of  Lycophron.  Cicero,  with  his  habitual  good- 
sense,  began  upon  works  of  Aratus,  a  poet  who  had  written  on 
astronomy  and  the  weather,  setting  forth  the  signs  of  change 
and  the  natural  calendar  kept  by  the  stars — which  for  country 
folk  was  more  convenient  than  the  civil  calendar,  in  which 
there  was  a  perplexing  series  of  compromises  between  lunar 
months  and  the  solar  year.  And  the  civil  calendar,  even  if  it 
had  been  as  intelligible  as  Julius  Caesar  made  it,  would  still 
be  a  tax  upon  memory,  especially  between  the  ides  and  the 
calends,  while  the  constellations  could  always  be  watched, 
and  if  any  one  forgot  there  were  neighbors  who  could  re- 
mind him.      There  were  other  subjects  besides  astronomy 


h 


t 


equally  suitable  for  didactic  poetry,  which  still  in  Alexandrian 
hands  was  devoted  to  the  learned  conservation  of  folk-lore. 
The  poet  went  out  to  gather  up  information  about  fishing  or 
gardening  or  simples  among  fishermen,  gardeners,  and  herbal- 
ists, just  as  other  poets  collected  local  legends  in  out-of-the- 
way  places.     They  adorned  what  they  collected  in  both  cases 
by  their  own  book-learning;  but  there  was  no  attempt  to  revive 
the  reflected  poetry  of  Xenophanes,  Parmenides,  and  Emped- 
ocles.     The  learned  poets,  for  the  most  part,  were  sceptical ; 
they  shrank  from  great   works.     Their  coryphaeus,  Callima- 
chus,  pronounced  a  great  book  a  great  evil.     They  were  quite 
content  to  leave  speculation  to  philosophers,  who,  in  turn,  were 
more  and  more  inclined  to  criticism:   as  the  great  systems 
were  already  completed;  and  the  greatest  of  all,  the  system  of 
Aristotle,  was  left  like  a  deserted  fortress.     The  official  rep- 
resentatives of  Aristotle  were  content  to  elaborate  the  doctrine 
of  the  conduct  of  life  and  the  conditions  of  happiness;  while 
all  the  speculative  parts  of  his  system,  having  served  as  a 
starting-point  for  science,  were  neither  affirmed  nor  disputed. 
The  transcendentalism  of  Plato  had  shared  the  same  fate,  ex- 
cept among  the  learned  Jews  of  Egypt :  the  only  difference 
between  the  heirs  of  the  Academy  was  whether  they  were  to 
ally  themselves  with  men  of  the  world  against  the  dull,  preten- 
tious dogmatism  of  the  Stoics,  and  furbish  up  the  sceptical 
side  of  the  Socratic  method,  or  whether  they  were  to  ally 
themselves  with  the  Stoics,  and  ransack  Plato's  stores  of  elo- 
quence to  rebuke  the  low  and  worldly  views  of  the  Peripatet- 
ics.     Here,  too,  Roman  influence  made  itself  felt ;  the  number 
of  Romans  of  rank  of  all  ages  who  wished  to  "  hear  "  the  reign- 
ing philosophers  in  Greece  were  inclined  to  prefer  a  teacher 
who  was  edifying.     The  Romans  were  as  f\ir  from  scepticism 
as  from  science  :  the  one  question  for  them  was  how  to  attain 
a  blessed  life,  free  from  prejudice  or  passion.     Even  this,  of 
course,  required  some  theory  of  the  world  in  which  they  lived; 
and  as  Plato's  tentative  physics  had  died  with  him,  and  the 
physics   of  Aristotle   were   only   studied  by  specialists,  they 
were  thrown  back  on  the  primitive  speculations  of  the  Italian 
and  Ionic  schools  by  the  stagnation  of  contemporary  Greek 


HI 


i< 


84 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


thought.  These  were,  moreover,  naturalized  in  Italy  by  a  tra- 
dition going  back  to  the  days  of  Ennius,  if  not  further.  There 
was  a  similar  interregnum  in  Greek  poetry  between  Euripides 
and  Menander,  and  it  was  due  to  similar  causes. 


LUCRETIUS. 

The  transition  from  the  tragic  poets  to  Lucretius  is  like  the 
transition  from  Euripides  to  the  New  Comedy :  there  is  a  vis- 
ible continuitv  of  intellectual  movement,  but  the  movement  is 
on  a  lower  level ;  common-sense  and  the  interests  of  private 
life  replace  public  and  heroic  struggles  and  transcendental 
morality.  Euripides  coincides  with  the  last  struggles  of  Ath- 
ens to  maintain  her  supremacy;  Accius  coincides  with  the  last 
days  of  decorous  senatorial  government:  Epicurus  and  the 
New  Comedy  coincide  wiih  the  tacit  or  avowed  acceptance  of 
Macedonian  ascendencv,  as  Lucretius  coincides  with  the  tacit 
or  avowed  acceptance  of  the  ascendency  of  military  chiefs. 
But  for  the  Greek  poets  and  the  (ireek  thinker  the  period  of 
defeat  was  a  period  of  calm;  for  the  Roman  poet  it  was  a 
period  of  struggle,  the  more  passionate  because  all  guiding 
authorities  had  collapsed. 

The  poem  "  l)e  Rerum  Natura "  is  interesting  for  many 
reasons — for  none  more  than  for  the  contrast  between  the 
author's  temperament  and  his  doctrine.  The  author  is  an  ar- 
dent enthusiast  who  would  fain  be  a  devotee;  his  doctrine  is 
the  most  thorough -going  expression  of  homely,  kindly,  self- 
complacent,  self-confident  common -sense.  Epicurus  is  the 
one  truly  positive  AVestern  thinker  who  constructed  a  com- 
plete speculative  and  practical  code  upon  grounds  level  with 
the  experience  of  ordinary  people.  Even  then  science  was 
transcendentalist,  and  had  reached  positions  which  upon  their 
fiice  were  paradoxical.  The  astronomy  of  the  time  was  as  much 
beyond  a  plain  man  who  wished  to  judge  by  his  sensations  as 
the  traditional  orthodoxy.  Both  had  to  be  received  upon  au- 
thority, if  at  all ;  and  Epicurus  wished  every  man  free  to  judge 
for  himself  upon  evidence  drawn  from  familiar  intelligible  ex- 
perience.    Although  the  Stoics  were  beginning  to  anticipate 


LUCRETIUS. 


85 


the  concordat,  not  yet  repudiated  in  Christendom,  whereby 
the  authority  of  science  and  tradition  support  one  another, 
they  were  compelled  repeatedly  to  fall  back  upon  the  mad- 
ness of  the  many.  Their  theory,  that  strictly  regulated  activity 
is  the  end  of  life,  is  a  theory  for  the  few  :  for  most  who  have  to 
pass  through  life  the  value  of  activity  is  that  it  maintains  life, 
which  yields  them  nothing  better  than  what  Epicurus  pro- 
claimed as  the  end.  Physical  bicn-etrc  apart  from  misconduct 
always  brings  cheerfulness  ;  and  all  the  forms  of  activity 
which  make  life  more  complicated  or  more  splendid  are  only 
possible,  at  least  only  rational,  when  unrewarded  sacrifices 
are  readilv  made.  On  the  other  hand,  the  deliberate  limita- 
tion  of  desire  which  Epicurus  preached  is  only  possible  to  a 
class  sufficiently  educated  to  understand  the  argument  in  fa- 
vor of  listlessness ;  for  otherwise  men  are  the  dupes  of  hopes 
which  break  their  promise  to  the  individual,  and  at  best  half 
keep  it  to  the  race.  Lucretius  himself  never  succeeded  in 
reaching  the  passionless  calm  that  he  preached  with  an  air 
of  eager,  vehement  conviction,  contrasting  strangely  with  the 
good-humored,  prolix  complacency  of  his  master.  Little  as 
we  know  of  his  life,  we  have  no  reason  to  doubt  the  tradition 
that  it  was  stormy.  Our  main  authority  is  St.  Jerome,  who  is 
proved  by  Ritschl  and  Lachmann,  to  Professor  Munro's  sat- 
isfaction, to  have  copied  the  lost  articles  of  Suetonius's  "  De 
Viris  lUustribus."  He  tells  us  in  his  supplement  to  Eusebius 
that  Lucretius  committed  suicide  at  the  age  of  forty-four,  in  56 
i].c.,  having  lost  his  reason  by  a  philter;  and  that  his  poems, 
written  in  the  intervals  of  insanity,  were  edited  by  Cicero.  As 
Suetonius  wrote  nearly  two  hundred  years  after  the  facts,  we 
have  to  rely  upon  the  chance  that  the  tradition  of  literary  his- 
tory, passing  through  few  hands,  was  more  likely  to  be  right 
than  wrong;  especially  as  the  reporters  all  cared  for  the  sub- 
ject. So  far  as  the  connection  with  Cicero  goes,  the  tradition 
is  confirmed  by  numerous  coincidences  with  the  "  Aratea,"  and 
perhaps  still  more  by  the  fact  that  Cicero  wrote  to  his  brother 
in  winter- Quarters  in  Gaul,  four  months  after  Lucretius's 
death,  in  terms  which  imply  that  both  had  read  the  poem  : 
"  Lucreti  poemata  ut  scribis  ita  sunt,  multis  luminibus  ingenii; 


86 


LATIX  LITERATURE. 


LUCRETIUS. 


87 


niultce  tanien  artis  si  cum  inveneris/  virum  te  putabo  ;  si  Sal- 
lustii  Empcdoclea  legeris  homineni  non  putabo."  No  editor 
accepts  the  MS.  reading  of  the  letter.  According  to  Professor 
Munro's  ahiiost  certain  restoration,  the  passage  implies  that 
the  elder  Cicero  knew  the  book  best,  and  therefore  he,  if 
either,  was  the  editor;  though  it  is  curious  that  there  is  no 
other  trace  of  the  affair  in  his  large  correspondence.  The 
only  other  relation  of  Lucretius  to  the  political  life  of  his  time 
was  his  curious  devotion  to  C.  Memmius,  who  was  praitor  the 
year  when  Caesar  was  consul  first,  and  opposed  him  with  en- 
ergy that  commanded  the  admiration  of  Cicero.  This  shows 
that  Lucretius,  like  most  other  sceptics,  was  a  conservative  in 
politics.  His  devotion  need  not  have  been  misplaced  be- 
cause Catullus,  who  followed  IMemmius  to  Bithynia  in  the 
hope  of  making  money,  gave  frank  expression  to  his  disgust 
when  disappointed.  It  was  certainly  exaggerated,  for,  though 
Lucretius  did  not  live  to  see  it,  Mcmmius  had  serious  thoughts 
of  pulling  down  Kpicurus's  house,  as  he  wanted  to  build  him- 
self, and  positively  refused  to  make  the  site  over  to  the  head 
of  the  Epicurean  school;  and  finally  died  in  exile,  after  an  un- 
successful attempt  first  to  sell  himself  to  Caesar,  and  then  to 
outbid  him  in  his  promises  to  the  democracy. 

Lucretius  himself  is  aware  that  Memmius  is  half  indifferent 
to  philosophy,  and  constantly  presses  the  subject  upon  him  ; 
he  is  aware,  too,  that  it  is  out  of  the  question  for  such  an  illus- 
trious person  to  stand  aloof  from  public  life. 

Most  readers  of  Lucretius's  great  poem  will  be  more  likely 
to  agree  with  the  younger  Cicero  than  with  the  elder.  The 
many  flashes  of  genius  that  light  up  the  first  three  books,  at 
any  rate,  are  more  obvious  than  the  art  which  should  blend 
the  whole  poem  into  one.  Its  form  is  determined,  not  by  any 
positive  scheme  of  doctrine,  but  by  a  series  of  protests  against 

*  MSS. :  "  Sed  quum  veneris."  The  editors  had  ac;reed  to  insert  "  non," 
and  only  differed  as  to  whether  it  came  before  "nuiltis"  or  "multx."  As 
emended  the  sense  is  perfectly  clear.  Cicero  gives  his  brother  credit  for 
recognizing  Lucretius's  genius  in  the  many  splendid  passages  of  his  poem, 
hopes  he  is  man  enough  to  recognize  his  skill  as  well,  and  tells  him  he  will 
sink  below  humanity  if  he  can  read  Sallust's  "  Empedocles." 


different  forms  of  superstition.  The  fear  of  the  gods  is  nour- 
ished by  the  belief  that  they  made  and  rule  the  world,  and  so 
we  have  two  books  to  set  forth  the  theory  of  the  origin  and 
destruction  of  the  universe  borrowed  by  Epicurus  from  Denioc- 
ritus.  The  fear  of  death  and  of  torment  after  death  poisons 
life,  and  is  a  fruitful  motive  of  crime;  and  so  in  the  third  book 
we  have  a  polemic  against  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  the 
clinging  to  life.  Then,  since  apparitions  are  a  support  of 
superstition,  we  have  a  theory  of  perception  to  explain  them 
awav,  and  in  connection  with  this  a  theory  of  imaginative 
passion,  which  concludes  with  a  very  vigorous  denunciation  of 
women.  This  occupies  the  fourth  book,  and  then  the  connec- 
tion becomes  more  and  more  fragmentary.  Both  astronomy 
and  the  history  of  civilization  were  strongholds  of  supernatu- 
ralism  ;  the  heavenly  bodies  were  supposed  to  be  the  dwelling 
of  higher  spirits,  the  arts  of  life  were  supposed  to  have  been 
revealed  by  gods  or  heroes  who  attained  divine  immortal  life. 
These  two  topics,  with  the  hidden  connection  which  it  is  left 
to  the  reader  to  supply,  fill  up  the  fifth  book;  in  the  sixth  Lu- 
cretius discusses  all  the  occurrences  which  are  interpreted  as 
signs  of  the  will  or  anger  of  the  gods,  such  as  magnetism, 
electricity,  and  pestilence.  Of  course,  when  we  leave  the  po- 
lemical purpose  out  of  sight,  it  seems  as  if  electricity  and  mag- 
netism belonged  to  the  first  two  books,  which  treat  of  physics 
in  general,  and  as  if  pestilence,  like  other  forms  of  disease, 
ou'iht  to  have  been  treated  in  connection  with  death  in  the 
third  book. 

Another  defect  which,  like  the  inorganic  arrangement,  is 
due  to  the  author's  polemical  ardor,  is  that  he  continually 
overstates  his  case.  Every  presumption  that  tells  for  him  is 
an  intellectual  necessity  in  his  eyes,  every  conclusion  is  en- 
forced by  iteration ;  and  when  a  point  is  proved  to  his  satis- 
fiiction,  he  tells  us  it  is  true  twice  over — "etiam  atque  etiam." 

It  cannot  be  counted  as  a  defect  that  the  author  dutifully 
rejects  astronomy,  or  rather  regards  it  as  a  series  of  hypotheses 
each  of  which  admits  endless  alternatives,  all  equally  in  har- 
mony with  facts.  From  a  common-sense  point  of  view,  Epicu- 
rus was  right  in  classing  astronomy  with  atmospheric  phenom- 


f 


88 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


ena,  under  the  head  of  meteorology,  the  doctrine  of  things 
over  our  heads.  No  theory  of  either  could  be  verified  :  it  was 
impossible  to  mount  up  into  the  sky  and  look.  The  telescope 
did  not  yet  exist;  minute  accuracy  of  measurement  was  im- 
possible; the  close  correspondence  between  calculation  and 
observation,  which  makes  modern  astronomy  so  convincing  to 
the  laity,  was  only  represented  by  approximate  predictions  of 
eclipses.  It  was  only  after  Kepler  that  the  geocentric  hy- 
pothesis became  decidedly  less  plausible  than  the  heliocentric, 
and  when  Lucretius  lived  it  was  still  possible  to  hesitate  wheth- 
er there  might  not  be  a  new  sun  every  morning,  and  a  new 
moon  every  night,  or  at  any  rate  every  month. 

A  less  justifiable  omission  is  that  we  have  no  theorv  of  hu- 
man  nature.  The  supremacy  of  pleasure  is  repeatedly  stated  as 
something  self-evident,  and  there  is  not  even  a  definition  of 
what  pleasure  means— whether  it  is  to  be  conceived  as  con- 
sisting in  enjoyment  or  in  ease;  though  there  is  a  constant 
lauding  of  simplicity,  a  constant  polemic  against  the  costly 
and  clumsy  luxury  which  turned  many  of  the  nobility  into 
Epicureans  because  they  were  epicures.  Again,  the  resolute 
and  premature  rejection  of  teleology  makes  much  of  the  natu- 
ral history  meagre  and  unsatisfactory.  It  is  quite  possible 
now  to  maintain  that  teleology  is  superseded,  at  least  for  sci- 
entific purposes,  by  the  growth  of  anatomical  and  physiological 
science;  but  while  these  were  in  abeyance  it  gave  valuable 
aid,  as  supplying  one  class,  at  any  rate,  of  moderately  coherent 
and  precise  observations.  Even  now  there  are  branches  of 
botany,  especially  the  doctrine  of  the  structures  which  provide 
for  cross-fertilization,  which  are  nothing  if  not  tcleological.  We 
know  the  use  of  the  intricate  machinery;  we  know  next  to 
nothing  of  the  process  of  its  formation.  Aristotle  represents 
a  scientific  advance  upon  Democritus,  though  he  accepts  the 
teleology  of  the  Socratic  school. 

Where  Lucretius  succeeds  is  in  showing  that  of  the  pre- 
Socratic  philosophies,  to  which  without  notice  he  restricts  our 
choice,  the  atomic  philosophy  of  Democritus  is  much  the  most 
reasonable.  For  one  thing,  Democritus  and  Lucretius  see 
clearly  that  ro  sensible  substance  is  simple,  since  each  enters 


LUCRETIUS. 


89 


into  many  dilTercnt  substances,  and  must  therefore  be  decom- 
posable into  as  many  different  elements  as  diflerent  natures 
can  assimilate.  For  instance,  horses  and  oxen  feed  upon  the 
same  pasture;  lions  and  men  may  feed  upon  the  same  ox;  and 
this  proves  that  such  different  creatures  as  oxen  and  horses,  as 
lions  and  men,  build  up  their  bodies  out  of  the  same  materials  ; 
and  as  lions  can  live  upon  dift:erent  kinds  of  fiesh,  it  cannot  be 
replied  that  beef  and  grass  are  simple  substances  which  form 
different  compounds  with  different  bodies.  Every  way  Anax- 
agoras's  theory,  that  every  organized  being  is  made  up  of  some 
one  elementary  substance  dispersed  throughout  nature  and 
only  reunited  in  that  single  species,  is  shown  to  be  opposed  to 
plain  facts.  And  Lucretius  is  equally  free  from  the  bondage 
of  the  four  elements,  which  came  in  with  Empedocles  and  was 
accepted  by  Aristotle  and  most  subsequent  thinkers.  He 
sees  clearly  that  earth  must  be  eminently  decomposable  ;  and 
though  he  nowhere  says  that  fire  is  not  an  element,  but  one 
state  of  many  elements,  he  sees  that  as  fire  it  can  only  exist 
when  it  is  actually  burning.  And  he  plays  off  Heraclitus  and 
Empedocles  against  each  other  very  cleverly,  proving  by  the 
arguments  of  Heraclitus  that  the  ''elements"  are  not  ultimate, 
since  they  pass  into  one  another,  and  by  the  arguments  of  Em- 
pedocles that  something  permanent  must  be  assumed  under 
all  the  changes  of  phenomena  if  we  are  to  guarantee  the  sta- 
bility of  the  universe.  There  is  a  considerable  deviation  from 
Democritus  upon  the  question  whether  the  shapes  of  atoms 
were  infinite  or  only  the  number  of  atoms  of  each  shape.  It 
might  have  saved  Lucretius  and  his  master  some  embarrass- 
ment if  either  had  known  the  mathematical  convention  which 
recognizes  infinities  of  difterent  orders.  But  Epicurus  and 
Lucretius  (who  argues  the  point  with  admirable  vigor)  felt  the 
limitation  of  the  actual  world  of  experience  too  strongly  to  be 
inclined  to  admit  that  it  could  have  arisen  out  of  absolutely 
unlimited  constituents. 

Another  strong  point  of  Lucretius  is  his  psychology.  It  is 
rudimentary  compared  to  that  of  Plato  or  Aristotle;  but  he  has 
a  clearer  grasp  than  either  upon  the  obvious  truth  that  our 
faculties  are  closely  connected  with  our  organization,  and  so 


rjo 


LATIX  LITERATURE. 


escapes  the  illusion  of  those  great  thinkers  that  the  heavenly 
bodies  were  animated  by  higher  inteHigences,  in  virtue  of  the 
simple  reflection  that  inorganic  nature  stands  below  organic. 
Only  the  backward  condition  of  anatomy  prevented  Lucanius 
from  anticipating  the  fashionable  doctrine  which  practically 
substitutes  the  nervous  system  for  the  traditional  conception 
of  the  rational  soul.     He  insists  upon  the  unequal  distribution 
of  sensibility  as  a  proof  that  the  soul  is  not  equally  present 
throughout  the  body,  and  is  much  impressed  with  the  subtlety 
of  a  fourth  nameless  substance,  which  is  the  very  soul  of  the 
soul.     The  other  three  components  which  he  names  are/tVTw, 
spiritiis,  and  aer,  and  these  are  supposed  to  have  their  centre 
in  the  breast.     7'hey  enter  in  ditlerent  proportions  into  the 
souls  of  different  animals;  for  instance,  there  is  more  spiritns 
in  the  soul  of  a  lion,  more  aer  in  the  soul  of  an  ox.     From 
these  and  other  examples  it  is  plain  that  he  is  thinking  of  the 
interaction  of  the  heart  and  the  lungs;  only  his  apprehension 
of  it  is  exclusively  based  upon  the  subjective  feelings  to  which 
it  gives  rise.     Consequently,  he  divides  the  proces.fof  respira- 
tion between  two  distinct  principles  :  the  act  of  inspiration, 
being  the  more  conspicuously  necessary  of  the  two,  is  ascribed 
to  aer;  while  the  act  of  expiration,  which  is  only  noticed  dur- 
ing vehement  action,  is  ascribed  to  spiritns.     As  the  nervous 
system  is  nowhere  described,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  central 
seat  of  life  should  be  placed  in  the  breast;  for  Lucretius  did 
not  care  to  depart  from  tradition  gratuitously,  and  was  anxious 
in  every  way  to  identify  the  principle  of  life  and  thought.    The 
existence  of  some  central  seat  is  easily  proved,  since  life  and 
consciousness  survive  mutilation,  and  it  takes  time  for  the  will 
to  act  upon  the  extremities.     This  last  is  mentioned  in  con- 
nection with  the  curious  Epicurean  doctrine  of  free-will.     If 
everything  is  a  compound  of  atoms  falling  straight  through  a 
void,  which  only  differ  in  shape  and  densitv,  it  is  possibfe  to 
understand  how  they  become  entangled  with  one  another  into 
more  or  less  durable  shapes.     It  is  hard  to  see  how  any  of 
these  shapes  have  the  power  of  reacting  from  within  upon  the 
shapes  that  surround  them.     It  would  have  been  enough  for 
the  time  to  say  that  atoms  were  elastic,  and  therefore  capable 


LUCRETIUS. 


91 


of  reacting  in  certain  combinations  almost  as  if  they  were  act- 
in^  of  themselves.  But  Lucretius  knew  elasticity,  at  most,  as 
a  property  of  bodies  of  sensible  magnitude,  and  was  anxious, 
like  his  master,  to  save  "  free-will  "  in  the  transcendental  sense, 
because  it  was  important  to  them  as  practical  philosophers  to 
maintain  that  all  men  were  really  and  truly  able  to  act  upon 
their  benevolent  precepts.  So  Lucretius  accepts  his  master's 
device  to  make  the  motion  of  the  atoms  incalculable  :  instead 
of  falling  perpendicularly,  it  is  assumed  that  some  or  all  of 
them  have  an  imperceptible  deflection  (which,  being  imper- 
ceptible, can  never  be  disproved);  whence  it  would  follow  that 
the  bodies  formed  from  these  would  have  a  proper  motion  of 
their  own  derived  from  the  motion  of  the  atoms  forming  them, 
and  independent  of  the  motion  communicated  by  the  impact 
of  other  bodies.  No  part  of  the  system  has  attracted  more 
ridicule  in  ancient  or  modern  times,  to  say  nothing  of  other 
objections  :  if  consistently  applied,  the  doctrine  makes  all  ex- 
act science  impossible.  This  is  hardly  proving  too  much 
from  Epicurus's  point  of  view.  Such  exact  science  as  he  knew 
struck  him  as  *' slavish,"  just  as  civilized  industry  strikes  sav- 
ages, who  contemplate  its  results  disinterestedly,  and  compare 
them  with  the  laborious  efforts  required  to  begin  to  appropriate 
them. 

When  Lucretius  is  discussing  the  atoms  and  the  void,  he 
has,  at  any  rate,  the  advantage  of  following  a  thinker  who  was 
in  some  sense  in  advance  of  his  successors.  Impressive  as 
the  discussion  of  immortality  is,  it  is  a  loss  that  he  so  com- 
pletely ignores  Plato.  The  argument  from  the  contrast  be- 
tween sense  and  thought,  which  is  stated  in  so  many  forms  in 
the  *'  Phcedo,"  is  left  untouched  ;  the  idea  that  a  future  life  can 
be  an  object  of  even  mistaken  desire,  which  is  so  prominent 
in  the  early  days  of  Buddhism,  has  not  a  trace  in  Lucretius. 
In  his  view  either  the  future  life  is  spent  in  hell  among  the 
torments  of  the  poets,  or  else  it  is  a  life  of  endless  transmigra- 
tion, either,  as  Empedocles  taught,  through  the  whole  round 
of  being,  or,  as  Plato  was  supposed  to  have  taught,  through  a 
succession  of  human  lives,  each  forgotten  as  soon  as  over. 
The  answer  to  this  is  quite  decisive.     "  First,  if  the  changeless 


92 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


immortal  soul  passes  through  so  many  bodies,  how  is  it  that  it 
remembers  nothing  of  its  former  lives?  for  such  a  change  in 
the  power  of  the  soul  as  to  cause  all  grasp  of  things  clone  to 
fall  away  cannot  differ  very  much  from  death;  so  there  is  no 
help  but  to  confess  that  the  soul  which  has  been  before  has 
perished,  and  that  which  now  is  has  been  fashioned  now.  Be- 
sides" (and  this  argument  against  transmigration  shows  that 
Lucretius  is  as  callous  to  the  spiritualism  of  Aristotle  as  to 
that  of  riato),  "  if  the  body  is  already  perfect  before  the  power 
of  the  enlivened  soul  is  set  within  us  just  as  we  are  being  born 
and  entering  the  threshold  of  life,  it  would  not  be  fitting  such 
a  power  should  seem  to  have  grown  together  with  body  and 
limbs  in  the  very  blood,  but  it  ought  to  live  alone  in  a  cave  to 
itself." 

Of  course,  it  is  easily  proved  that  Empedocles's  theory  of 
transmigration  is  impossible.     Lucretius  has  only  to  show  that 
the  principle  of  heredity  applies  to  all  animals,  and  that  the 
character  of  the  soul  would  assert  itself  at  the  expense  of  the 
character  of  the  race,  if  transmigration  were  possible.     The 
higher  side  of  the  doctrine  of  transmigration  did  not  appeal 
to  Lucretius  :  the  sense  that  the  spirit  has  entered  into  all 
experience,  that  life  is  one  throughout  the  world,  was  naturally 
strange  to  a  poet  who  had  apparently  no  conception  of  a  per- 
manent spiritual  self,  with  a  continuous  inner  life  of  its  own 
persisting  through  all  modes  and  circumstances.     The  only 
reality  to  him  is  the  life  of  the  moment :  his  feeling  for  that  is 
penetrating  and  intense,  but  it  only  makes  him   anxious  to 
preserve  it  from  the  contamination  of  hope  and  fear.     The 
wide  range  of  transformation  which  is  present  to  his  thought 
only  leads  to  a  certain  recklessness  of  concession  :  very  likely 
we  have  been  before,  very  likely  we  shall  be  again  ;  but,  either 
way,  it  is  nothing  to  us.     If  the  same  atoms,  or  atoms  exactly 
similar  to  those  which  make  up  our  bodies  and  minds,  have 
entered  and  will  enter  into  precisely  similar  combinations,  we 
have  no  more  need  to  think  of  what  we  shall  be  than  to  think 
of  what  we  have  been.     There  is  some  meanness  in  this  ;  the 
writer  cannot  allow  for  our  natural  and  wholesome  care  for 
what  will  never  be  matter  of  personal  experience.     A  man's 


LUCRETIUS. 


93 


dislike  to  the  imagination  of  indignities  which  his  corpse  may 
suffer  does  not  really  imply  a  latent  belief  that  he  will  feel 
them  when  they  come.     The  revellers  who  lie  at  their  wine 
with  garlands  shading  their  brows,  and  say,  heartily,  "  We 
manikins  have  but  a  little  pleasure  here ;  presently  it  will  be 
over,  and  we  shall  never  be  able  to  call  it  back  again,"  do 
not  really  think,  whatever  Lucretius  says,  that  they  will  be 
parched  by  tormenting  thirst  in  the  grave.     The  fear  of  never 
seeing  home  or  kindly  wife  again  is  not  a  fear  of  pining  after 
death  for  them.     Lucretius  allows  that  mourners  are  really 
sorry  for  the  dead,  not  for  their  own  loss  :  he  asks  what  is 
there  to  lament  in  a  lot  that  is  only  sleep  and  rest,  and  shows 
by  his  question  that  an  artificial  feeling  may  be  as  irrational 
as  a  spontaneous  feeling.     The  triumph  that  death  is  noth- 
ing, and  does  not  concern  us  a  jot,  comes  oddly  after  a  demon- 
stration that  the  mind  may  die   and    be  drowned    in   black 
lethargy  while  the  body  still  lives.     It  is  hard  to  judge  just 
here  of  the  argument,  for  there  is  a  provoking  lacuna  whose 
length  is  uncertain,  when  Lucretius  wins  his  easy  victory  over 
the  perfunctory  plea  for  immortality  put  forth  in  the  "  Repub- 
lic."    He  sees  the  distinction,  which  Plato  misses,  between  a 
fit  of  vice  or  folly,  and  confirmed  mental  disease  which  may 
permanently  lower  or  destroy  the  whole  life  of  the  mind,  so 
that  instead  of  being  free  from  the  risks  of  extinction  which 
affect  the  body,  it  has  a  special  danger  of  its  own,  able  to  slay 
it  while  the  body  lives.     This  is  a  worthy  sequel  to  the  com- 
placent inference  that  the  lower  fornix:  which  quicken,  as  Lu- 
cretius held  in  good  company,  out  of  the  corruption  of  higher, 
must  get  their  souls   from   the  souls  of  the  higher  beings. 
Throughout,  it  is  the  author's  object  to  represent  our  shrink- 
ing from  death  as  a  sort  of  unreasonable  caprice,  one  of  the 
worst  effects  of  which  is  actually  to  make  men  sacrifice  in 
order  that  their  days  may  be  prolonged  in  exile  and  other 
miseries,  which  might  end  at  once  if  they  would  die.     Obvi- 
ously, Lucretius  was  one  of  the  first  to  feel  the  passion  for 
suicide  which  gathered  strength  through  the  death-struggle  of 
the  Republic,  and  reached  its  height  in  the  halcyon  days  of 
Trajan.     Another  object  is  to  justify  nature  against  our  de- 


94 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


sires  ;  and  here  Lucretius  does  not  succeed.      He  does  not 
perceive  that  our  wish  that  the  best  moments  in  life  should  be 
eternal  is  one  of  the  most  natural  things  in  the  world,  and 
that  we  do  not  contract  our  clinging  to  life  by  our  own  mis- 
management.    If  we  pass  through  life  with  no  experience  but 
desire  and  regret,  this  is  the  foult  not  of  man,  but  of  nature, 
whom  Lucretius  introduces  to  rebuke  the  disappointment  of 
her  dupes.     Nature  tells  us  that  we  have  enjoyed  all  she  has  to 
give  ;  and  if  this  has  satisfied  us,  it  seems,  according  to  Lucre- 
tius, we  should  be  ready  to  go  :  if  not,  what  is  there  to  wait 
for  ?     Nature,  or  rather  Lucretius,  is  very  sarcastic  upon  the 
impossible  hopes,  the  preposterous  ambitions,  of  the  old  ;  but 
these  are  a  symptom,  not  a  cause,  of  the  reluctance  to  die 
which  they  serve  to  excuse.     And,  after  all,  criticism  of  such 
a    purely    animal   craving  is  even   more   unconvincing  than 
criticism  of  our  natural  craving  for  enjoyment,  which  Lucre- 
tius would  have  thought  empty  and  unreasonable.     To  argue 
ourselves  out  of  desires  which  may  trouble  us  is  generally  to 
extirpate  all  desires  alike  ;    if  desires  cannot  be  conquered 
without  arguing  with  them,  it  is  better  to  endure  them. 

It  is  remarkable  that  there  is  one  set  of  desires  which  Lu- 
cretius assumes  to  be  above  discussion :  he  takes  for  granted 
that  as  citizens  of  the  State  and  as  citizens  of  the  universe  we 
are  concerned  with  what  will  never  affect  us  personally.  He 
regards  the  final  catastrophe  of  the  universe,  to  which  Epicu- 
reans and  Stoics  alike  looked  forward,  with  spontaneous  un- 
feigned fear,  and  only  hopes  that  fortune  (being  too  consistent 
to  invoke  the  deities)  may  avert  it  as  long  as  possible.  He 
is  very  {\x  from  the  temper  of  the  Jewish  king  who  said  of  the 
ruin  of  his  realm  and  his  house,  "Is  it  not  good  if  peace  and 
truth  shall  be  in  my  days  ?''  Lucretius's  feeling  is  rather  that, 
as  Rome  and  the  world  must  end,  we  ought  to  resign  our- 
selves to  the  end  of  our  own  lives  :  he  wishes  to  prove  that  the 
world  is  so  admirable  that  we  ought  to  be  satisfied  with  our 
share  of  it,  and  so  perishable  that  we  cannot  complain  that 
our  own  craving  for  immortality  is  futile.  He  is  entirely 
without  the  idea  of  progress,  which  is  all  the  more  remarkable 
because  he  is   entirely  free  from  the  superstition  of  cycles 


LUCRETIUS. 


95 


through  which  prehistoric  civilizations  had  arisen  and  disap- 
peared and  left  no  trace.  He  sees  clearly  that  history  had  a 
beginning,  and  that  the  world  must  have  had  a  beginning  too  ; 
and  in  this  he  is  better  advised  than  Plato  or  Aristotle,  who 
both  leaned  to  the  eternity  of  the  world.  On  the  other  hand, 
they  have  a  feeling  for  literature,  for  art,  for  institutions,  which 
Lucretius  lacks.  His  ideal  is  the  legendary  life  of  Otaheite  \ 
and  the  growing  complexity  of  life,  which  is  the  clearest  re- 
sult of  progress,  is  not  attractive  to  such  a  temper,  especially 
when  activity  is  declining  throughout  the  world. 

The  point  at  which  Lucretius  is  most  tempted  to  go  beyond 
the  limits  fixed  by  his  master  is  theology;  and  this,  though 
one  of  the  most  ingenious  parts  of  the  system,  was  open  to 
modification,  because  it  had  little  connection  with  the  rest. 
Neither  Epicurus  nor  Lucretius  ever  seriously  asks  if  the  gods 
exist ;  they  take  that  fact  for  granted  on  the  fixith  of  the  gen- 
eral consent  of  mankind.     And  with  this  fact  they  take  for 
granted  the  character  of  the  gods  as  the  best  and  most  glori- 
ous beings  imaginable,  "enjoying  life  immortal  at  the  height 
of  peace,"  or,  as  Epicurus  puts  it  more  prosaically,  "The  best 
has  no  trouble  of  its  own,  and  gives  no  trouble  to  others." 
Doth  respect  the  instinct  of  worship,  if  purged  of  irrational 
fears  and  hopes  :  and  both  ignore  the  fact  that  it  is  precisely 
these  that  keep  alive  the  instinct  in  ordinary  minds.     This 
attitude  at  first  may  seem  illogical,  till  we  remember  how  ex- 
actly it  corresponds  to  our  own  attitude  to  the  ideal.     We  do 
not  think  it  is  exactly  a  creation  of  our  own,  and  yet  only  a 
few  enthusiasts  hold  that  the  actual  world  originates  w^ith  it  or 
is  ruled  by  it,  and  all  right-minded  people  like  to  dwell  upon 
it  and  venerate  it.     How  we  come  to  elaborate  ideals,  or  how 
we  are  trained  to  apprehend  them,  is  such  a  difficult  question 
that  it  is  no  wonder  Epicurus  and  Lucretius  cut  the  knot  by 
assuming  that  we  simply  see  the  images  of  the  gods  as  they 
are,  just  as  we  see  the  images  of  sensible  things.     Where  one 
detects  the  incoherence  of  the  conception  is  in  the  necessity 
of  putting  the  gods  outside  the  perishable   material  world. 
The  tradition  which  it  was  wished  to  save  had  made  the  gods 
the  highest  inhabitants  of  the  world  rather  than  its  makers  or 


96 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


even  its  rulers.     It  was  to  get  rid  of  this  last  that  Epicurus 
was  induced  to  declare  war  against  the  natural  explanation 
of  the  anthropomorphic  ideals  of  Greece.     Me  might  safely 
have  recognized  that  they  were  embodiments  of  natural  forces 
or  natural   processes.     If  he  had  condescended  to  borrow 
from  Empedocles  as  he  borrowed  from  Democritus,  he  might 
have  explained  their  immortality  by  the  rival  principles  of  love 
and  hatred,  showing  that  beings  in  whom  the  principle  of 
hatred  predominated  were  short-lived,  and  beings  in  whom 
the  principle  of  love  predominated  lived  lonor;  while  the  jrods 
were  immortal   because   in   them   the  principle   of  love   had 
gained  an  entire  victory.     As  it  is,  his  belief  in  the  gods  is 
obviously  a  survival,  gradually  detaching  itself  from  the  main 
body    of  his    belief.      Lucretius    is    more    strongly    tempted 
to  adopt  tlie  old  Roman  rationalism  in  the  double  form  in 
which  Ennius  and  his  successors  had  embodied  it;  he  can 
hardly  keep  from  deifying  nature,  and  hardly  from  deifying 
Epicurus.     Here   the  temptation  is  so  strong  that  he  more 
than  once  salutes  his  teacher  as  very  god,  though  he  is  so  sure 
of  his  mortality  that  it  is  the  climax  of  all  his  arguments  to 
reconcile  us  to  our  own.     The  other  temptation  was  less  fun- 
damental:  the  gods  would  still  have  been  perfectly  tranquil, 
if  not  perfectly  motionless,  if  they  had  been  identified  with  the 
ideal  side  of  the  beneficent  processes  of  nature;  they  would 
not  have  been  responsible  for  rewarding  human  merit  or  pun- 
ishing human  vice  ;  they  would  have  been  free,  too,  from  the 
endless  whirl  in  which  the   one  supreme  god  of  the  Stoics 
lived,  for  Epicurus  and  Lucretius  were  polytheists.     In  spite 
of  his  protests,  he  gives  way  more  than  once  quite  sincerely: 
all  his  concessions,  it  is  true,  are  in  the  line  of  possible  con- 
tinuations of  his  system.     Venus,  the  mother  of  the  House  of 
^neas,  the  pleasure  of  gods  and  men,  the  power  who  keeps 
the  world  alive,  befoie  whom  the  winds  depart,  and  the  clouds 
of  heaven  flee  at  her  coming,  for  whom  Daedal  earth  sends  up 
flowers  in  sweetness,  the  only  lady  who  governs  the  nature  of 
things,  is  really  quite  at  home  in  the  system  of  Epicurus  ;  and 
Mars,  "  melting  in  her  lap  spell-bound  by  the  eternal  wound  of 
love,"  is  at  once  a  picture  too  sincere  to  be  conventional,  and 


LUCRETIUS. 


97 


a  persuasive  allegory  of  the  way  that  grace  subdues  stormy 
strength  into  fruitfulness ;  and  this  last  entered  into  the 
Roman  conception  of  Mars.  If  one  compares  this  descrip- 
tion with  the  scene  in  the  fourteenth  "  Iliad,''  between  Zeus 
and  Here,  it  is  obvious  that  it  is  the  Greek  poet  rather  than 
the  Latin  who  is  playing  with  a  conventional  mythology. 

Lucretius  sometimes  plays  with  mythology  too,  as  in  the  fa- 
mous passage  on  the  round  of  the  seasons.     Spring  and  Venus 
go  along;  and  Spring's  harbinger,  the  winged  West  Wind, 
nips  before  ;  and  beside  his  steps  they  find  Mother  Flora  scat- 
tering flowers  on  the  way  before,  to  fill  all  things  with  choice 
colort  and  scents.     Next  in  place  follows  parching  Heat  ;  and 
close  beside  are  dusty  Ceres  and  the  yearly  northern  blasts. 
Then  Autumn  draws  nigh,  and  Euhius  Evian  trips  beside. 
Then  other  seasons  and  winds  follow— high  thundering  Vol- 
turnus  and  the  South  Wind  with  all  the  strength  of  the  levin. 
At  last  short  days  bring  the  snows  and  stiff  numb  cold,  and 
Winter  goes  abroad  ;  behind  her  follows  Shivering  with  chat- 
tering teeth.     This  is  quite  in  conformity  to  Lucretius's  own 
theoiy,  that  all  such  allegory  should  be  treated  consciously  as 
a  mere  ornament,  separable  from  the  substance  of  the  work. 
It  is  only  in  connection  with  Epicurus  that  Lucretius  feels 
the  necessity  of  invoking  a  higher  power  than  man's  to  account 
for  the  effects  which  strike  him  with  admiration  ;  in  general, 
he  uses  the  conception  of"  nature  "as  easily  and  as  vaguely 
as  half-educated  writers  on  the  "  scientific "  side  in   modern 
times  use  the  conception  of  "force."     He  finds  it  easy  to  per- 
sonify "  nature,"  and  at  the  same  time  to  remember  that  she 
has  nothing  but  what  we  have  given  her;   he  is  at  least  as 
much  impressed  by  the  fact  that  her  power  is  limited  both  in 
extent  and  duration  as  by  the  fact  that  our  power  is  over- 
shadowed by  hers.     The  flaming  walls  of  the  world  are  a  boun- 
dary that  nothing  but  the  human  spirit  led  by  Epicurus  and 
Democritus  can  pass.     For  Lucretius  the  sages  are  true  ideals 
of  blessedness  and  holiness  ;  even  when  he  refutes  Democritus 
his  decrees  are  sacred. 

He  follows  Democritus  closely  and  intelligently  in  one  of 
the  most  thorough  and  ingenious  parts  of  his  book,  which  deal? 

1.-5 


98 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE. 


LUCRETIUS, 


with  the  phenomena  of  vision.  All  the  arguments  which  prove 
that  color  is  a  "secondary  property  "  of  bodies  are  as  old  as 
Democritus;  the  sea,  for  instance,  is  dark  in  repose  and  white 
when  lashed  into  foam  by  the  wind,  whence  it  is  inferred  with 
admirable  boldness  that  even  those  bodies  which  always  pre- 
sent the  same  colors  to  the  eye  do  so  because  the  arrangement 
of  their  component  atoms  is  less  variable,  and  so  they  are 
always  affected  in  the  same  way  by  the  light  that  falls  upon 
them.  But  here  the  explanation  stops  short ;  if  light  is  really 
colored,  and  different  combinations  of  atoms  reflect  differently 
colored  light,  it  is  obvious  that  light  ought  to  be  altogether  in- 
dependent of  the  atoms,  and  of  a  separate  substance  and  opera- 
tion. But  it  is  explicitly  stated  that  the  sky  and  all  luminous 
bodies  are  composed  of  the  lighter  atoms,  which  separated 
themselves  in  the  beginning  from  the  grosser  particles  which 
formed  the  earth  by  a  process  like  that  by  which  the  shining 
dew-drops  mount  up  in  the  morning  into  air. 

The  theory  of  images  given  forth  from  objects  is  even  more 
remote  from  our  ordinary  ways  of  thinking  ;  it  is  harder  to 
follow  because  it  is  not  explained  for  its  own  sake,  but  as  part 
of  a  polemic  against  superstition.  The  author  spends  more 
pains  on  what  are  now  called  optical  illusions  than  on  the 
common  facts  of  perception.  Then,  as  now,  optical  illusions 
suffirested  vairue  alarms  about  the  superhuman  powers  with 
which  they  were  supposed  to  originate.  Lucretuis  aiTanges 
them  in  two  classes  :  one  includes  the  visions  of  sleep,  trance, 
and  delirium  ;  the  other  includes  such  appearances  as  the 
mirage  and  the  fata  morgana.  The  former  are  explained 
mainly  as  confused  reminiscences  of  real  observations ;  it  is 
the  latter  which  (in  default  of  familiarity  with  the  phenomena 
of  refraction)  suggest  the  very  curious  theory  that  the  images 
which  bodies  give  off  are  capable  of  forming  new  combinations 
just  as  the  atoms  are,Nand  that  in  this  way  we  come  to  have 
ideas  of  centaurs  and  hippogriffs  and  other  impossibili- 
ties. The  apparent  externality  of  mere  subjective  visions 
is  very  cleverly  explained.  Of  course  we  can  only  judge 
of  what  enters  the  eye  (and  therefore  it  may  be  granted  that 
space  is  full  of  unseen  images),  but  there  is  always  a  reac- 


99 


tion'  from  within  in  the  case  of  perception  of  real  objects,  and 
the  analogy  of  this  leads  us  to  imagine  that  visions  and  dreams 
are  external  too.  Perhaps  also  we  ought  to  give  Lucretius 
credit  for  his  perception  that  the  eye  has  some  '  power  of  in- 
stinctively correcting  the  illusion  of  distance  in  the  case  of 
elevated  luminous  objects;  although  the  argument  was  never 
sufficient  to  bear  out  his  theory  of  the  size  of  the  sun  and 
moon. 

One  interesting  feature  of  the  fifth  book  in  particular  is  the 
writer's  keen  sense  of  the  continuity  of  celestial  and  terrestrial 
phenomena.  This  serves  to  cover  the  astronomical  perversity 
of  a  system  which  refused  to  recognize  a  purely  rational  account 
of  phenomena  that  could  not  be  made  objects  of  direct  sensa- 
tion. The  sun  looks  small,  and  he  is  small,  but  that  is  no  reason 
why  he  should  not  be  able  to  light  and  warm  the  world.  Look 
how  many  fields  a  little  fountain  will  irrigate.  Of  course  the 
fountain  is  fed  :  why  not  the  sun  ?  Again,  why  should  there 
be  more  difficulty  in  a  fresh  sun  being  formed  every  mornin"- 
than  in  all  the  periodical  phenomena  upon  earth?  There  are 
fresh  thunder  and  lightning  pretty  nearly  every  summer,  fresh 
snow  and  hail  pretty  nearly  every  winter;  every  spring  there 
are  fresh  buds,  every  autumn  there  are  fresh  fruits  ;  every  child 
has  one  set  of  teeth  in  so  many  months  after  birth,  and  an- 
other set  so  many  years  after.  Of  course  most  of  these  period- 
ical phenomena  are  dependent  upon  the  sun  ;  but  it  is  per- 
haps to  the  credit  of  Lucretius  to  have  reversed  the  presump- 
tion that  the  sun  is  an  independent  source  of  light  and  heat. 
He  will  not  even  take  it  as  proved  that  the  moon  shines  by 
his  light :  it  is  quite  possible  she  may,  and  turn  the  illumi- 
nated side  in  larger  measure  upon  the  earth  day  by  day;  but 

»  This  reaction  corresponds  to  the  more  precise  observations  of  modern 
science  upon  attention  to  the  muscular  efforts  which  adjust  the  eye  to  objects 

=»  V.  566.  In  fact,  Mr.  Hamerton  ("  Portfolio,"  1875,  P- 11)  has  shown  that 
most  people  suppose  that  the  sun  and  moon  look  larger  than  they  really 
do  ;  that  is,  they  think  the  sun  and  moon  have  the  same  apparent  diameter 
as  certain  other  objects  which  must  obviously  be  estimated  with  reference 
to  their  habitual  distance  from  the  eye,  at  which  distance,  as  can  be  proved 
by  angular  measurement,  the  apparent  magnitude  of  those  objects  far  ex- 
ceeds that  of  the  sun  and  moon. 


* 

I 


lOO 


LATLV  LITERATURE. 


LUCRETIUS. 


lOI 


it  is  just  as  likely  that  she  rolls  with  a  light  of  her  own,  and 
pays  her  debt  to  earth  in  changeful  shining  forms.  There  may 
be  a  dark  invisible  body  that  almost  always  partially  eclipses 
the  moon;  or,  granting  (a  large  concession)  that  the  moon  is 
spherical,  it  may  have  a  bright  side  and  a  dark  side,  and  turn 
sometimes  more  of  one  and  sometimes  more  of  another  to  the 
earth.  Besides,  there  may  be  always  new  moons  as  there  may 
be  new  suns,  and  the  argument  is  supported  by  the  picturesque 
analogy  of  the  procession  of  seasons  quoted  above.  In  deal- 
ing with  astronomy,  Lucretius's  zeal  to  provide  a  large  number 
of  alternative  theories  is  especially  striking,  because  we  are 
f^imiliar  with  astronomy  as  the  province  where  certain  and  ex- 
clusive truth  is  most  surely  to  be  found.  Lucretius  addressed 
a  public  who  still  found  it  hard  to  apply  natural  standards  to 
lieavenly  bodies,  and  found  it  still  harder  to  keep  two  views  of 
the  same  subject  in  their  minds  at  once.  None  of  his  nu- 
merous alternative  physical  explanations  of  celestial  phenomena 
really  exclude  the  supernatural  theory  they  are  meant  to  su- 
persede. Any  one  of  his  conjectures  about  sunrise  is  plau- 
sible enough  to  justify  disbelief  in  Phoebus  Apollo;  any  one 
is  quite  compatible  with  a  belief  in  the  providential  uses  of 
sunshine.  His  belief  in  their  adequacy  is  one  proof  more 
of  his  incapacity  to  imagine  believers  who  found  comfort  in 
their  belief,  and  of  the  extreme  activity  of  his  mind,  that 
found  it  always  easier  to  start  a  dozen  hypotheses  than  to 

test  one. 

When  Lucretius  returns  to  earth,  he  is  more  fortunate ;  he 
coincides  often  with  views  which  have  been  fashionable  recent- 
ly or  are  fashionable  now.  Thirty  years  ago  it  would  have 
been  reckoned  to  his  credit  that  he  thinks  the  first  stages  of 
evolution  were  much  more  rapid  and  much  more  imposing 
in  their  results  than  those  that  succeeded  them  (v.  799,  800). 
He  imagined  that  each  race  began  with  giants,  and  gradually 
dwindled  away:  and  that  the  earth  too  lost  its  fertility,  so  that 
the  enlarged  allotments  of  the  later  republic  were  inadequate 
to  maintain  such  families  as  had  thriven  upon  the  small  allot- 
ments of  the  good  old  days.  Observations  in  Colorado  and 
elsewhere  prove  that  vegetables,  the  average  size  of  which 


/ 


appeared  to  be  known,  attain  a  gigantic  development  when 
nUroduced  under  favorable  conditions  to  a  virgin  soil.     If  the 
analogy  between  the  individual  and  the  race  is  as  trustworthy 
as  Lucretius  thinks,  it  would  be  safe  to  assume  that  the  period 
during  which  a  race  survives  its  most  vigorous  manifestation 
is  longer  than  the  period  during  which  it  reaches  it.     With 
this  view  of  evolution  in  general,  Lucretius  is  able  to  explain 
the  changes  in  human  society  without  the  conception  of  prog- 
ress.    According  to  him,  the  life  of  mankind  was  once  rude 
and  simple   and   easy;   it   gradually  became   elaborate  and 
anxious;  it  exchanged  the  risks  which  affect  individuals,  such 
as  homicide,  perils  from  wild  beasts,  weather,  and  the  like,  for 
the  rarer  but  more  terrible  risks  that  affect  communities,  such 
as  war,  famine,  civil  massacres,  and  pestilence.     Men   grow 
gentler  as  they  grow  weaker  and  the  like.     All  these  are  in- 
teresting and  plausible  generalizations,  and  rather  too  discour- 
aging in  their  tone  to  be  quite  compatible  with  the  optimism 
(in  our  judgment)  hardly  separable  from  piety.     They  leave 
room  for  the  euhemerism  which  turned  mythology  into  an  his- 
torical theory  quite  as  plausible  as  most  of  the  physical  theories 
with  which  it  had  to  be  combined.     At  the  same  time,  his 
criticism  is  not  a  protest.     The  tradition  of  energy  and  occu- 
pation is  still  too  strong  to  be  attacked.    Instead  of  the  contrast 
which  Horace  is  so  fond  of  between  the  simple  pleasures  of 
repose  and  the  barren  labors  of  ambition  and  avarice,  w^e  have 
the  contrast  between  pleasures  that  are  easy  and  cheap  and 
those  that  are  costly  and  disappointing.     He  lends  no  support 
to  the  gross  love  of  eating,  which,  to  judge  by  the  comedians 
and  satirists,  was  a  very  prominent  feature   in  Roman  life ; 
whereas  in  Greece,  after  the  Homeric  age,  eagerness  as  to  the 
quantity  or  quality  of  food  was  somewhat  discreditable,  while 
drinking  was  idealized  for  the  sake  of  the  excitement  that  it 
promoted.     Lucretius  does  not  care  for  either  form  of  animal 
enjoyment.    He  is  remarkably  bitter  in  his  depreciation  of  love, 
and,  what  perhaps  is  curious,  it  is  the  ideal  side  of  love  which 
rouses  his  spleen:  the  animal  appetite,  if  we  could  limit  it  to 
that,  would  give  very  little  trouble  if  it  did  not  give  much 
pleasure.     The  strength  of  his  feeling  is  to  be  measured  by 


r  J  T^r  v  r  /  r*/;'  p  a  ttti}  fr 


I 


102 


LA  T/.V  LITER  A  TURK, 


the  length  at  which  he  develops  the  subject,  as  an  appendix 
to  his  theory  of  perception,  for  it  is  the  image  thrown  off  from 
the  beloved  and  lodged  in  the  eye  of  the  lover  that  does  the 
mischief 

Lucretius  seems  to  think  that  philosophy  can  purge  us  of 
sentiment  and  restore  the  innocent  pleasures  of  the  Golden 
Age:  in  general,  he  does  not  go  beyond  the  ordinary  promise 
of  ordinary  Roman  philosophy,  that  he  can  give  strength  and 
insight  to  lead  the  common  life  in  a  better  way  than  others, 
and  to  attain  inward  peace.  The  temple  of  philosophy  from 
which  the  sage  looks  down  upon  the  wanderings  of  a  world 
astray  is,  after  all,  a  figure  :  the  sage  knows  the  way  of  life,  simply 
because  he  knows  that  common  existence  would,  upon  the 
whole,  be  a  pleasant  thing  if  men  could  only  clear  their  minds 
from  idle  fears  and  passions.  \w  this,  as  in  much  else,  Lucre- 
tius reminds  us  of  Rousseau  and  Cowper.  Lucretius's  indig- 
nation against  "religion"  is  very  like  Rousseau's  indignation 
against  "civilization'*  and  Cowpers  indignation  against  ''world- 
liness."  All  three,  at  bottom,  seem  to  seek  nothing  more  than 
a  peaceable  development  of  their  own  nature,  though  each  has 
a  different  transcendental  theory  to  justify  the  modest  de- 
mands of  his  character.  All  seek  some  external  cause  for  the 
storms  which  disturb  an  inner  life  consumed  bv  a  fruitless 
aspiration  after  calm,  which,  so  long  as  it  is  heartily  felt, 
seems  always  to  be  the  truest  expression  of  the  real  self.  Al- 
though persons  in  the  position  of  Lucretius  always  exaggerate, 
it  is  probable  that  a  vague  anxiety  about  the  inscrutable  in- 
tention of  higher  powers  was  still  a  source  of  trouble  in  Italy. 
The  only  reason  for  doubting  this  is  that  a  section  (we  do  not 
know  how  large  a  section)  of  the  upper  classes  had  become 
sceptical.  \w  fact,  this  would  probably  make  superstition  more 
formidable.  The  majority  escape  superstition  best  when  their 
natural  guides  have  a  hearty  practical  respect  for  the  religious 
tradition  they  have  inherited;  for  then  their  attention  is  di- 
rected by  minds  more  active  than  their  own  to  the  points  at 
which  the  tradition  is  in  living  contact  with  experience.  The 
"emancipation"  of  the  educated  leaves  the  uneducated  to  take 
refuge  in  those  parts  of  the  tradition  which  are  furthest  and 


LUCRETIUS. 


103 


safest  from  experience;  for  their  experience   is  narrow  and 
their  apprehension  of  it  fragmentary;  and  whenever  they  are 
anxious  or  uncomfortable,  they  turn  to  old  wives*  firbles  for 
guidance  how  to  put  their  fears  and  hopes  into  shape,  unless 
some  secular  fanaticism  takes  the  place  of  superstition.    Then, 
too,  all  the  idle  brooding  over  a  half-employed  and  less  than 
half- successful  life  which  tormented  all  Romans  above  the 
ranks  of  the  peasantry  (unless  a  strong  turn  for  politics  or 
money-making  saved  them)  led  in  itself  to  meditations  upon 
luck  and  ill-luck,  and  their  conditions.     And  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  Lucretius  should  have  thought  that  the  mischief  was 
done  by  the  theories  in  which  such  meditations  issued,  instead 
of  by  the  temper  that  made  such  meditations  anxious.     This 
may  seem  a  meagre  justification  for  his  passion,  but  a  yoke 
which  all  have  worn  is  never  hated  till  some  have  broken  it. 
The  famous  passage  on  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigenia  (in  the  pref- 
ace to  the  first  book)  is  not  intended  to  prove  that  religion 
makes    men  miserable,  or  that   every  man  who  believes   in 
"  providence  "  is  liable  to  sacrifice  his  daughter.     It  is  intended 
simply  to  contrast  the  effects  of"  religion  "  with  the  claims,  ad- 
mitted to  be  superior,  of"  piety."     Nothing  is  too  horrible,  ac- 
cording to  Lucretius,  to  be  done  under  a  belief  that  uncontrol- 
lable, incalculable  forces  have  to  be  propitiated.     Due  regard 
to  human  ties,  due  reverence  to  superhuman  perfection,  are 
only  possible  when  both  are  disinterested — when  we  are  able 
to   watch  the  course  of  things   understandingly,  hoping  and 
fearing  nothing  except  from  human  efforts. 

The  sixth  book  is  even  more  fragmentary  than  the  fifth. 
It  leaves  off  in  the  middle  of  a  rhetorical  description  of  a 
pestilence,  which  is  evidently  elaborated  much  more  for  the 
sake  of  ornament  than  for  the  sake  of  the  argument  that  suf- 
fering in  such  calamities  is  distributed  with  little  resfard  to 
equity.  The  magnet  is  examined  through  two  hundred  lines,  ' 
because  when  Thales  had  once  noticed  some  of  its  properties 
and  inferred  that  it  had  a  soul,  and  supported  his  impression 
that  all  things  were  full  of  gods,  it  figured  in  the  first  rank  of 
popular  science,  and  was  probably  the  more  attractive  for  its 
mystery;  if  the  mariner's  compass  had  been  familiar  for  two 


I04 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


hundred  years  when  Lucretius  wrote,  he  might  have  been  able 
to  say  no  more  about  magnetism  than  other  useful  arts. 

I'he  discussion  on  thunder,  on  the  other  hand,  was  strictly 
obligatory.  The  Roman  official  religion  was  full  of  specula- 
tions about  the  meaning  of  electrical  phenomena,  and  cere- 
monies to  provide  against  their  bad  effects.  Italians  always 
have  been  constitutionally  nervous  about  thunder-storms;  and 
when  public  business  was  transacted  in  the  open  air,  a  thunder- 
storm was  certain  either  to  cut  it  short  or  lead  to  its  being 
badlv  done.  And  the  official  doctrine  was  as  vulnerable  as  it 
was  obtrusive.  The  aruspices  were  already  discredited ;  their 
mystery  was  a  tissue  of  elaborate  nonsense,  with  no  visible  rela- 
tion to  objective  fact  of  any  kind.  Whoever  chose  to  look  might 
see  that  the  thunderbolt  fell  at  random — on  the  waste  and  on 
the  temple,  and  on  the  dwelling  of  the  righteous.  A  natural- 
istic account  of  the  matter  was  evidently  needed,  and  sure  to 
be  welcome;  but  Lucretius,  like  most  of  his  successors,  comes 
short  of  Aristotle's  precept  not  only  to  set  forth  the  truth,  but 
also  the  cause  of  error.  It  would  be  an  adequate  explana- 
tion, if  it  were  true,  that  the  collision  of  clouds  gives  rise  to  a 
report  which  we  hear  on  earth  and  call  thunder;  but  the  fact 
that  conscious  guilt  cannot  rest  in  such  explanations  needs  to 
be  explained  in  turn.  The  human  mind  is  not  an  ultimate 
source  of  self-originated  error,  anymore  than  of  self-originated 
knowledge  ;  its  power  of  projecting  its  own  alarms,  its  own 
unrest,  upon  a  world  above  or  a  world  to  come  is,  like  all  its 
powers,  a  derived  power — derived  Lucretius  does  not  tell  us 
whence. 

The  poem  is  manifestly  incomplete;  it  is  not  only  that  the 
sixth  book  is  not  finished,  but  that  after  the  first  two  books 
the  writer  almost  seems  to  have  left  his  work  in  the  state  of  a 
rough  draught  (e.g.  v.  82-90;  vi.  58-66).  Ornamental  pas- 
sages are  repeated  in  different  places,  sometimes  entire,  some- 
times with  omissions  and  insignificant  alterations.  There  are 
additions,  often  of  over  a  hundred  lines  {e.  g.  v.  no),  which 
unmistakably  interrupt  the  connection,  though  they  make  the 
treatment  of  the  subject  more  complete.  Besides  all  this, 
there  is  a  large  crop  of  interpolations,  ancient  and  modern 


LUCRETIUS. 


105 


(e.  g.  i.  40-49;  iJi-  806-818);  some  of  which  long  held  their 
ground,  because  they  were  so  like  Lucretius's  own  in  their 
manner  of  insertion.     The  additions,  of  course,  are  intelli"-ible 
enough;  the  repetitions  of  the  ornamental  passages  show  that 
they  too  are  after -thoughts,  and  it  would  not  be  strange  if 
poetical  imagination  was  the  last  power  to  develop  in  Lucre- 
tius, as  it  was  the  last  to  develop  in  Dryden  and  Burke.    These 
repetitions  are  a  proof  that  his  memory  was  weak;  which  is 
what  might  have  been  expected,  considering  that  he  has  no 
sense  of  ihe  continuity  of  the  inward  life.     In  the  fifth  book 
we  have  an  extreme  instance  of  the  author's  infirmity:   he 
proceeds  to  prove  the  possibility  of  a  new  moon  coming  into 
existence  every  month,  as  if  he  had  not  proved  the  possibility 
of  a  new  sun  coming  into  existence  every  morning,  by  very 
much  the  same  arguments,  some  seventy  lines  before.     Even 
in  the  third  book,  the  insertions  do  not  fit  their  places,  though 
they  help  the  argument  and  do  not  disturb  its  framework,  or 
mar  the  impressiveness  of  the  sustained  glow  of  passion  and 
sarcasm  which  Lucretius  pours  upon  the  natural  clinging  to 
life  to  prove  that  it  is  condemned  by  nature. 

The  six  books  on  the  "Nature  of  Things"  deserve  more  at- 
tention than  they  have  always  received,  as  a  very  fresh,  vio-or- 
ous,  and  earnest  contribution  to  the  formation  of  opinion  ;   it 
is  quite  as  able,  as  interesting,  and  as  telling  as  many  of  the 
great  books  of  the  eighteenth   century,  which  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  hence  are  likely  to  seem  as  preposterously  incom- 
patible with  true  knowledge  as  Lucretius  seems  now.     The 
analogy  is  not  exact :  as  a  thinker  Lucretius  ranks  with  men 
like  Vico  rather  than  with  men  like  Rousseauor  Montesquieu; 
he  gathers  up  much  of  the  thought  of  the  past,  he  anticipates 
much  of  the  thought  of  the  future,  but  he  is  not  a  leader  or 
director  of  the  thought  of  his  own  times.     The  only  trace  of 
his  intellectual  influence  is  the  reaction  from  it  in  Vergil,  who 
sets  himself  persistently  to  idealize  all  the  laborious  side  of 
civilization,  which  Lucretius  systematically  depreciates.      As 
a  poet,  too,  he  has  had  more  fiime  than  influence.     He  was 
praised  and  read, but  not  imitated  as  Vergil  was;  his  thoughts 
and  phrases  did  not  pass  current  with  posterity  as  Horace's 


io6 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


did.  Manilius  affected  a  few  of  his  mannerisms:  Vergil  stud- 
ied him  as  he  did  all  his  predecessors,  but  he  imitated  Ennius 
far  more  closelv. 

Passing  from  Ennius  and  Lucilius  to  Lucretius,  we  feel  that 
he  marks  an  epoch  in  versification.  His  lines  have  a  power 
and  a  flow  which  those  of  his  predecessors  have  not;  perhaps 
we  ought  to  take  account  of  his  having  read  Empedocles  as 
well  as  Homer,  for  the  movement  of  his  lines  is  certainly 
more  Greek  than  that  of  his  elder  contemporary  Cicero,  or 
his  younger  contemporary  Catullus.  When  we  compare  him 
with  them,  we  see  that  his  metrical  achievement,  such  as  it 
is,  lies  off  the  path  that  led  to  Vergil.  He  is  far  from  acquies- 
cing in  the  principle  which  Cicero  had  clearly  grasped,  and 
probably  discovered  that  the  appropriate  ending  for  a  Lat- 
in hexameter  is  either  a  dissyllable  or  a  trisyllable.  Ca- 
tullus, with  some  refinements  which  shall  be  pointed  out  in 
their  place,  accepts  the  rule  of  Cicero.  But  Lucretius  seems 
to  be  fond  of  polysyllabic  endings  for  their  own  sake:  such 
lines  as 

Qune  mare  navigerum,  quae  terras  frugifercnteis  .  .  . 
Iti  gicmium  matris  tenai  praccipitavit 

are  as  deliberately  introduced  for  effect  as  lines  like 
Funera  Cecropia  nefunera  portarentur. 

The  termination  of  the  fourth  foot  with  a  word  is  common 
to  him  and  Cicero  and  Catullus,  and  is  probably  as  much  a 
matter  of  necessity  as  of  choice;  for  to  link  the  whole  six  feet 
always  into  one  rhythm  was  beyond  the  power  of  poets  who 
still  had  the  tact  to  shun  crudities  like 

Pendent  peniculata  unum  ad  quemque  pedum 
Pluma  atque  amfitapoe  et  si  aliud  quid  deliciarum. 

Perhaps  Lucretius's  predilection  for  sonorous  endings  makes 
him  end  the  fourth  foot  with  a  word  rather  oftener  than  his 
contemporaries.  Like  them,  when  he  has  a  dissyllable  and  a 
monosyllable  to  place  after  the  caesura  in  the  third  foot,  he 
generally  places  the  monosyllable  first,  while  after  Vergil  the 
presumption  is  the  other  way.  The  metrical  order  in  both 
cases  seems  to  coincide  more  or  less  with  the  rhetorical ;  it 


CATULLUS. 


107 


would  disturb  the  flow  of  the  older  poet  to  write  "  terras  quae 
frugifercnteis;"  to  write 

Arma  virumque  cano  qui  Trojae  primus  ab  oris 

would  cripple  the  eloquence  of  the  younger:  as  it  is,  "  Trojce  " 
seems  too  emphatic  to  be  kept  back. 

Other  metrical  peculiarities  of  Lucretius,  like  his  beirinnin<r 
the  third  foot  with  a  word,  and  constructing  the  third  and 
fourth  feet  upon  the  pattern  which  Vergil  reserves  for  the  fifth 
and  sixth,  are  as  likely  to  be  due  to  the  pressure  of  matter  as 
to  a  perverse  taste  for  archaism. 


CATULLUS. 

Catullus  is  in  some  ways  the  most  enigmatical  of  the  great 
poets.     For  one  thing,  we  know  very  little  of  the  order  of  his 
poems;  he  brought  out  his  works  himself  in  one  volume,  in  an 
entirely  arbitrary  arrangement.     He  put  the  lyrics  first,  the 
long  poems  in  the  middle,  and  the  epigrams  in  elegiacs  at  the 
end.     Vorlander  has  collected  instances  where  a  poem  on  a 
difterent  subject  is  inserted  to  give  the  reader  a  change.    This 
is  provoking,  because  the  order  of  the  poems,  if  we  knew  it, 
would  throw  light  upon  the  meaning.    Catullus  is  full  of  abrupt 
and  violent  changes  of  feeling,  and  their  depth  and  sincerity 
are  only  to  be  measured  by  their  durability.     How  often  did 
he  quarrel  with  Lesbia,  and  make  it  up  again  ?  how  often  with 
Furiujs  and  Aurelius.?  how  much  did  he  mean  by  his  attacks 
on  Mamurra  and  Cxsar.?    Is  the  smooth  and  monotonous  epi- 
thalamium  of  Peleus  and  Thetis  one  of  his  earliest  works  or 
one  of  his  latest  ?    Is  its  disproportion  to  be  explained  by  say- 
ing that  the  Ariadne  episode  was  finished  separately  after  the 
poet  had  read  Lucretius  "> 

Again,  the  dates  of  his  birth  and  death  are  uncertain.  There 
is  a  tradition  that  he  died  at  the  age  of  thirty,  and  the  last 
events  that  he  unmistakably  mentions  are  the  second  con- 
sulate of  Pompeius,  B.C.  55,  and  Caesar's  first  invasion  of  Brit- 
ain, B.C.  55-54.  The  accepted  chronology  of  Catullus's  poems 
assumes  that  he  died  soon  after;  and  unless  his  final  quarrel 
with  Lesbia  left  him  in  the  condition  of  a  more  or  less  extinct 


io8 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


CATULLUS, 


109 


volcano,  it  is  strange  that,  if  he  lived  to  see  Vatiniiis  consul  in 
48-47,  he  should  not  allude  to  any  public  event  in  the  seven 
years  between.  On  the  other  hand,  Catullus  thought  it  a  duty 
to  die,  because  Vatinius  swore  fiilsely  by  his  consulate;  and 
though  he  might  have  begun  to  clench  his  lies,  "  as  sure  as  I 
shall  be  consul,"  when  first  put  down  for  promotion,  honest 
people  were  perfectly  free  to  find  him  ridiculous,  till  he  was 
actually  consul.  There  would  be  more  point  in  calling  Caesar 
*' Romulus"  after  he  received  the  formal  title  of  father  of  his 
country.  It  is  a  less  weighty  argument  that  Catullus  might 
have  yielded  to  Caesar  with  a  better  grace  when  Caesar  was 
master  of  the  world.  If  Caesar  cared  to  dine  with  a  man  who 
he  thought  had  branded  liis  name  forever  by  his  lampoons  at 
any  time  before  he  crossed  the  Rubicon,  his  object  must  liave 
been  to  gain  him;  after  Pharsalia,  the  same  act  could  only 
have  been  a  seal  of  pardon. 

Catullus's  place  in  literature  is  h.arder  to  determine  than  his 
place  in  chronology  :  he  seems  to  have  no  precursors,  and 
hardly  any  successors.  All  the  poetry  that  can  be  said  in  any 
sense  to  belonii  to  his  school  is  included  in  the  narrow  circle 
of  the  aj^pendix  to  Vergil.  There  is  no  sign  of  hendecasyllabics 
earlier  than  his  in  Latin,  except  a  couple  that  are  attributed 
to  Naivius.  What  is  more,  we  know  of  no  great  Greek  writer 
whose  hendecasyllabics  were  celebrated,  though  Sappho  wrote 
in  them.  Again,  there  was  no  great  Greek  poem  in  galliam- 
bics,  which  is  certainly  the  right  name  for  the  metre  of  the 
"  Attis,"  though  Greek  metrists  are  inclined  rather  to  treat  it 
as  a  variant  of  the  lonicus  a  viinore.  In  all  this  Catullus  is 
much  more  original  than  Horace,  who  formed  himself  as  a 
lyric  poet  on  Alca^us  and  Sappho,  with  a  distant  imitation  of 
Pindar.  Like  Horace,  too,  he  stands  apart  from  the  literary 
movement  of  his  day  :  the  movement  towards  assimilating 
Alexandrine  literature  was  begun,  and  in  full  force,  and  he  is 
perceptibly  aware  of  it  and  interested  in  it,  and  yet  outside  it. 
He  translates  the  *'  Coma  Berenices  "  for  Hortalus,  he  trans- 
lates later  some  other  works  which  have  not  reached  us,  and 
sends  them  as  a  peace-offering  to  Gellius.  He  translates  or 
imitates  the  idyl  of  enchantments  from  Theocritus,  who  also 


supplies  the   model  of  an  epithalamium — which,  unlike  the 
other,  has  reached  us.     Catullus  even  composes  a  very  com- 
plete and  musical  miniature  epic  or  heroic  idyl — of  the  or- 
thodox Alexandrine  pattern — on  the  marriage  of  Peleus  and 
Thetis.     But  none  of  these  belong  to  his  most  characteristic 
work  :  none  appeal  to  the  inner  circle  of  admirers,  who  are 
the  best  judges  of  a  poet.    There  is  no  Alexandrian  precedent 
for  the  hendecasyllabics  or  iambics,  for  the  poems  to  Lesbia, 
or  the  Roman  Epithalamium,  or  the  "Attis."     One  might  al- 
most say  that  his  attitude  to  Alexandrinism  was  like  the  at- 
titude of  Byron  and  De  IMussct  to  the  phases  of  romanticism 
with  which  they  were  contemporary.     All  these,  without  sur- 
rendering themselves  to  the  movement  of  their  time,  or  really 
sympathizing  with  it,  were  enlarged  and  emancipated  by  it. 
Alexandrinism   was  unlike  romanticism   in  many  ways,  and 
not  least  in  this,  that  it  laid  too  much  stress  upon  form  and 
plan  rather  than  too  little;  but  it  was  like  it  in  two  very  im- 
portant points,  it  was  disinterested,  and  it  was  learned  ;   it 
paraded  the  separation  between  art  and  life,  and  it  carried  its 
curious  pursuit  of  the  beautiful  into  the  strangest  and  remotest 
regions.     The  "Attis"  is  a  poem  no  Alexandrine  could  have 
written,  but  the  legend  it  turns  upon  is  a  legend  which  would 
not  have  been  thought  fit  for  elaborate  treatment,  until  the 
fashion  set  by  Callimachus  and  his  school.     Hitherto  Roman 
literature  had  lived  upon  Greek  works,  which,  like  those  of 
Euripides  and  Alenander,  were  deeply  rooted  in  real  life.    The 
time  had  come  for  it  to  go  further  and  fare  worse.     Catullus's 
pet  abomination  was  a  certain  honest  Taminius  Geminus,  a 
continuator  or  rival  of  Ennius,  whose  "Annals  "  were  popular 
at  the  day.     His  own  ideal  is  the  compact,  studied,  memora- 
ble poem  of  his  friend  Cinna,  which  took  nine  years  of  labor, 
and  was  so  full  of  learning  that  it  required  a  highly  trained 
grammarian  to  understand  it,  and  earned  a  reputation  high 
enough  to  discourage  the  modesty  of  Vergil.     Neither  Catul- 
lus nor  Vergil  was  shocked  by  the  subject— the  passion  of  a 
daughter  for   her  father;    indeed,  its   morbid  intensity  com- 
mended itself  to  a  school  in  search  of  new  legends  and  strong 
emotions. 


l! 


no 


LA  TIX  LITER  A  TURK. 


Catullus  himself  is  the  one  great  master  of  a  certain  kind 
of  passion  in  Latin  literature.  There  are  many  poets  who  had 
understood  the  passion  of  a  woman  for  a  man,  and  in  this 
Catullus  does  not  come  short;  his  forsaken  Ariadne  may  face 
a  comparison  with  Vergil's  forsaken  Dido,  for,  after  all,  it  was 
written  first.  But  Catullus  is  the  first  poet  to  conceive  a  man's 
passion  for  a  woman  ;  and  Propertius,  his  only  successor,  comes 
very  far  short  of  him.  It  is  true  that  his  passion  is  a  little 
egoistic  and  brutal,  and  it  proves  what  a  new  phenomenon  it 
was,  that  it  has  no  appropriate  language  of  its  own ;  when  he 
wishes  to  reproach  his  mistress  with  the  depth  of  the  affection 
she  has  slighted,  he  can  only  say  that  he  loved  her,  not  as 
common  men  love  women,  but  as  a  father  loves  his  sons  and 
sons-in-law.  The  explanation  of  this  strange  phrase  may  be 
found  in  another  poem,  where  Catullus  assures  his  mistress  that 
the  result  of  her  faithlessness  is,  that  he  loves  her  more  than 
ever,  but  that  he  bears  her  less  good-will.  It  was  this  element 
of  good-will  which  impressed  him  by  its  novelty;  he  was  famil- 
iar with  the  idea  of  men's  desire  for  women,  and  the  resulting 
readiness  to  humor  a  woman's  caprice;  but  the  feeling  which 
makes  a  man  wish  well  to  his  mistress  for  her  own  sake  was 
something  quite  unheard  of:  not  unnaturally,  as  manners  did 
not  allow  anv  virtuous  maiden  so  much  intercourse  with  vounir 
men  as  might  lead  one  to  wish  to  marry  her,  and  the  inter- 
course that  was  permitted  was  obviously  selfish  on  the  part  of 
the  women  to  whom  it  was  permitted.  The  naive  enthusiasm 
for  an  attractive  woman,  which  is  more  conspicuous  in  Plautus 
than  in  Terence,  was  completely  worn  out  by  the  days  of 
Catullus,  who  came  so  long  after  both.  The  beloved  of  the 
comic  poets  was  always  unmarried  ;  the  beloved  of  the  elegiac 
poets  (with  the  doubttlil  exception  of  Tibullus)  is  always  mar- 
ried; and  it  is  Catullus  who  set  the  fashion.  His  own  mis- 
tress, according  to  ancient  tradition  and  most  modern  critics, 
except  Herr  Riese  and  Professor  Nettleship,  was  as  celebrated 
for  rank  as  for  beauty.  She  was  Clodia,  the  sister  of  the  famous 
tribune,  the  wife  and  afterwards  the  widow  of  Q.  Metellus  Celer, 
consul  B.c,  54.  She  w\as  as  fascinating  and  unscrupulous  as 
her  brother,  and  had  no  natural  outlet  for  her  enerc:ies.     A  Ro- 


CA  TULL  US. 


Ill 


man  matron  of  the  Republic  compromised  herself  by  dancing 
or  singing  or  talking  too  well  or  too  freely,  even  in  her  own 
house.     If  she  was  not  content  to  live  ostentatiously  for  her 
husband,  her  children,  and  her  spinning-room,  she  might  re- 
nounce her  reputation;  an  accomplished  woman  who  liked  to 
be  a  little  notorious  hardly  found  it  worth  while  to  be  virtuous 
or  even  prudent.     Lesbia  showed  no  sign  of  prudence  in  her 
downward  career,  except  quarrelling  with  her  lover  when  her 
husband  was  by.    She  was  at  least  ten  years  older  than  Catullus, 
and  must  have  been  very  charming  to  intoxicate  him  so  com- 
pletely.    There  is  no  evidence  that  she  was  in  love  with  him, 
though  his  devotion  flattered  her  so  fir  that  she  soothed  him 
by  promises  of  fidelity,  never  meant  to  be  kept.     She  did  not 
intend  to  be  fettered  in  any  way  by  her  relation  to  him,  even  if 
she  cared  enough  about  it  to  wish  it  to  be  pleasant  and  kind- 
ly while  it  lasted.    Catullus,  on  his  side,  did  not  feel  bound  to 
exclusive  fidelity,  and  never  imagined  that  a  woman  could  owe 
any  faith  to  her  husband.    If  she  cared  to  be  true,  she  deserved 
the  credit  which  the  world  would  give  her ;  but  he  did  not  hold 
that  he  was  sinning  himself  or  tempting  her  to  sin.     The  real 
sin  was  to  be  false  to  her  freely  plighted  oath  to  him,  who  loved 
her  more  than  he  had  loved  or  could  love  any  other  woman. 
He  does  not  believe  that  Jove  laughs  when  lovers  take  his 
name  in  vain  ;  and  he  expects  the  gods,  whose  name  he  has 
never  profaned,  to  take  his  part  and  deliver  him  from  his  pas- 
sion for  a  perjured  woman.     This  stage  was  only  reached  by 
degrees.    At  first  when  he  detected  her  escapades,  he  tried  to 
think  they  were  not  many  and  that  she  was  ashamed  of  them: 
he  refused  to  think  it  was  any  shame  to  himself,  when  the 
news  came  to  Verona  that  any  gentleman  who  pleased  might 
take  his  place  with  her  at  Rome.     True,  her  infidelity  made 
hhn  miserable  :  and  the  distracting  poems  in  which  he  analyzes 
his  misery  have  no  charm  but  their  sincerity,  and  the  unex- 
hausted  tenderness  that  made  him  ready  to  be  reconciled 
when  his  mistress  renewed  her  professions  of  regard.    To  the 
last  he  avoids  direct  reproaches  in  the  poems  addressed  to 
her,  though  he  speaks  of  her  with  asperity  that  passes  more 
and  more   into  vindictive  bitterness,      The  immortal  poems 


112 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


on  the  sparrow  and  the  kisses  seem  to  belong  to  the  early 
clays  of  fanciful  intoxication,  which  dies  away  into  something 
better  or  somethins:  worse  when  lovers  have  had  time  to  be- 
come  intimate  with  one  another. 

Accordinii  to  most  commentators,  the  affair  be^ran  about  or 
before  60  p.,c.  ;  according  to  Professor  Munro,  it  was  over 
when  Catullus  went  to  Bithynia  three  years  later.  This  would 
carry  the  quarrel  with  Mamurra  rather  far  back,  as  Catullus 
makes  it  a  grievance  that  his  Provincial,'  or  Provencal,  mis- 
tress ventured  to  compete  with  Lesbia  at  Rome.  The  quar- 
rel culminated  when  Mamurra  came  back  with  the  fortune 
that  he  had  accumulated  as  Caesar's  chief  engineer  to  replace 
the  patrimony  he  had  squandered.  His  tastes  for  display 
were  as  vigorous  as  ever  (Pliny  tells  us  that  he  was  the  first 
private  person  who  ventured  to  panel  his  own  house  with  col- 
ored marbles),  and  he  had  laid  himself  open  in  his  youth  to 
the  same  kind  of  imputations  as  Caesar.  According  to  Catul- 
lus, Caesar  and  Pompeius  had  ruined  the  world  by  a  family 
compact,  and  there  was  nothing  to  show  for  it  but  Mamurra's 
fortune.  The  imputations  on  Caesar's  private  life  can  only  be 
half  sincere  :  if  there  had  been  anvthin^r  a2:ainst  him  in  his 
manhood,  Cicero  would  have  mentioned  it;  but  the  Italians 
were  probably  foul-mouthed  because  many  of  them  were  foul- 
living  ;  the  coarse  jests  at  a  triumph  may  have  been  meant  to 
propitiate  Nemesis,  but  they  did  not  lose  sight  of  probability. 
Ccesar's  soldiers  rallied  him  on  the  legend  of  Nicomedes; 
Tiberius's  soldiers  rallied  him  on  his  presumed  fondness  for 
drinking  hard  on  the  sly.  Catullus  lavished  foul  language 
upon  his  friends  Furius  and  Aurelius  as  freely  as  upon  Caesar 
and  Mamurra,  or  Gellius,  a  rival  with  Lesbia,  whom  Baehrens 
has  proposed  to  identify  with  Lesbius  {i.e.  with  Clodius), 
although  he  thought  the  latter  worth  propitiating,  and  gra- 
ciously condescended  to  assure  Caesar  that  he  did  not  care 
whether  he  was  black  or  white. 

Catullus  is  too  self-absorbed  to  be  amiable  ;  he  complains  of 
almost  evervbodv  he  comes  in  contact  with  :  Cornificius  nes:- 

*  It  is  not  clear  whether /;v'c7//r/(?,  xli.  (xliii.)  6,  means  a  province  or  the 
province  of  Transalpine  Gaul  before  Csesars  conquests. 


CATULLUS. 


"3 


lects  him  in  his  trouble;  some  other  friend  who  is  under 
great  obligations,  at  least  to  Catullus's  thinking,  has  deserted 
him  in  his  pecuniary  difficulties.  Memmius,  the  praetor  who 
took  him  to  Bithynia,  and  brought  back  the  original  authority 
for  the  story  about  Caesar,  fares  none  the  better  upon  that 
account ;  he  is  foully  insulted,  for  no  reason  except  that  Ca- 
tullus failed  to  make  money  with  him.  Caecilius  and  Corne- 
lius Nepos,  Cinna  and  Calvus,  Cato  and  Varro,  are  mentioned 
respectfully ;  Verannius  and  Fabullus,  perhaps  because  they 
were  less  intimate  with  Memmius  than  Furius  and  Aurelius, 
are  condoled  with  on  the  ground  that  they  are  sacriticed  to 
unworthy  rivals.  He  is  always  as  ready  to  adopt  his  friends' 
quarrels  as  to  quarrel  with  them  himself  And  his  passionate 
lamentations  on  his  brother's  death — oddly  enough  alwavs 
in  connection  with  his  visit  to  the  grave  in  Troas — are  full 
of  a  depth  and  sincerity  which  have  no  j^arallel  in  ancient 
literature. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  fitfulness  of  Catullus  that  so  many 
of  his  best  pieces  should  be  short — a  cry,  or  jest,  or  a  caress  ; 
and  it  is  also  noticeable  that  the  affair  with  Lesbia  seems  to 
have  left  him  very  nearly  heart-whole  ;  the  innocent  merriment 
of  his  home-coming,  in  the  odes  to  his  villa  at  Sirmio  and  the 
pinnace  which  had  brought  him  home,  is  not  like  a  man  whose 
heart  was  broken  or  breaking.  Even  before  he  got  home,  the 
spring-time,  when  his  chief  leaves  the  province,  fills  him  with 
emotion  ;  he  takes  wing  in  spirit  for  the  f^amous  cities  of  Asia, 
and  his  mind  quivers  beforehand  with  the  yearning  to  roam. 
When  he  is  back  in  Rome,  he  is  equally  gay  :  he  rallies  one 
friend  on  the  secrecy  in  which  he  shrouds  his  love  affairs,  li. 
(liii.) ;  he  tells  the  story  of  his  misadventure  with  the  pert  mis- 
tress of  another,  who  would  not  let  him  brag  in  peace  of  Cin- 
na's  well-mounted  litter,  x.;  he  commemorates  the  pure,  happy 
love  of  Septimius  and  Acme  without  the  least  arriere  pe?tsie 
of  bitterness.  There  is  only  bitterness  enough  to  be  piquant 
in  the  brutal  poems  to  a  second  mistress,  xl.  (xlii.),  married, 
like  Lesbia,  and,  like  her,  in  possession  of  much  of  Catullus's 
writing;  or  in  the  farcical  poem,  xvii.,  in  which  he  invites  the 
"colony  to  duck  an  old  gentleman"  who  got  on  badly  with 


!■ 


114 


LA7LV  LITERATURE. 


CATULLUS. 


1^5 


his  young  wife.  The  most  perfect,  probably,  of  the  longer 
poems  is  the  Epithalamium  of  Mallius  :  it  is  remarkable  for 
a  curious  union  of  gayety,  tenderness,  and  enthusiasm.  The 
poet  has  much  to  say  that  it  would  be  enviable  and  natural  if 
attainable  to  say  now,  and  he  has  almost  as  much  to  say  that 
a  modern  writer  of  the  coarsest  fibre  would  have  felt  himself 
forced  to  refuse.  The  sentiment,  we  might  say,  is  almost  ex- 
clusively the  sentiment  of  the  situation  ;  the  bridegroom  is, 
for  the  moment,  in  love  almost  up  to  the  standard  of  Mr. 
Coventry  Patmore,  and  his  antecedents  are  discussed  with  a 
cynicism  which  outdoes  M.  Dumas yf/y.  The  impatience  of 
the  spectators,  who  do  not  care  to  be  kept  waiting  for  the  suc- 
cessive stages  of  the  show,  gets  full  play,  and  there  is  plenty 
of  good-humored  banter  upon  everything  in  its  turn  —  from  the 
expectation  of  the  bridesmaids,  whose  own  day  will  come,  to 
the  final  recommendation  to  the  new  spouses  to  keep  up  an 
old  family.  Throughout,  the  whole  is  full  of  caressing  diminu- 
tives ;  and  there  is  a  sort  of  eagerness — we  cannot  call  it 
hurry — pervading  the  metre,  which  moves  much  more  swiftly 
than  in  Horace,  although  Horace  never  dallies  with  his  ideas 
as  Catullus  does.  The  praise  of  Hymen,  for  instance,  with 
which  the  poem  opens,  tells  us  nothing  but  the  most  common- 
place advantages  of  marriage,  and  stanza  after  stanza  the  poet 
bursts  out  with  the  question.  Since  these  all  come  by  the 
grace  of  this  god,  who  can  dare  to  liken  himself  to  himi^ — an 
extreme  and  rare  instance  in  Roman  literature  of  the  tendency 
of  worshippers  who  have  a  choice  of  several  objects  of  wor- 
ship to  set  the  one  they  select  above  all  others  while  they  are 
worshipping  it. 

The  whole  poem  is  full  of  pictures  like  the  bride  in  her 
bower,  shining  as  brightly  as  the  while  pellitory,  or  glowing 
as  the  yellow  poppy,  and  the  light  of  warm,  tender  desire 
through  which  they  are  seen  doubles  their  charm.  In  his 
other  Epithalamium,  Catullus,  who  is  probably  translating  or 
imitating  a  Greek  work,  takes  matters  still  more  simply  ;  there 
is  nothing  of  the  Roman  ritual  of  marriage,  little  of  its  social 
purpose  :  everything  turns  on  the  bare  conflict  of  sentiment 
between  the  chorus  of  youths  and  maidens  who  dispute  over 


the  bride.  I'he  maidens  hold  that  when  a  maiden  marries  she 
is  like  a  plucked  flower  that  droops  and  is  trodden  under- 
foot ;  the  youths,  that  a  maiden  unwed  is  like  the  vine  trailino- 
along  the  ground  untended  of  swain  and  steer,  while  a  maiden 
wedded  is  like  the  same  vine  trained  to  fruitfulness  upon  the 
stately  elm. 

The  poem  on  the  nuptials  of  Peleus  and  Thetis  is  the  long- 
est work  of  Catullus :  it  is  a  little  over  four  hundred  lines, 
much  longer  than  any  of  the  mythological  idyls  of 'i^heocritus 
or  Moschus — for  one  reason,  because  it  is  the  only  attempt  of 
its  author  in  that  kind.     It  is  divided  into  two  nearly  equal 
parts,  the  main  story  and  the  episode  of  Ariadne,  which  is  in- 
troduced because  it  was  represented  upon  the  coverlet  on  the 
marriage-bed;    just  as  in   Moschus  the  casket  of  Europa  is 
adorned  with  the  story  of  lo  :  only  Moschus,  though  by  no 
means  so  great  a  poet  as  Catullus,  has  a  sense  of  proportion, 
and  remembers  that  Europa  is  his  subject,  and  not  lo.     It  is 
possible  that  if  Catullus  was  following  a  Greek  original  he 
amplified  it  for  the  benefit  of  a  public  that  knew  very  little  of 
Theseus  and  less  of  Ariadne.     But  of  two  hundred  and  seven- 
teen lines  that  are  devoted  to  tho  coverlet,  a  hundred  and 
eighty  could  quite  well  be  spared  by  a  reader  who  had  the 
information  which  is  contained  in  any  dictionary  of  mvthol- 
ogy.      No  part  of  the  description  of  the  coverlet  woukf  have 
to  be  omitted,  and  we  should  pass  at  once  from  the  picture 
of  the  desolation  of  Ariadne  to  the  picture  of  the  jollity  of  her 
divine  wooer,  with  his  train  of  Bacchanals.     The  part  which 
would  have  to  be  omitted  is  full,  however,  of  splendid  poetry  ; 
in  fiict,  it  has  more  movement  and  connection  than  the  main 
poem,  where  one  picture  succeeds  another  without  «^rowino- 
out  of  it.     The  opening  passage  about  the  Argo  is  irrelevant, 
or  at  least  superfluous,  and  leads  to  nothing  except  anachro- 
nisms \  for  we  cannot  suppose  that  Thetis  fell   in  love  with 
Peleus  when  he  sailed  in  the  Argo,  the  first  ship  that  ever 
sailed  the  sea,  and  that  the  marriage  was  postponed  till  Minos 
had  established  a  maritime  empire,  and  his  vengeance  for  his 
son  and  the  death  of  ^geus  and  the  perfidy  of  Theseus  were 
an  old  familiar  tale.     Besides,  how  are  we  to  believe  that  peo- 


ii6 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


pie  came  from  all  Thessaly  and  Scyros  to  Pharsalus,  only  to 
go  away  again  before  the  arrival  of  the  gods,  who  alone  are 
worthy  to  sit  down  at  the  marriage  supper  and  hear  the  song 
of  fate  ?     Even  when  the  gods  arrive,  Chiron  and  Peneus  and 
Prometheus  seem    more    important  to  the   author   than   the 
Olympians.       The    protest    against    impiety   is    spirited,  and 
might  perhaps  be  taken  as  a  reply  to  the  Epicureanism  of 
Lucretius.     According  to  Lucretius,  the  blessed  nature  of  the 
gods  would  be  contaminated  by  any  interest  in  human  affairs. 
According  to  Catullus,  it  is  only  human  guilt  which  shuts  men 
out  from  the  fiimiliar  intercourse  with  heaven  enjoyed  in  days 
of  old.     The  poet  looks  back  with  longing  and  regret  to  the 
times  of  the  heroes,  upon  whom  he  promises  to  call  often  in 
his   song,  although  the  promise   remained  unfulfilled.      'I'he 
song  of  the  Fates  is  solemn  and  dignified,  but  very  inferior  to 
the  lament  of  Ariadne,  which  refers  to  the  long  quarrel  of  the 
sexes,  treated  more  lightly  in  the  second  Epithalamium.     Ca- 
tullus had  much  experience  of  the  quarrel,  and  probably  Les- 
bia,  when  their  passion  had  reached  the  stormy  stage,  took 
care   that  he  should   hear  the  woman's  side  of  the   matter. 
Theseus  is  perfidious  much  rather  than  ungrateful;  Ariadne 
does  not  reproach  liim  with  having  been  saved  by  her,  but 
with  having  broken  his  promise,  or  rather  his  solemn  oath,  to 
marry  her.     It  is  his  perjury  which  brings  down  the  curse 
upon  him  :  he  forgot  Ariadne,  and  therefore  Jove  ordered  that 
he  should    forget  the  token   his    flither  had  appointed  if  he 
prospered  in  his  errand  ;  and  so  his  father,  thinking  his  son 
had  perished,  threw  himself  into  the  sea.     Love,  who  brought 
the  trouble  upon  her,  is  still  a  holy  child,  who  mingles  care 
with  joy  for  men. 

Protesilaus  and  Laodamia  were  parted  because  they  did 
not  propitiate  Nemesis,  and  Catullus  is  careful  to  propitiate 
her  himself  So,  too,  he  winds  up  his  poem  on  the  tragicom- 
ical legend  of  Attis,  who  mutilated  himself  in  haste  o^iily  to 
repent  at  leisure,  with  the  naive  petition  that  the  lady  of 
Dindymus  will  graciously  vouchsafe  to  keep  all  her  madness 
far  from  his  house,  and  drive  others  to  headlong  courses, 
others  to  madness.     The  first  reading  of  the  ''  Attis'''  su^^-ests 


CATULLUS. 


117 


Gibbon's  remark,  that  it  is  worth  all  the  mystical  theories  of 
the  legend  put  together;  the  second  or  third  reading  suggests 
that  it  is  as  artificial  as  any,  and  almost  as  heartless.  There 
is  a  sob  of  true  passion  in  the  famous  address  to  his  native 
land,  which  furnished  the  key-note  that  is  struck  repeatedly  in 
Mr.  Tennyson's  "Gi^none." 

Patria  o  mea  cicatrix,  patria  o  mca  gcnitrix, 
Ego  quam  miser  relinquens,  domiiios  ut  herifugoe 
FamuH  solent,  ad  Idae  tetuli  nemora  pedem  ; 
Ut  apud  nivem  et  ferarum  gelida  stabula  forcm, 
Et  earum  omnia  adirem  iui  ibunda  latibula : 
Ubinani,  aut  quibus  locis  te  positam,  patria,  rear? 
Cupit  ipsa  pupula  ad  tc  sibi  dirigere  acicm, 
Rabie  fcra  carens  dum  breve  tern  pus  animus  est. 
Egone  a  mea  remota  hxc  ferar  in  nemora  dome.? 
Patria,  bonis,  amicis,  gcnitoribus  abero? 
Abcro  foro,  palaestra,  stadio,  et  gymnasiis  ? 
Miser,  ah  miser,  querendum  est  ctiam  atque  etiam,  anime. 
«  «  »  #  ^  » 

Egone  deiim  ministra,  et  Cybeles  famula  ferar? 
Ego  Macnas,  ego  mei  pars,  ego  vir  sterilis  ero? 
Ego  viridis  algida  Idai  nive  amicta  loca  colam  ? 
Ego  vitam  agam  sub  altis  Phrygian  columinibus, 
Ubi  cerva  silvicultrix,  ubi  aper  nemorivagus? 
lam  iam  dolct,  quod  cgi,  iam  iamque  poenitet.* 

Even  here  the  splendid  epithets  of  the  doe  and  the  wild 
boar  belong  to  Catullus  rather  than  to  Attis;  and  when  we 

'  Fatherland,  my  fatherland,  my  mother  who  barest  me,  whom  I,  poor 
wretcli,  have  left  after  the  manner  of  servants  who  run  from  their  lords,  to 
bring  my  steps  to  the  thickets  of  Ida,  that  I  might  be  among  the  snow  and 
the  cold  lairs  of  wild  beasts,  and  go  into  all  their  hiding-places  in  my  mad- 
ness! Wherever,  in  what  region,  must  I  think  thee  set,  my  fatherland? 
My  very  eve  desires  of  itself  to  turn  unto  thee  for  the  short  season  that 
my  spirit  is  clear  of  wild  madness.  Shall  I  be  borne  to  those  thickets  far 
from  my  home  ?  be  away  from  my  fatherland,  gear,  friends,  parents  ?  be 
away  from  market  and  ring,  from  race-course  and  playground  ?  Ah,  poor 
soul !  complain  again,  poor  soul !  and  yet  again.  ...  I  to  be  called  a  hand- 
maiden of  gods,  of  the  household  of  Cybele;  to  be  a  Maenad?  I  a  fragment 
of  myself  ?  I  a  man  unmanned?  I  to  dwell  in  the  chill  regions  of  green  Ida, 
whose  covering  is  of  snow?  I  to  spend  my  life  under  the  lofty  pinnacles  of 
Phrygia,  where  the  boar  roams  through  the  thicket  and  the  doe  haunts  the 
glade  ?    Now,  now,  my  deed  repents  me  ;  now,  even  now,  it  is  my  pain. 


i8 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


hear  in  the  next  line  that  the  cry  of  Attis  came  from  ''  rosy 
liplets,"  it  is  clear  that  the  legend  is  being  treated  as  Perugino 
treated  the  martyrdom  of  St.  Sebastian— with  a  dainty  curi- 
osity not  far  removed  from  cruelty.     The  whole  poem  belongs 
to  a  very  simple  period  of  art,  and  so  at  first  seems  to  be 
purely  natural;  but  within  its  limits  it  is  elaborately— over- 
elaborately— finished.     All  the  primitive  ornaments  of  alliter- 
ation and  euphony  are  lavishly  employed,  and  there  are  signs 
of  affectation  :  the  cry  of  Attis  rises  to  the  "  twin  ears  "  of  the 
gods;  Cybele,  when  she  looses  one  of  her  lions  to  scare  her 
wavering  votary  back  to  his  duty,  bids  him  "beat  his  back 
with  his  tail,"  which  is  simple  enough,  and  to  "bear  his  own 
blows,"  which  is  a  conceit.     The  lion  himself  is  the  "  left-hand 
foe  of  cattle;"  he  "calls  upon  himself  in  his  fury;  his  spirit  is 
stirred  to  speed:  he  goes,  he  roars,  he  bursts  the  brushwood 
with  uncontrolled  tread.     But  when  he  cnme  to  the  moist  re- 
gion of  the  whitening  shore,  and  saw  tender  Attis  beside  the 
flashing  levels  of  the  main,  he  made  his  charge  :  and  Attis  fled 
crazy  iTito  the  wild  woods."     The  whole  poem  is  short,  only 
nine'ty-three  lines,  and  five  of  these  are  given  to  saying,  "When 
the  sun  rose  Attis  woke'— "When  the  sun,  with  the  radiant 
eyes  of  his  golden   countenance,  looked  abroad  upon  white 
heaven,  hard  earth,  wild  sea,  and  drove  the  shadows  of  night 
before   the   tramp   of  his   fresh  steeds,  then    Attis   started. 
Sleep  departed  from  him  in  swift  flight,  and  the  goddess  Pa- 
sithea  took  him'  trembling  to  her  bosom."     It  is  very  pretty, 
fresh,  and  dainty,  but  cold  and  unreal.     Why  should  Sleep  fly 
trembling  to  the  bosom  of  Pasithea?     In  Homer  there  is  a 
reason:   he  has  been  deceiving  Jupiter,  and  one  is  not  clear 
whether  the  espousals  of  Sleep  and  the  gracious  lady  of  the 
fair  fancies  of  night  are  older  than  the  "  Iliad  "—and  there  they 
are  only  promised.     What,  again,  is  the  sound  of  the  feet  of  the 
horses  of  the  sun  ?  and  the  epithet  is  perhaps  a  little  rahenhe. 
Vero-il  is  far  better— "When  we  feel  the  breath  of  the  panting 
horses  of  the  east."     The  words  are  all  simple  and  natural, 
and  the  metaphor  is  at  once  delicate  and  true,  where  Catullus 
is  forced,  quaint,  and,  if  suggestive,  boisterous.     Quaintness 
'  Or,  as  others  read,  "  took  him  to  her  quivering  bosom." 


CATULLUS. 


119 


Catullus  would  hardly  have  thought  a  reproach  ;  he  was  dis- 
gusted with  the  notion  of  what  was  common  or  homespun  or 
commonplace  :  his  firvorite  word  of  praise  is  "  venustus  " — full 
of  the  charm  of  Venus  ;  and  it  is  curious  to  find  that  he  thinks 
it  applicable  to  an  unfinished  poem  of  a  friend's  upon  Cybele, 
a  subject  which  might  be  thought  to  demand  sublime  or  pict- 
uresque or  romantic  treatment  rather  than  an  exquisitely 
pretty  one.  When  he  wishes  to  give  praise  not  quite  so  high, 
he  speaks  of  what  is  "  lepidus  "  or  '•  bellus  "  or  "facetus:" 
"  bellus  "  is  exactly  "  pretty ;"  "  lepidus  "  is  "  elegant,"  with  an 
added  suggestion  of  kindly  pleasantness;  "facetus"  wavers 
between  "clever"  and  "amusins:." 

His  own  hexameters  in  the  longer  and  more  elaborate  poem 
suffer  from  over -finish.  The  separate  lines  are  happy  and 
skilful  —  more  skilful  than  any  separate  lines  which  had  been 
written  in  Latin  before;  there  is  a  curiosity  in  varying  the 
construction  and  cadence,  and  an  ingenious  appreciation  of 
the  advantages  of  weak  ccesuras.  Even  the  mannerism  of 
ending  lines  with  a  double  spondee  is  probably  suggested  by 
the  observation  that  when  some  pains  were  taken  with  the 
caesuras  in  the  early  parts  of  the  line,  and  the  verse  was  care- 
fully ended  with  a  dissyllable  or  trisyllable,  the  fourth  foot  was 
apt  to  end  with  a  word  and  to  be  a  spondee.     After  lines  like 

Pars  e  divolso  jactabant  membra  juvcnco, 

lines  like 

Pars  sesc  tortis  serpcntibus  incingcbant 

were  a  welcome  relief.  In  the  Epithalamium  there  are  no 
spondaic  lines,  but  Catullus  is  carefully  on  his  guard  against 
ending  the  fourth  foot,  which  is  still  almost  always  a  spondee, 
with  a  word  except  a  monosyllable.  The  structure  of  the 
poem,  short  stanzas  divided  by  the  hymeneal  refrain,  excludes 
the  more  serious  fault  of  the  poem  on  Peleus  and  Thetis — a 
want  of  continuous  movement,  and  the  too  obvious  effort  to 
gain  effect  by  an  accumulation  of  parallel  details. 


I20 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


ORATORY  OF  THE  REPUBLIC. 


121 


CHAPTER  II. 
ORATORY  OF   THE  REPUBLIC. 

The  development  of  Latin  oratory  was  much  more  contin- 
uous than  that  of  Latin  poetry,  and  is  much  better  known. 
For  Cicero  has  traced  its  history  from  the  earliest -recorded 
speeches  to  his  own  day  with  infinite  good-will  and  a  great 
deal  of  delicate  discrimination,  and  has  taken  quite  sufficient 
pains  to  mark  the  necessary  abatements  from  his  general  tone 
of  eulogy. 

The  external  conditions  of  Roman  oratory  were  practically 
fixed  from  the  days  of  Pyrrhus  to  those  of  Cicero — the  only 
important  change  being  the  institution  of  the  standing  court 
for  the  trial  of  provincial  governors  in  149  B.C.,  and  the  exten- 
sion of  this  jurisdiction  to  murder,  attempted  murder,  forgery, 
riot,  undue  electoral  influence,  under  Sulla.  Men  had  always 
spoken  in  the  senate  and  in  the  forum,  and  in  the  forum  they 
had  spoken  under  very  different  conditions  from  Greek  ora- 
tors. At  Rome  and  at  Athens  the  theory  was  that  all  causes 
were  determined  by  the  sovereign  people,  and  that  all  meas- 
ures of  legislation  or  administration  were  decided  in  the  last 
resort  by  their  votes.  But  at  Athens  the  rule  w\as  that  speech- 
es on  public  affiirs  were  addressed  to  the  meeting  that  voted 
upon  them  :  it  was  the  exception  when  this  happened  at  Rome. 
Again,  at  Rome  the  question  of  law  was  always  decided  by 
the  authority  of  a  magistrate  in  the  presence  of  the  parlies  and 
their  supporters,  and  often  of  a  crowd  w'ho  shared  their  excite- 
ment; there  was  seldom  much  for  the  orator  to  do:  shrewd- 
ness, intrigue,  influence,  had  more  to  do  than  eloquence  or 
argument  in  deciding  what  particular  issue  of  fact  should 
be  raised  to  govern  the  legal  issue.  The  opportunity  of  the 
orator  came  later,  before  the  court  that  had  to  decide  the 


special  issue  of  fact.  At  Athens  the  duty  of  the  magistrate  was 
purely  ministerial :  the  whole  merits  of  the  case,  whether  of 
fact  or  lawycame  before  the  jury  ;  and  the  jury  was  a  body  to 
be  counted  by  hundreds — a  large  committee  of  the  sovereign 
assembly.  At  Rome  the  question  of  Hict  was  often  referred 
to  a  single  judex;  and  when  the  court  was  largest  it  was 
counted  by  scores.  But  the  court  was  never  the  whole  of  the 
audience;  generally  it  was  the  smallest  part.  Besides  the 
parties  and  their  friends,  there  were  the  loungers  in  the  mar- 
ket-place, who  gathered  round  any  knot  engaged  in  an  inter- 
esting or  amusing  dispute.  The  larger  the  ring  of  such  idlers 
any  speaker  could  draw  and  hold,  the  greater  his  success : 
knowledge  of  the  law,  station,  tact,  and  the  like  might  win  the 
verdict  of  the  judge,  but  eloquence  only  could  interest  an  au- 
dience; and  success  gained  by  eloquence  was  much  more  im- 
portant to  the  orator  than  a  success  gained  in  any  other  way. 
Consequently,  what  told  upon  the  audience  was  quite  as  im- 
portant as  what  told  upon  the  court,  and  much  told  upon  the 
audience  which  did  not  tell  upon  the  cause.  There  was  the 
same  tendency  to  irresponsible  display  in  political  speaking: 
the  audience  was  commonly  a  mass-meeting  convoked  to  sup- 
port or  oppose  a  particular  measure ;  it  was  rare  that  any 
speaker  addressed  a  meeting  called  by  an  opponent.  The 
only  scene  of  debate  was  the  senate,  and  even  there  debate 
was  beset  by  formalities :  for  one  senator  directly  to  reply  to 
another  was  only  tolerable  when  questions  of  personal  dignity 
had  been  raised.  As  a  rule,  each  senator  gave  his  opinion  in 
turn  as  called  upon  by  the  consul  or  other  magistrate.  In 
this  way,  men  of  consular  rank,  at  any  rate,  had  to  speak 
whether  they  had  anything  to  say  or  no ;  and  even  when  the 
consulars  had  spoken,  there  was  little  chance  that  less  digni- 
fied speakers  would  animate  the  latter  part  of  the  sitting.  In 
the  first  place,  they  were  not  expected  to  speak  at  such  length 
as  the  leaders,  and  there  were  a  number  of  senators  who  would 
give  a  silent  vote,  and  had  still  to  be  asked  for  whom  they 
would  give  it.  Even  in  the  senate,  too,  there  was  a  great  deal 
of  vague  speaking,  for  no  senator  who  was  not  a  magistrate 
could  bring  forward  any  subject  of  his  own  motion  :  lie  had 

I.— 6 


( 


122 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


123 


to  speak  on  such  subjects  as  magistrates  chose  to  bring  for- 
ward: if  other  subjects  struck  him  as  more  important,  his  only 
resource  was,  in  speaking  on  the  magistrates'  motion,  to  give 
his  opinion  that  they  should  be  instructed  to  bring  his  own 
question  before  the  senate  on  a  future  day.  Even  this,  though 
permissible,  was  reckoned  irregular,  like  the  practice  of  per- 
sonal altercation. 

CICERO'S     PREDECESSORS. 

The  records  of  Roman  eloquence  went  far  back.     Cicero 
had  read  the  speech  of  Appius  Caucus  which  decided  the  sen- 
ate against  treating  with  Pyrrhus,  and  ^le  had  read  funeral 
orations  older  than  the  days  of  Cato.     He  did  not  admire 
either  :  he  disliked  the  funeral  orations,  which  were  kept  as 
the  authorities  and  patterns  for  similar  exercises  in  his  own 
day,  whereby   history  was   increasingly  corrupted.      He   was 
willing  to  believe  that  Appius  must  have  been  eloquent,  since 
till  he  spoke  the  senate  had  been  inclined  to  treat.     He  pavs 
capricious  compliments  to  the  hypothetical  eloquence  of  Fa- 
bricius,  sent  to  induce  Pyrihus   to  restore  his  prisoners;  of 
Tiberius  Coruncanius,  whose  wisdom  was  proved  by  the  "Com- 
mentaries of  the  Pontiffs;"  and  of  iM'.  Curius,  who  overruled 
the  illegal  intention  of  Appius  Caucus  to  create  two  patrician 
consuls.      There  were  other  speakers  who  had  a  name  for 
having   carried    measures   or   exercised   influence.     But    the 
first  speaker  whose  reputation  was  intelligible  was  M.  Cor- 
nelius Cethegus,  consul  203  b.c;  and  his  eloquence,  which 
Cicero  only  knew  by  the  report  of  Ennius,  was  chiefly  an  aff^air 
of  voice   and  manner.      His  contemporaries  called  him  the 
*'fine  flower  of  the  people,"  "  the  marrow  of  persuasion,"  and 
spoke  of  his  "  mouth  of  honeyed  speech."    When  he  was  con- 
sul  the  elder  Cato  was  quc-estor,  with  whom  Cicero  plainly 
feels  that  the  history  of  Latin  oratory  really  begins.     There 
were  a  hundred  and  fifty  of  his  speeches  (unless'' Cicero  con- 
founded hmi  with  a  grandson  who  left  speeches  in  the  same 
style)  to  be  read  in  Cicero's  day  ;  and  it  amused  Cicero  to 
overpraise  him.     He  compared  his  speeches  to  Lysias,  and  his 
history  to  Thucydides  and  Philistus;  partly  because  Lvsias 


\  \ 


was  the  least  passionate,  the  least  ornate,  of  the  great  Attic 
orators,  and  among  the  most  voluminous,  and  partly  because 
the  historical  reputation  of  Thucydides  and  Philistus  had  been 
thrown  into  the  shade  by  the  affected  sublimity  of  Theopom- 
pus.  (Was  Cicero  inclined  to  resent  the  historical  reputation 
of  Sallust,  who,  like  Theopompus,  aimed  at  the  sublime?)  He 
liked  also  to  illustrate  Greek  figures  of  rhetoric  from  the  prac- 
tice of  Cato,  who  was  really  an  ambitious  and  clever  speaker,* 
with  a  strong  taste  for  displaying  his  ingenuity,  all  the  more 
pronounced  because  he  had  no  real  oratorical  passion.  The 
speech  on  the  freedom  of  the  Rhodians  has  been  preserved  in 
great  measure  by  Aulus  Gellius.     It  is  a  plea  against  punish- 

*  Fronto  gives  an  amusing  specimen  :  "  Jussi  caudicem  profeni  iibi  mea 
oratio  scripta  crat.     Dc  ea  re  quod  sponsionem  feceram  cum  M.  Cornelio 
tabulx  prolatcc  :  majorum  bene  facta  perlecta,  deinde  quce  ego  pro  repub- 
lica  fccissem,  Icguntur.     Ubi  id  utrumque  perlectum  est,  deinde  scriptum 
crat  in  oratione  :   '  Nunquam  ego  pecuniam  neque  mcam  neque  sociorum 
per  ambilionem  dilargitus  sunn'     Attat  noli,  noli  scribere,  inquam  ;  istud 
nolunt    audirc.      '  Num    quos   prxfectos  per  sociorum  vcstrorum  oppida 
imposivi,  qui  bona  eorum,  liberos  diripercnt  ?'    Istud  quoquc  dele  :  nolunt 
audire.     Rccita  porro  :    'Nunquam  ego  prncdam  neque  quod  de  hostibus 
captum  esset,  neque  manubias  inter  pauculos  amicos  meos  divisi,  ut  illis 
eriperem  qui  ceperant.'      Istuc  quoque  dele.     Nihilominus  volunt  dici : 
non  opus  est.     Recitato :    '  Nunquam  ego  evectionem  datavi,  quo  amici 
mci  per  synibolas  pecunias  magnas  caperent.'   Perge  istuc  quoque  uti  cum 
maximc  delerc :     '  Nunquam  ego  argentum  pro  vino  congiarii  inter  ap- 
paritores  atque  amicos  meos  disdidi  neque  eos  malo  publico  divites  feci.' 
Enim  vero  usque  istuc  ad  lignum  dele.     Vide,  sis,  quo  loco  respublica  siet 
uti  quod  reipublicx  bene  fccissem,  unde  gratiam  capiebam,  nunc  idem 
illud  memorarc  non  audeo,  ne  invidias  siet.     Ita  inductum  est,  male  facere 
inpocne,  bene  facere  non  inpoene  licere."     Cato  had  boasted  of  his  integ- 
rity with  success  and  acceptance,  and  naturally  could  not  believe  that  he 
had  done  anything  to  disgust  the  public  with  the  interesting  topic.     Since 
they  found  it  tedious,  it  was  obvious  they  had  changed.     When  he  found 
it  necessary  to  defend  himself  again  on  the  subject  of  his  expenditure — for 
there  were  many  who  thought  his  extreme  frugality  mean — his  first  idea 
was  to  look  over  his  speech  that  had  succeeded  before  when  his  merits 
were  fresh.     He  saw  that  it  would  not  do  to  repeat  his  old  boasts,  and  so 
he  carried  the  figure  of  "  pretermission  " — saying  that  he  would  not  say 
so-and-so — to  a  pitch  of  ingenuity  beyond  anything  in  the  range  of  Fronto's 
reading.     A  modern  reader — probably,  too,  a  reader  of  the  days  of  Cicero 
— would  have  been  struck  rather  by  the  speaker's  naivete  and  his  readi- 
ness to  take  liberties  with  his  audience. 


124 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


ing  the  Rliodians  too  severely  for  their  presumed  sympathy 
with  Perseus  in  the  last  war  with  Rome.  Cato  maintains  that 
it  is  unfair  in  such  a  case  to  take  the  will  for  the  deed  ;  the 
Rhodians  had  been  trustworthy  allies  in  their  acts,  and  they 
did  not  deserve  to  lose  their  independence  because  they  had 
proffered  their  mediation,  and  had  not  wished  the  Romans  to 
conquer  too  completely.  He  illustrates  this  ingeniously  with 
instances  of  cases  where  unpractical  good-will  is  not  rewarded 
and  unpractical  ill-will  is  not  punished.  He  recurs  to  the 
same  idea  in  his  latest  speech,  when  he  prosecuted  Galba  for 
violating:  a  convention  with  the  Lusitanians  because  he  sus- 
pected  them  of  meaning  to  break  faith  with  him.  The  illus- 
trations are  new ;  he  tells  the  audience  how  absurd  it  would 
be  for  him  to  expect  to  be  made  pontiff  or  augur  because  he 
meant  to  become  a  great  authority  upon  pontifical  law  or 
augury,  and  argues  that  it  was  as  absurd  to  punish  the  Lusi- 
tanians for  what  they  meant  to  do. 

Most  of  the  fragments  of  his  speeches  are  in  this  vein  of 
leisurely,  antithetical  argument:  there  is  a  great  show  of  brev- 
ity, because  there  is  little  amplification,  although  there  is  al- 
ways some  parade  and  irrelevance.  There  is  nothing  of  the 
easy  flow  of  exposition  that  we  find  in  the  speeches  of  Lysias, 
who  deliberately  avoids  display,  and  keeps  as  near  as  he  can 
to  the  tone  of  refined  conversation  on  matters  of  exciting  busi- 
ness. Cato,  on  the  contrary,  likes  to  perorate.  Here,  for  in- 
stance, is  what  he  says  when  a  Roman  magistrate  had  the  au- 
thorities of  an  Italian  town  publicly  beaten  for  not  providing 
him  with  a  proper  dinner  : 


Dixit  a  decemviris  paium  bene  cibaria  curata  esse;  jussit  vestimenta 
detrahi  atque  flagio  caedi :  dcccmviros  IJiuttiani  vcrbciaveie  :  videre  multi 
mortales:  quis  banc  contumeb'am,  quis  hoc  imperium,  quis  banc  servitu- 
tem  feire  potest?  Nemo  hoc  rex  aiisus  est  faceie  ;  cam  facere  bonis,  bono 
genere  gnatis,  boni  consulitis?  ubi  societas?  ubi  fides  majorum?  insignitas 
injurias,  plagas,  verbera,  vibices  eos  dolores  atque  carnificinas  per  dedecus 
atque  maxiniam  contumeliam  inspectantibus  populai  ibus  suis  atque  multis 
mortalibus  te  facere  ausum  esse  ;  sed  quantum  luctum,  quantum  gemitum, 
quid  lacrimarum,  quantum  fletum  audivi.  Servi  injuriam  nimis  aegre  fe- 
runt:  quid  illos,  bono  genere  gnatos,  magna  virtute  praeditos,  opinamini 
animi  habuisse  atque  habituros  dum  vivunt? 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


125 


Obviously  the  orator  is  deliberately  lashing  up  his  own  indig- 
nation, and  the  indignation  of  his  audience,  to  divert  attention 
from  the  question  what  was  to  be  done  with  the  authorities  of 
a  small  town  who  neglected  the  rather  onerous  duty  of  pro- 
viding for  a  Roman  governor  en  route:  if  he  was  to  have  any 
control  at  all,  he  must  be  able  to  inflict  summary  punishment, 
and  it  was  hard  for  him  to  dispense  with  the  convenient  fic- 
tion that  he  was  at  the  head  of  an  army  able  to  deal  with 
whomsoever  he  met  under  martial  law. 

Among  his  own  contemporaries,  Cato's  fame  for  eloquence 
did  not  s'tand  high  :  he  was  an  able  man,  whose  perseverance, 
cleverness,  and  bitterness  made  his  speeches  worth  listening 
to,  while  his  vanity  secured  their  preservation.     Other  speak- 
ers had  more  weight  and  gave  more  pleasure.     C.  Laelius,  the 
friend  of  the  younger  Africanus,  was  supposed  to  be  the  wisest 
statesman  of  his  day;  and  his  freedom  from  personal  ambition 
and  passion,  and  his  readiness  to  take  the  second  place,  gave 
him  a  higher  reputation  than  a  more  active  politician  could 
gain.     hIs  "mild  wisdom"  was  long  proverbial:  he  was  sup- 
posed to  be  the  only  man   able  to  influence  his  friend,  who, 
without  wishing  to   override  the   constitution,  habitually  set 
himself  above  it.     Consequently,  Loelius  was  asked  to  speak 
in  all  important  cases,  and  took  pains  with  his  speeches,  which 
had  the  merit  of  perfect  purity  of  language,  though  that  was 
less  remarkable  then  than  in  later  days.     His  speeches  read 
well  for  their  day,  because  he  took  as  much  pains  in  preparing 
them  for  publication  as  for  delivery  in  the  forum.     The  charm 
of  his  speeches  was  a  kind  of  religious  unction;  nothing,  says 
Cicero,  could  be  sweeter,  nothing  holier.    We  have  a  specimen 
in  the  magnificent  panegyric  on  his  dead  friend  which  he  wrote 
for  Q.  Tubero,  and  which  was  imitated  by  Q.  Fabius  ^milia- 
nus.     "  Needs  must  be,"  said  Laelius,  "  that  the  empire  of  the 
whole  earth  should  be  where  that  man  was :  wherefore  neither 
such  great  thanks  can  be  paid  to  the  immortal  gods  as  ought 
to  be  paid  that  he,  with  such  a  mind  and  such  a  spirit,  was 
born  in  this  city  out  of  all  others,  nor  yet  such  moan  and  la- 
ment be  made  as  ought  to  be  made  since  he  died  of  that  dis- 
ease, and  was  taken  away  in  that  same  season,  when  to  you 


126 


LA  TIN  LITEKA  TURK, 


and  all  others  who  would  have  this  commonwealth  safe  there 
was  most  need  of  his  life,  ye  men  of  Rome."     Cicero  had 
trained  himself  to  feel  strongly  about  a  speech  on  the  sacred 
ceremonies  of  Rome,  in  which  it  was  set  forth  what  delight  the 
gods  took  in  wooden  ladles  and  bowls  of  red  Samian  earthen- 
ware.    LcX'Iius's  speeches  were  remarkably  archaic  compared 
with  Scipio's.     Cicero  does  not  tell  us  whether  this  was  be- 
cause they  were  more  accurately  transmitted :  the  orations  of 
Scipio  doubtless  found  their  way  into  the  "  Annales  Maximi;" 
but  when  that  voluminous  work  was  published,  there  had  been 
time  for  a  good  deal  of  archaism  to  rub  off.     At  the  same 
tmie,  the  parade  of  ancient  words,  which  it  required  training 
to  use  accurately,  was  itself  a  mark  of  education  ;  and  througlv 
out  the  history  of  Roman  eloquence  there  is  a  constant  feelhig 
that  ordinary  words  are  not  good  enough  for  oratory.    Though 
Lx^lius  was  the  more  celebrated  speaker,  we  have  more  quotV 
tions  from  Scipio.     With  one  exception,  they  are  not  very  re- 
markable.   He  was  more  shocked  at  the  fiict  that  five  hundred 
free-born  girls  and  boys  learned  to  dance  such  dances  as  were 
performed  upon  the  stage  than  we  should  have  expected  from 
one   who,  among  his   contemporaries,  had   a   name   for  self- 
indulgence.     His  scorn  for  a  certain  Asellus,  of  which  two  or 
three  specimens  have  been  preserved,  is  not  above  the  mark 
of  other  aristocrats  of  the  period.     One  really  characteristic 
phrase  is  quoted  by  Isidore  of  Seville  :  "Innocence  brinos 
worth,  worth  brings  office,  office  brings  command,  command 
brmgs  freedom."     The  feeling  is  that  no  Roman,  till  he  had 
earned  and  held  the  highest  office,  had  a  right  to  feel  himself 
free:  not  only  the  duty  of  obedience  to  the  laws,  but  the  more 
galling  duty  of  deference  to  superiors,  still  lay  upon  him. 

Both  Scipio  and  Laelius  owed  their  fame  as  orators  to  their 
position  as  statesmen  and  to  their  disinterested  care  for  cult- 
ure. Servius  Sulpicius  Galba,who  belonged  to  an  older  gen- 
eration, was  a  real  orator:  according  to  Cicero,  he  was^he 
first  Latin  orator  to  undertake  what  only  an  orator  could  do— 
Uie  first  to  introduce  deliberate  digression  for  the  sake  of  or- 
nament; the  first  to  delight  the  mind,  to  move  it,  to  raise  his 
subject;  the  first  to  use  "commonplaces"  and  topics  of  pity. 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


12  7 


Apparently  it  was  in  this  last  that  his  real  power  lay:  he 
had  a  hoarse,  gruff  voice,  and  he  could  make  it  sound  as  if  it 
were  thick  with  emotion.    When  Libo,  with  the  support  of  Cato, 
impeached  him  for  his  treatment  of  the  Lusitanians,  he  de- 
clared that  the  Roman  people  might  deal  with  him  as  they 
pleased  •  he  only  trusted  that  they  would  have  mercy  upon  his 
children  and  the  orphan  son  of  Gallus.     He  brought  the  chil- 
dren into  court— a  Greek  practice  that  he  was  the  first  to  in- 
troduce  at   Rome  — and   their  tears   mingled  with  his,  and 
quenched  the  fiame  of  popular  indignation.     Cicero  tells  us 
himself  that  his  power  lay  in  his  natural  dolorousness  ;  he  al- 
wavs  felt  his  own  case  or  his  client^s  as  a  grievance,  and  the 
feelin-  was  always  contagious.     He  had  the  power  of  working 
himseTf  into  a  passion  in  cold  blood,  as  is  shown  in  a  story 
which  Cicero  tells  on  the  authority  of  P.  Rutilius  Rufus.     1  he 
fiirmers  of  the  State  pitch-works  in  the  Forest  of  Sila  were 
accused   of  allowin-   their  slaves   to   commit   murders  upon 
respectable  people.^    The  case  against  them  was  strong,  for 
Lx'lius,  who    spoke   twice   in   their   defence,  taking   especial 
pains,  could  obtain  nothing  better  than  repeated  adjournments. 
After' the  second,  he  suggested  that  they  should  put  the  case 
into  Galba's  hands.     Galba  had  only  a  clear  day  to  prepare 
himself,  and  shut  himself  up  in  a  vaulted  chamber,  with  some 
slaves  that  could  read  and  write,  till  the  morning  of  the  third 
day,  and  did  not  leave  till  he  heard  the  consuls  had  come  into 
court.      In  his  excitement  he  had  thrashed  all  the  slaves  to 
whom  he  had  dictated  his  notes.     He  came  out  with  flushed 
cheeks  and  flashing  eyes,  as  if  he  had  been  delivering  a  speech 
instead  of  preparing  it.     The  speech  was  delivered  amid  con- 
tinual applause.     He  complained  so  copiously  of  the  hardship 
of  keeping  respectable  men  with  such  a  charge  hanging  over 
them  on  mere  suspicion,  that  the  court  forgot  how  unconvinc- 
ing they  had  found  Lselius's  sober  and  elaborate  argument  that 
the  suspicion  did  not  amount  to  legal  certainty.     Neither  this 
speech  nor  any  of  Galba's  read  well :  they  were  old-fashioned 
compared  not  only  with  Laelius  and  Scipio,  but  with  Cato.     A 
verbatim  report  of  them  would  have  been  disappointing,  they 
owed  so  much  to  the  voice  and  feeling  of  the  orator;  and  he 


128 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


did  not  take  any  pains  when  they  were  delivered  to  prepare 
them  for  publication :  he  had  not  yet  reached  the  artistic  fas- 
tidiousness of  the  age  of  Cicero,  when  every  orator  who  took 
himself  seriously  thought  that  to  work  up  a  successful  speech 
after  delivery  was  the  best  way  to  improve  himself     The  only 
other  contemporary  of  Galba  who  had  any  real  reputation  as 
an  orator  w^as  M.  yEmilius  Lepidus  Porcina.     He  was  a  little 
younger  than  Galba,  and  in  his  own  day  passed  for  a  first-rate 
speaker,  and  in  Cicero's  judgment  his  speeches  proved  him  a 
really  good  writer.     He  was  the  first  Latin  who  had  a  sense 
of  the  easy  flow  of  Greek  and  the  value  of  a  good  arrangement 
of  words :  he  wrote  as  if  it  were  a  fine  art.     It  is  a  description 
of  superficial  graces.   Galba's  innovations  had  been  more  sub- 
stantial, though  equally  artificial.     Publius  Crassus  was  appar- 
ently the  best  speaker  of  those  whose  reputation  was  due  to 
their  knowledge  of  law  and  their  station  and  influence;  he 
had  married  his  son  to  Galba's  daughter,  and  studied  law  with 
the  fiimous  Pontiff  Scaevola.     A  certain  Gains  Fannius,  consul 
122  B.C.,  left  a  famous  speech  against  the  measures  of  the 
younger  Gracchus.     It  was  the  best  speech  of  the  day  which 
Cicero  had  read  :  it  was  the  manifesto  of  the  aristocracv,  who, 
though   they   sometimes   chose    to    represent  themselves   as 
champions  of  the  Latin  allies,  affected  to  fear  that  if  the  Lat- 
ins were  enfranchised  they  would  leave  no  room  for  the  Ro- 
mans at  Rome.     But  Cicero  makes  a  very  lame  reply  to  the 
suspicion  of  Atticus  that  the  written  speech  was  the  work  of 
C.  Persius,  who  utilized  all   the  suggestions  of  the  nobility. 
Fannius  himself  was  a  tolerable  speaker,  and  doubtless  deliv- 
ered an  effective  speech,  which,  when  delivered,  owed  nothing 
to  the  help  of  Persius.     Fannius  belonged  to  an  older  gener- 
ation than  even  the  elder  Gracchus,  who,  like  C.  Carbo,  had 
studied  under  Porcina.     Carbo,  according  to  Cicero,  was  the 
great  orator  of  his  day:  he  praises  both  him   and  Tiberius 
Gracchus  for  their  prudence   and  ingenuity  and  acuteness, 
while  neither  seems  to  have  had  any  aptitude  for  purely  liter- 
ary display;  which   Cicero  excuses   in   the  case  of  Tiberius 
Gracchus  on  the  ground  that  he  was  cut  off  before  he  reached 
his  prime.     Carbo  lived  long  enough  to  give  his  measure:  he 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


129 


was  the  kin«-  of  the  courts,  in  spite  of  his  want  of  political 
steadfixstncss.  He  was  fluent  and  voluble,  and  had  a  good 
voice;  he  was  sharp  enough  (this  may  be  taken  in  connection 
with  his  want  of  political  earnestness,  for  he  only  took  up  the 
democratic  cause  for  popularity)  and  had  abundant  energy, 
and  withal  knew  how  to  keep  his  audience  in  good-humor  and 
amused:  these  last  were  his  great  merits — all  the  more  impor- 
tant because  the  courts  had  just  received  the  right  of  voting 
by  ballot,  and  so  were  made  comparatively  independent  of 
family  and  political  influence.  He  was  also  painstaking  in 
his  preparation,  and  had  the  great  virtue,  in  Cicero's  eyes,  of 
writinf'-  a  great  deal  before  he  spoke.  None  of  the  other 
speakers  of  the  generation  were  remarkable  even  in  the  eyes 
of  Cicero.  Scaurus,  the  famous  Pnnceps  Scnatus,  always  spoke 
as  if  he  were  giving  evidence,  which  answered  better  in  the 
senate  than  in  the  courts.  Rutilius,  who  was  involved  with 
Scaurus  in  a  cross-action  for  electoral  manoeuvres,  wearied  the 
audience  with  his  stoical  precision. 

Hitherto  Cicero  has  been  dealing  with  orators  who  only 
interested  himself,  as  he  is  careful  to  tell  us;  for  Brutus,  with 
whom  Cicero  is  supposed  to  be  conversing,  explains  that  he 
never  read  any  of  them.  It  appears  from  the  admirable  dia- 
lo"-ue  on  oratory,  generally  ascribed  to  Tacitus,  that  most  later 
readers  were  of  the  same  mind  as  Brutus.  Galba  and  Carbo 
are  only  mentioned  to  be  depreciated;  there  was  nothing  in 
either  of  them  that  Cicero  could  imitate;  even  the  eulogist  of 
the  ancients  can  find  nothing  better  to  say  than  that  eloquence 
was  in  its  infancy  in  the  days  of  Galba  and  La^lius,  and  it  was 
no  wonder  that  their  speeches  left  a  good  deal  to  be  desired. 
The  reputation  of  Cato,  which  Cicero  was  at  such  pains  to 
foster — because,  like  himself,  he  was  a  newMiian  from  an  Italian 
country  town,  and  because  his  namesake  deserved  an  in- 
direct compliment— slept  in  spite  of  Cicero's  pains:  there  is 
no  trace  of  him  in  Tacitus  or  Seneca.  He  is  not  one  of  the 
classics  of  Quinctilian.  He  was  disinterred  in  the  days  of 
Gellius,  who  seems,  like  Cicero,  proud  of  having  discovered 
him. 

For  most  people  the  history  of  Latin  eloquence  began  with 

I.  — 6* 


I30 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


Gaius  Gracchus/  who  certainly  by  all  accounts  was  an  extraor- 
dinary genius,  though  Cicero  seems  to  put  him  below  Carbo, 
on  the  ground  that  his  style  of  speaking  was  better  suited  to 
public  meetings  than  to  law-courts.  Again,  he  was  a  little  of- 
fended at  the  entire  absence  of  elaboration  :  he  valued  him- 
self upon  having  carried  the  elaboration  of  every  possible 
effect  further  than  any  orator  had  ever  done,  and  he  valued 
his  predecessors  as  stages  on  the  road  to  his  own  perfection. 
His  own  judgment  on  Gracchus  is  that  there  was  plenty  of  su- 
perb beginnings,  but  nothing  worked  out  as  it  should  be.  This 
is  borne  out  to  some  extent  by  Tacitus,  who  says  that,  if  the 
choice  lay  between  the  age  before  Cicero  and  the  age  after 
him,  the  impetus  of  Gracchus  and  the  "maturity"  of  Crassus 
were  better  than  anything  in  post-Augustan  oratory.  Perhaps 
verve  in  its  highest  sense  would  be  the  nearest  translation  of 
impetus.  It  was  difficult  for  Gracchus  to  control  himself :  while 
he  was  speaking  he  ran  up  and  down  on  the  rostra;  he  was 
so  apt  to  scream  that  he  kept  a  slave  behind  him  with  a  flute 
to  irive  him  a  softer  note.  It  was  not  that  he  was  unfamiliar 
with  rhetorical  training;  his  opponents  taunted  him  with  the 
help  he  got  from  Menelaus  of  Marathus,  which  reminds  us  of 
another  great  orator,  Mirabeau,  who  gave  his  secretaries  heads 
from  which  they  drew  up  the  speeches  that  electrified  France. 
He  had  seen  the  effect  of  rhetorical  tricks  at  Rome.  C.  Curio 
had  delivered  an  elaborate  defence  of  Ser.  Fulvius,  accused  of 
incest,  full  of  all  the  flowers  of  Greek  school-books,  discussing 
Ihe  force  of  love,  the  inferences  to  be  drawn  from  what  slaves 
said  or  did  not  say  under  torture,  or  from  the  conduct  of  their 
masters  in  offering  or  withholding  them,  the  weight  to  be  given 

1  Tiberius  Gracchus  was  still  read  in  some  form  by  Plutarch,  who  gives 
us  the  heads  of  his  speeches  on  the  agrarian  law  with  much  pathos  on  the 
homeless  condition  of  the  majority  of  Italians,  who  had  not  so  much  as  a 
den  or  cave  of  their  own  like  the  wild  l)easts  ;  though  when  they  went  to 
battle  they  were  bidden  to  fight  for  their  family  shrines  and  tombs  as  if 
they  had  cither.  Plutarch  was  even  more  struck  by  the  ingenuity  with 
which  he  accumulated  illustrations  of  the  thesis  that  Octavius  (a  tribune 
deprived  of  his  office  on  the  motion  of  Gracchus  because  he  would  not 
waive  his  right  to  veto  the  agrarian  law)  had  forfeited  the  immunities  of  an 
office  which  he  had  abused  against  the  intention  of  the  founder. 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


131 


to  local  rumor— all  topics  too  hackneyed  for  the  days  of  Cic- 
ero who  could  remember  when  the  speech  was  m  the  hands  of 
every  schoolboy.  Gracchus  was  too  serious  for  such  display  ; 
he  dis-usted  Gellius  by  the  simplicity  with  which  he  recount- 
ed outra-es  of  governors  on  their  way  to  their  provinces,  with^ 
out  eveif  aspiring  to  the  emphasis  and  amplification  which 
Cato  in  his  earlier  day  had  reached.  All  he  cared  for  in  the 
way  of  ornament  was  splendid  diction;  all  he  cared  for  in  the 
way  of  artifice  was  to  coin  aphorisms  which  would  stick  in  the 
memory  ^Ve  have  very  few  quotations  from  his  speeches  ; 
and  if  we  had  many,  it  would  be  impossible  to  judge  of  such  a 
speaker  by  quotations.  His  speeches  told  by  a  fulness  both 
of  f  icts  and  of  feeling  which  left  no  room  for  rhetoric.  One 
or  two  phrases  are  full  of  passion,  like  the  appear  to  the  Ro- 

.  -  Si  vellem  apud  vos  verba  facere  et  a  vobis  postulare  cum  genere 
summo  ortus  essem.  et  cum  fratrem  propter  vos  amisissem,  nee  qu.squam 
de  P  Africani  et  Tiberii  Gracchi  familia  nisi  ego  et  puer  restaremus,  ut  pa- 
teremini  hoc  tempore  me  quiescere  ne  a  stirpe  genus  nostrum  mtereat  et 
uti  aliqua  propago  generis  nostri  reliqua  esset  baud  sc.o  an  lubentibus  a 
vobis  impetrassem."     He  could  count  on  some  regard  for  his  sacrihces  it 
he  had  asked  for  leave  to  save  himself;  he  doubted  whether  they  weighed 
enouMi  with  the  Romans  to  carry  his  laws  about  the  corn  distribution  and 
revenue-farming  and  the  courts  of  justice.     Even  more  celebrated  was  the 
outburst-"  Ouo  me  miser  conferam?  quo  vertam  ?  in  Cap.toluimne  ?  atfra- 
tris  san-uine\edundat?  An  donuim  ?  ad  matremne?  ut  m.seram  lamentan- 
tcm  vidcam  et  abjectam."    Cicero  thought  so  highly  of  these  passages  as  to 
imitate  both.     The  imitation  of  the  first  comes  in  the  speech  for  I  ubl.us 
Sulla,  acquitted  on  a  charge  of  complicity  with  Catiline,  which  rested  on  no 
other  ground  than  that  he  had  stood  for  the  consulship  with  Autromus,  one 
of  the  conspirators,  and,  like  him,  was  condemned  for  undue  influence  at 
the  election.     The  imitations  are  instructive,  for  they  show  in  what  w^ays 
Cicero  thought  he  could  improve  upon  Gracchus.     The  prosecutor  had 
chosen  to  assume  that  Cicero  was  making  himself  a  king  in  Rome,  and 
choosing  at  his  will  whom  to  protect  and  whom  to  destroy  ;  so  Cicero  re- 
torts  that  instead  of  taking  well-earned  repose  he  went  on  facing  the  dan- 
gers and  duties  of  public  life  :  so  that  a  new  turn  is  given  to  his  claim  to 
ease,  or  rather  a  new  inference  is  drawn  from  it.     "Ego,  tant.s  a  me  be- 
neficiis  in  republica  positis,  si  nullum  aliud  mihi  praemium  ab  senatu  pop- 
uloque  Romano  nisi  honestum  otium  postularem,  quis  non  concederet . 
Sibi  haberent  honores,  sibi  imperia,  sibi  provincias,  sibi   tnumphos.  sib. 
alia  prxclara.  laudis  insignia,  mihi  liceret  ejus  urbis,  quam  conseryassem 
conspectu,  tranquillo  animo  et  quieto  frui.     Quid  ?  si  hoc  non  postulo  ;  s, 


132 


LA  TIX  LITER  A  TURE. 


man  people  to  rouse  themselves,  if  they  cared  for  him  or  for 
his  sacrifices  and  his  brother's. 

His  opinions  made  him  permanently  unpopular  among  the 
class  of  professional  speakers  who  expected  to  rise  to  the 
honors  of  the  State  by  defending  men  of  station.  It  was  not 
the  rule  to  learn  his  speeches  by  heart,  as  men  learned  the 
peroration  of  the  speech  of  C.  Galba,  son  of  the  famous  orator, 
who  was  crushed  as  an  accomplice  of  Juguriha.  The  elo- 
quence of  Drusus,  who  tried  to  carry  out  what  was  beneficent 
in  the  reforms  of  Gracchus  in  the  interest  of  the  senate,  with 
the  leave  of  the  nobility,  left  no  trace  behind  it.  Cicero'  who 
mentions  every  orator  that  he  can  think  of,  is  silent  about 
him,  though  he  mentions  P.  Scipio,  the  wittiest  speaker  of  the 
day,  who  died  when  he  was  consul,  in  the  same  year  with 
Bestia,  who  was  banished,  to  the  great  grief  of  Cicero,  for 
treating  with  Jugurtha.  He  only  spoke  rarely.  The  great 
speaker  of  the  time  immediately  after  Gracchus  was  C.  Fim- 

ille  labor  mens  pristinus,  si  sollicitudo,  si  officia,  si  opcrne,  si  vigiliai  deser- 
viunt  amicis,  pra^sto  sunt  omnibus ;  si  neque  amici  in  foro  requirunt  stu- 
dium  meuni  ncque  respublica  in  curia;  si  mc  non  modo  rerum  gcstarum 
vacatio,  sed  neque  lionoris,  ncque  aitatis  excusatio  vindicat  a  laborc  ;  si 
voluntas  mea,  si  industria,  si  domus,  si  animus,  si  auies  patent  omnibus  : 
si  niihi  ne  ad  ea  quidem,  quae  pro  salute  omnium  gessi,  recordanda  et  cogi- 
tanda  quidquam  relinquitur  tcmporis  :  tamen  hoc  regnum  appellabitur  cu- 
jus  vicarius  qui  velit  esse  invcniri  nemo  potest?''  ("  Pro  P.  Sulla,"  ix.  26). 
How  connected  and  vigorous  and  varied  this  is  compared  with  Gracchus  ! 
how  much  fuller,  how  much  richer,  for  not  a  single  detail  is  thrown  away 
— each  adds  a  new  trait  to  the  picture.     Only  Gracchus  is  thoroughly  in 
earnest — his  tragic  words  correspond  to  a  tragic  situation.     It  is  the  same 
in  the  "  Pro  Murcna,"  x.  41  :  "  Si  (quod  Jupiter  omen  avertat)  hunc  vestris 
sententiis  afflixciitis  :  quo  se  miser  vertct?     Donnmine?  ut  earn  imaginem 
clarissimi  viri,  parentis  sui,  quam  paucis  ante  dicbus  laureatam  in  sua  gra- 
tulatione  conspexit,  eamdem  deformatam  ignoniinia  lugentemque  videat .? 
An  ad  matrem  }  quae  misera,  modo  consulem  osculata  filium  suum,  nunc 
cruciatur  et  sollicita  est,  ne  eumdcm  paullo  post  spoliatum  omni  dignitate 
conspiciat?     Sed  quid  ego  matrem  aut  domum  appcllo,"  etc.     Murena,  it 
seems,  would  have  to  go  into  exile  :  was  he  to  go  to  the  far  cast  or  to  the 
far  west  ?     He  had  commanded  in  both  ;  was  he  to  visit  either  as  an  exile  ? 
In  fact,  he  would  not  have  had  to  go  farther  than  Sicily  or  Greece,  if  he  had 
to  go  farther  than  Naples.     Here,  too,  Cicero  is  playi'ng  with  a  topic  that 
was  serious  in  the  hands  of  Gracchus. 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


133 


bria  a  very  passionate  free-spoken  partisan  of  the  senate, 
whose  character  stood  high  enough  to  carry  off  his  scolding 
way  of  speaking.     It  was  impossible  to  find  any  of  his  speech- 
es when  Cicero  wrote,  some  sixty  or  seventy  years  afterwards. 
Fimbria  was  consul  B.C.  104;  five  years  later,  M.  Antonms 
was  consul ;  four  years  later  came  the  turn  of  Licinius  Crassus. 
Antonius  and  Crassus  were,  in  the  judgment  of  Cicero,  the 
Demosthenes  and  Hyperides  of  Rome.     They  were  very  near- 
ly contemporaries.     Antonius  was  born  143  B.C.,  Crassus  139 
B.C.     Antonius  lived  to  perish  in  the  massacre  of  Cinna,  B.C. 
87;  Crassus  died  in  peace  91  B.C.,  just  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  Social  War.     He  had  been  the  first  to  make  his  reputation  : 
two  of  his  greatest  speeches  were  delivered  in  his  twenty-first 
and  twenty-seventh  years.     Antonius  is  not  thought  to  have 
spoken  in  public  till  he  was  thirty,  and  that  in  his  own  de- 
fence ;  while  Crassus  made  his  first  speech  against  Carbo,  who 
had  deserted  the  popular  cause  without  gaining  the  confidence 
of  the  nobility,  though  he  had  gone  so  far  as  to  defend  Opim- 
ius.     Six  years  after,  Antonius  had  the  opportunity  of  accusing 
another  Carbo,  the  unfortunate  opponent  of  the  Cimbri :  three 
years  later  still  they  came  into  collision.     Crassus  had  to  de- 
fend Servilius,  who  was  prosecuted  for  having  been  defeated 
by  the  Cimbri,  because  he  had  proposed  a  law  to  restore  the 
control  of  the  courts  to  the  senate.     The  prosecutor,  C.  Nor- 
banus,  was  himself  accused  of  lowering  the   majesty  of  the 
State  by  raking  up  forgotten  scandals :  on  this  occasion  An- 
tonius defended  him.     But  neither  was  a  serious  politician, 
and  both  respected  the  authority  of  the  senate.     Their  object 
was  to  prove  their  own  consequence  in  the  courts,  to  make  as 
many  friends  as  possible,  and  to  prove,  if  they  pleased,  that 
they  could  be  formidable  enemies.     As  the  law-courts  were 
the  highest  field  of  eloquence  at  Rome,  and  Antonius  the 
greatest  Roman  advocate,  he  had  to  be  the  Roman  Demos- 
thenes, though  Cicero  was  quite  aware  of  his  inferiority  in  all 
the  imaginative  and  intellectual  part  of  oratory.     He  wrote 
nothing  :  even  his  Latinity  was  questionable— at  least,  his  vo- 
cabulary was  not  choice :  as  he  always  spoke  extempore,  he 
had  no  occasion  or  opportunity  for  rhetorical  turns  and  devel- 


134 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


opments.  His  praise  was  that  he  "  thought  of  everything," 
caught  all  the  points  of  a  case  at  once,  and  conveyed  to  the 
court  a  vivid  sense  of  all  that  told  on  his  own  side.  He  ar- 
ranged his  words  and  sentences  with  a  sufficient  eye  to  effect 
and  emphasis,  but  did  not  care  for  elegance  or  dignity ;  in 
fact,  his  pursuit  of  rapidity  made  his  sentences  so  full  of  short 
and  open  syllables  that,  in  the  judgment  of  severe  critics  who 
liked  every  phrase  to  be  full  and  rounded,  his  style  was  hardly 
manly.  This  was  corrected  in  delivery  by  his  energy  and  en- 
terprise :  he  astonished  the  court  when  defending  Aquillius, 
who  was  accused  of  peculation  after  his  return  from  putting 
down  the  servile  war  in  Sicily,  by  baring  the  breast  of  the  vet- 
eran and  showing  the  honorable  scars  which  covered  his  body. 
According  to  ancient  tradition,  the  court  knew  he  was  guilty, 
but  had  determined  not  to  encourage  revolutionists  by  con- 
demning him.  When  he  himself  was  prosecuted  under  the 
law  of  Varius,  he  actually  was  seen  to  bend  before  his  judges 
till  one  knee  touched  the  ground.  This  was  the  more  re- 
markable because  he  had  boasted,  in  his  defence  of  Norbanus, 
that  he  was  only  in  the  habit  of  descending  to  supplication  on 
behalf  of  his  friends.  Apparently,  Cicero  thought  the  speech 
on  behalf  of  Norbanus  his  best,  for  in  his  dialogue  upon  oratory 
he  makes  A n ton i us  give  a  very  complacent  sketch  of  it,  dwell- 
ing especially  on  his  boldness  in  pressing  home  to  the  court 
how  much  Rome  had  been  indebted  in  the  past  to  politicians 
who  could  be  called  seditious.  Though  Antonius  never  wrote 
his  own  speeches,  there  was  enough  curiosity  about  them  for 
some  notes  to  be  taken  at  the  lime,  which,  with  the  help  of 
Cicero,  kept  a  critical  tradition  about  him  alive  as  late  as  the 
third  centurv. 

Crassus  had  more  vanitv  :  he  wrote  down  for  the  benefit  of 
posterity  the  most  successful  passages  in  his  speeches.  He 
was  a  niucli  more  leisurely  speaker  :  he  was  not  ready  to  take 
up  every  case  that  was  brought  him  like  Antonius  :  he  repent- 
ed heartily  of  having  been  induced  to  prosecute  Carbo.  He 
took  care  never  to  have  to  defend  himself,  and  he  refused  to 
defend  Servilius,  whose  law  he  had  advocated.  Instead,  he 
chose  to  be  a  witness  for  the  defence  :  and  in  that  capacity 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


'35 


he  made  a  serious  speech,  denouncing  the  prosecutor,  and  de- 
scribing the  measures  he  had  felt  boimd  to  take  agamst  him 
as  cons°ul      The  speech  was  rather  long  for  a  witness,  and  de- 
cidedly short  for  an  advocate,  and  Cicero  admired  it  immetise- 
iv  •  a.Kl  as  for  the  speech  in  favor  of  the  Servd.an  law,  which 
restored  to  the  senate  the  right  of  trying  senators,  he  always 
professed  that  it  had  been  his  mistress  in  the  art  of  oratory. 
He  especially  admired  the  appeal  to  the  people  to  deliver  the 
senators  out  of  the  hands  of  the  knights,  so  that  thenceforward 
the  senate  might  have  no  superior  but  the  Roman  people— 
wlio  no  doubt,  as  represented  by  the  loungers  in  the  forum, 
were    almost   as  jealous   of  the   knights    as   of  the   senate. 
Thou"h  there  was  a  great  deal  of  solemnity,  Crassus  seems  to 
have  Tested  even  in  Uiis  speech.     C.  Memmius,  a  famous  op- 
nonent  of  the  nobilitv,  spoke  against  the  bill  of  Servilius,  and 
Crassus  said  he  thought  himself  so  tall  that  when  he  went 
down  to  the  forum  he  stooped  to  pass  under  an  archway.     In 
the  same  speech  he  had  told  a  perfectly  imaginary  story  of 
how  he  found  the  walls  at  Terracina  covered  with  L  L  L  M  M, 
and  that  it  was  explained  to  him  they  meant  "  Lacerat  lacer- 
lum  Largi  inordax  Memmius.^'     Apparently  the  jest,  such  as  it 
was,  succeeded.     Oratory  was  still  rather  rudimentary :  Cicero 
immortalized  a  lillle  bit  of  cross-examination  which  would 
have  fallen  flat  at  the  Old  Bailey.     A  better  specimen  of  his 
skill  is  found  in  his  altercation  with  Brutus,  the  son  of  a  famous 
master  of  law,  who  had  got  through  his  patrimony  and  then 
taken  to  the  trade  of  accuser-general.     Crassus  had  to  defend 
Cn   I'lancus  against  him,  and  both  orators  were  much  more 
occupied  with  «ne  another  than  the  case.     Brutus  had  two 
men  to  read  parallel  passages  from  Crassus's  speeches  on  the 
Servilian  law  and  the  colony  of  Narbo  which  did  not  agree 
very  well  together;  Crassus  retorted  by  having  the  opening 
words  read  from  each  of  the  father's  treatises  on  law.     Each 
began  with  an  allusion  to  one  of  three  estates  which  the  father 
left  behind  him,  all  of  which  the  son  had  sold.    As  he  had  sold 
his  father's  baths  too,  Crassus  suggested  that  the  only  reason 
diey  were  not  mentioned  in  a  fourth  book  was  that  Brutus  was 
alreadv  too  old  to  bathe  with  his  father.     In  the  same  vein. 


136 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


when  Brutus  said  he  was  "in  a  sweat  about  nothing"  (to  indi- 
cate his  contempt  for  the  argument  he  was  considering),  Cras- 
sus  retorted,  "And  no  wonder :  you're  just  out  of  the  baths." 
In  the  same  speech  he  took  occasion,  by  the  passage  of  a  fu- 
neral of  an  old  lady  of  the  family,  to  apostrophize  Brutus  and 
ask  what  message  he  wished  her  to  carry  to  all  the  ilkistrious 
dead  of  his  house.     In  neither  case  was  the  audience  offend- 
ed by  the  discursiveness  of  the  speaker.     They  liked  to  be  en- 
tertained.    When  Scaevola  had  argued  in  great  detail  that  an 
heir  who  was  to  take  under  a  will  if  another  heir  died  a  minor 
could  not  take  at  all,  since  the  heir  failing  whom  he  was  to 
succeed  had  never  been  born,  Crassus  began  his  reply  by  tell- 
ing a  story  of  a  young  man  who  was  lounging  by  the  seashore 
and  picked  up  the  ihole-pin  of  an  oar,  and  thereupon  con- 
cluded to  build  a  ship.     Scx-vola  had  made  as  much  out  of  as 
little  :  it  would  be  intolerable  tyranny  to  make  every  will  of  no 
effect  if  it  was  not  drawn  with  all  the  technicalities  a  jurist 
thought  desirable.     The  whole  speech  was  in  a  vein  of  happy 
banter,  though  there  were  no  separate  witticisms  which  could 
be  quoted.     Cicero  is  the  principal  authority  for  the  witticisms 
of  Crassus.    Tacitus  prefers  to  emphasize  the  sure  way  in  which 
he  made  his  points  when  he  had  worked  up  to  them ;  and  Cice- 
ro, when  he  is  bearing  witness  to  the  opinions  of  others,  seems 
to  say  the   same;   for  he  tells  us  his  strength  lay  in  defining 
and  explaining,  and  that  he  was  more  impressive  than  exciting. 
L.  Marcius  Philippus  was  the  most  important  of  the  con- 
temporaries of  Antonius  and  Crassus.    He  was  free  from  any- 
thing like    restraint  or  embarrassment,  witty  and   ingenious 
without  being  exactly  eloquent.      Apparently- in  this  he  was 
surpassed  by  T.  Albucius  Barra  of  Asculum,  the  most  eloquent 
Italian  outside  Rome,  who  often  spoke  at  Asculum,  and  once 
had  the  opportunity  of  speaking  at  Rome  against  Servilius 
Caepio.    Ca'pio's  reply  was  written  by  L.  AiXxw?,  Stilo,  who  has 
been   mentioned  already.     He  was   one  of  the  most  accom- 
plished men  of  his  day,  but  Cicero  will  not  allow  that  he  was 
eloquent:  he  never  spoke  himself,  but  he  wrote  speeches  for 

others  to  deliver,  and  wrote  out  the  speeches  of  others.     To 
Cicero's  surprise,  C.  Aurelius  Cotta,  one  of  the  best  speakers  of 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


137 


the  generation  who  were  growing  up  when  Antonius  and  Cras- 
sus were  in  their  prime,  thought  it  worth  while  to  issue  the 
works  of  .4£lius  as  his  own  — although  he  himself  was  a  vig- 
orous speaker ;  and  the  pretty  little  pamphlets  which  ^lius 
made  out  of  his  speeches  were  smooth,  but  tame.    He  himself 
was  an  imitator  of  Antonius,  and  caught  something  of  his  en- 
ergy ;  but  he  was  even  more  meagre,  and  never  rose  to  any 
ideal  elevation,  or  opened  large  horizons  to  his  audience.    The 
successor  of  Crassus  was  less  unworthy  of  his  model.     P.  Sul- 
picius  Rufus  was,  according  to  Cicero,  the  "grandest,"  the  "most 
tragic  "  speaker  whom  he  had  ever  heard.     He  excelled  Cras- 
sus in  passages  like  the  improvisation  on  the  funeral  of  the 
old  lady  of  the  family  of  Brutus.     But  he  could  never  relieve 
an  audience  by  talking  quietly  and  good-humoredly  about 
an  unexciting  side  of  a  case.     He,  too,  could  not  write  his 
speeches  ;  but  he  was  more  fortunate  than  Cotta,  for  after 
his  death  P.  Canutius,  the  most  eloquent  of  all  Romans  out- 
side the  senate,  wrote  speeches  on  his  subjects,  and,  no  doubt, 
introduced  close  reminiscences  of  his  finest  passages,  so  that 
it  was  necessary  to  state  a  generation  after  that  Sulpicius  had 
not  written  anything  that  circulated  in  his  name.     Another 
orator  of  the  same  generation  was  the  elder  Curio,  who  had  a 
great  name  among  some  for  the  splendor  of  his  diction  and 
for  the  purity  of  his  Latin,  which  he  owed  to  having  been 
brought  up  in  good  society,  for  he  had  no  literary  training  in 
either  Latin  or  Greek.     C.  Julius  C\xsar  the  elder  was  also  a 
witty  and  amusing  speaker,  whom  it  was  always  easy  to  listen 
to.    No  one  spoke  with  such  agreeable  good-breeding,  though 
his  speeches  never  carried  any  weight.     He  died,  like  Anto- 
nius, in  the  massacres  which  followed  the  return  of  Marius. 

Q.  Hortensius,  who  was  twenty-seven  when  this  happened, 
had  already  distinguished  himself  as  an  orator,  even  under  the 
rule  of  Cinna,  when  he  was  twenty-eight.  For  about  sixteen 
years  he  was  undisputed  leader  of  the  courts :  after  his  con- 
sulship, 69  B.C.,  which  followed  immediately  upon  his  abortive 
defence  of  Verres,  he  took  less  pains  with  his  speeches,  and  fell 
off:  and  though  when  Cicero  became  consul  six  years  later 
he  felt  that  he  had  a  rival  against  whom  it  was  worth  while  to 


i3« 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


exert  himself,  in  Cicero's  judgment  it  was  too  late  to  recover 
the  lost  ground.  Still  a  speech  in  behalf  of  Messalla,  deliv- 
ered twelve  years  after,  the  year  before  Hortensius's  death,  had 
a  considerable  success  :  the  verbatim  report  of  it  was  pub- 
lished, and  did  the  author  credit,  though  his  speeches,  as  a  rule, 
were  better  to  hear  than  to  read. 

The  criticism  of  Cicero  seems  candid  as  well  as  elaborate; 
the  great  fault  of  his  speaking  was  that  it  wanted  force  and 
seriousness.     Cotta  wanted  "pomp,"  Sulpicius  wanted  "gen- 
tleness," Hortensius  wanted  "gravity."     His  voice  and  pres- 
ence were  admirable,  and  his  ingenuity  was  inexhaustible;  all 
his  gifts  were  of  a  kind  to  make  their  fullest  impression  in 
youth.     He  was  so  eager  and  entertaining  that  the  audience 
did  not  notice  that  he  was  irrelevant  and  diffuse,  especially  as 
he  corrected  the  effect  of  the  diffuseness  by  announcing  be- 
forehand  the  heads  under  which  he  intended  to  treat  of  the 
case.     This  was  a  novelty  at  Rome,  like  another  device  of 
Hortensius.     Towards  the  close  of  a  speech  he  used  to  re- 
capitulate all  that  had  been  said  on  either  side.     With  his 
admirable  and  singular  memory,  this  gave  him  a  great  advan- 
tage, as  he  put  his  own  coloring  on  arguments,  which  at  the 
time  produced  their  effect  on  the  court,  at  a  time  when  the 
court  had  half  forgotten  them.     Another  advantage  his  mem- 
ory gave  him  was,  that  he  could  reproduce  exactly  what  he 
had  prepared  at  leisure.     There  were  two  schools  of  Asiatic 
oratory  at  the  time,  one  of  which  relied  on  an  ingenious  multi- 
plication of  general  aphorisms  more  or  less  applicable  to  the 
case;  another  depended  upon  vehemence  and  volubility.     \\\ 
both  Hortensius  was  a  master;  and  he  had  the  peculiar  grace 
that  his  irrelevant  aphorisms  and  his  empty  phrases  were  al- 
ways beautifully  rounded,  because  he  took  such  an  interest  in 
his  profession  that  he  was   never  weary  of  rehearsin"-.     He 
never  let  a  day  pass  without  speaking  in  the  forum  or  de- 
claiming at  home  ;  very  often  he  did  both.    The  perfection  of 
superficial  polish,  the  readiness  in  retort,  the  animation,  the 
abundance  of  words,  and  what  did  duty  for  thoughts,  were  all 
fascinating  to  the  young,  especially  in  a  young  man  ;  while  the 
elders  from  the  first  were  inclined—if  we  may  trust  Cicero— 


CICERO'S  PREDECESSORS. 


139 


to  think  the  display  of  Hortensius  little  better  than  preten- 
tious rubbish.     With  all  his  diligence,  he  seems  at  no  time  to 
have  had  any  literary  or  philosophical  interest:    he  gained 
verdicts  by  adroitness  and  tact  of  statement  rather  than  by 
playing  upon  the  feelings  of  the  court.     When  Cicero  was,  in 
his  o\ui  judgment,  at  his  best,  in  the  four  years  between  the 
speeches  against  Verres  and  those  on  the  Manilian  law  and 
the  defence  of  Cluentius,  there  was  no  speaker  before  the  pub- 
lic with  any  knowledge  of  law  or  history,  any  power  of  digres- 
sion, any  art  of  raising  a  particular  case  into  the  sphere  of  gen- 
oral  truth.      Hortensius,  who  had  never  possessed  this  art,  af- 
ter two  or  three  years  of  luxury  lost,  first,  the  art  of  rounding 
his  phrases  and  picking  his  words,  and  then  the  power  of 
pouring  forth  an  endless  stream  of  rapid  speech.     His  inge- 
nuity lasted  better  :  he  could  always  produce  neat  and  well- 
framed  aphorisms,  but  they  were  too  ingenious  for  a  speaker 
of  his  years,  and  they  lost  half  their  effect  for  want  of  being 
clothed  in  fluent,  graceful  language.   Besides,  the  circumstances 
under  which  he  spoke  before  his  consulship  suited  him  better. 
While  the  courts  were  in  the  hands  of  the  senate,  the  majority 
of  judges  must  have  been  young  and  idle  men;  it  w'as  enough 
to  make  Hortensius  careless  that  a  number  of  busy  elderly 
men  came  to  listen  to  him,  who  wished  to  understand  causes 
and  decide  them,  not  to  amuse  themselves  with  them. 

Cicero  judges  himself  as  well  as  his  great  predecessor;  but 
while  he  dwells  alike  upon  his  predecessor's  gifts  and  upon 
his  zeal  and  diligence  in  improving  them,  he  speaks  only  of 
his  own  natural  defects— his  scraggy  neck,  his  weak  flanks,  his 
tendency  to  pitch  his  voice  in  a  monotonous  scream,  and  the 
like,  as  if  it  were  unseemly  to  boast  of  his  genius.  He  has  no 
scruple  in  praising  his  own  industry  and  his  unusually  elabo- 
rate and  systematic  training,  which  he  owed  partly  to  the  fact 
that  he  grew  up  in  the  midst  of  the  civil  wars,  and  to  his  weak 
health.  At  the  age  of  eighteen  he  served  one  campaign  in 
the  Marsian  war;  but  from  nineteen  to  twenty -six,  at  an  age 
when  Hortensius  and  Crassus  had  been  already  celebrated,  he 
was  quietly  pursuing  his  studies,  for  the  courts  were  not  open  : 
when  they  were  open,  he  showed  some  skill  and  great  boldness 


140 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


for  two  years ;  but  on  the  abdication  of  Sulla  the  state  of  af- 
fairs at  Rome  was  so  unsettled  that  he  might  well  have  decided 
to  resume  his  studies  (as  he  did  for  the  best  part  of  three  years), 
even  if  his  health  had  allowed  him  to  continue  speakin"-. 

CICERO. 

The  pre-eminence  of  Cicero  in  Latin  prose  is  only  to  be 
compared   to  the  pre-eminence   of  Phidias    and    those  who 
worked  with  him  at  Athens  in  sculpture.     He  stands  alone, 
above    predecessors    and    contemporaries    and    successors: 
none  approach  him  as  Demades  or  yEschines  or  Hyperides 
approaches  Demosthenes.     Plato's  art  is  as  supreme 'and  un- 
equalled, and  in  quality  it  is  rarer  than  Cicero's ;   but  Cicero 
is  always  master  of  his  subject,  while  it  is  an  essential  element 
of  Plato's  art  to  be  always  reminding  us  that  it  is  still  impos- 
sible for  any  mind  to  master  such  subjects  as  his ;  and  noth- 
ing has  been  attributed  on  doubtful   evidence  to  Cicero  so 
brilliant  as  the  "Greater  Hippias,"  which  the  latest  criticism 
refuses  to  regard  as  the  work  of  Plato.     There  can  be  no 
question  in  such  a  case  whether  the  supreme  achievement  is 
the  result  of  circumstances  or  of  a  personal  gift,  and  Cicero 
owed  more  to  himself  and  less  to  his  surroundings  than  most 
great  Latin  writers.     All  the  great  orators  before  him,  with 
the  exception  of  Cato,  had  been  men  of  rank  and  family;  and 
the  oratory  of  Cato,  though  elaborate,  pretentious,  and'clever, 
was  still  essentially  plebeian;  while  the  oratory  of  Cicero  is 
full  of  an  ideal  dignity  and  nobility,  which  surpasses  the  tone 
that  rank  can  give,  because  it  proceeds  from  an  honest  enthu- 
siasm for  Roman  institutions  as  they  had  been  and  might  be. 
One  must  not  imagine  this  idealism  is  insincere  becau'se  it  is 
inconsistent:  in  the  orations  themselves  there  is  a  difference 
of  tone  between  the  "  Pro  Murena  "  and  the  "  In  Catilinam," 
between  the  "Pro  Ca^lio  "  and  the  "  Pro  Milone."     Between 
the  letters  in  general  and  the  orations  in  general  the  contrast 
is  greater;  it  is  at  its  height  in  the  letters  to  Atticus  about 
the  aftair  of  Catiline,  where  he  is  always  ridiculing  the  exag- 
gerated way  in  which  he  thought  it  wefl  to  speak  in  public  of 
.  the  dangers  he  had  saved  the  State  from,  and  the  services  he 


CICERO. 


141 


had  rendered.     It  is  a  familiar  observation  that  people  who 
have  had  great  experiences  find  it  difficult  when  the  experi- 
ence is  over  to  believe  that  they  are  the  same  :  there  is  so 
much  difference  between  what  they  thought  and  felt  at  the 
time  and  what  they  think  and  feel  afterwards.     In  ordinary 
cases  ^reat  experiences  are  rare,  and  the  reaction  after  them 
is  accomplished  quietly  ;  and  it  is  only  in  looking  back  after 
some  time  that  its  whole  extent  can   be   measured.     But  a 
busv,  exciting  life  like  Cicero's  is  full  of  alternations  of  feel- 
ing Vhich  succeed  each  other  too  rapidly  for  one  to  chasten 
an'd  subdue  the  other ;  instead,  the  effort  to  secure  the  conti- 
nuity of  life  has  to  be  given  up :  it  is  necessary  to  live  in  and 
for  the  moment,  and  an  orator  has  to  express  all  that  he  feels 
while  he  feels  it.    Here,  too,  we  have  to  remember  that  Cicero 
was  a  self-made  man,  without  the  habits  of  caution  and  reti- 
cence which   are    hereditary  in  a  business-like  aristocracy. 
One  finds  the  same  defect  in  Canning  and  Brougham,  whose 
eloquence  raised  them  to  a  leading  position  in  two  opposite 
camps.     Both  lost  the  confidence  of  their  colleagues  through 
their  want  of  decorum,  while  each  had  sympathies  and  inter- 
ests in  the  camp  of  his  opponents.     Cicero,  like  them,  is  open 
to  the  charge  of  political  tergiversation — to  say  the  least,  of 
political  versatility.     He  has,  however,  an  excuse  which  they 
had  not:  an  English  politician  has  to  choose   between   two 
political  confederations,  with  a  stable  organization  and  flexi- 
ble traditions.     This  makes  it  natural  to  speak  of  Cicero  as 
wavcrincr  between  the  aristocratical  and  democratical  parties, 
especially  as  he  speaks  himself  of  the  opthnaies  and  popidares 
as  dividing  the  public  at  Rome.    In  a  speech  delivered  in  the 
Roman  forum  the  division  was  not  irrelevant;  but  when  we 
take  history  as  a  whole,  we  see  that  for  any  time  after  the 
Gracchi  it  was  inadequate  as  an  explanation  of  Roman  poli- 
tics.    In  the  age  of  Cicero  there  were  no  less  than  five  dis- 
tinct forces  in  politics  :  the  old  nobility,  enriched  by  several 
generations  of  high  office  ;  the  mob  of  the  capital,  who,  in  vir- 
tue of  the  legislation  of  the  Gracchi,  continued  to  rec(;ive  out- 
door relief;    the  great   banking   and  financial   corporations, 
which  dated  from  the  time  of  Gracchus  too ;  the  notables  of 


142 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


I4i 


the  country  towns  all  over  Italy ;  the  great  general,  or  great 
generals,  of  the  period,  who  had  conducted  several  campaigns 
continuouslv.     The  action  of  the  first  three  admitted  of  beins: 
calculated  :  as  a  rule,  the  nobility  were  always  opposed  both 
to  the  mob  and  to  the  equestrian  order,  which,  as  a  political 
force,  was  nnder  the  control  of  the  largest  and  most  enterpris- 
ing capitalists,  who  of  course  had  no  sympathy  with  govern- 
ment by  mass-meetings,  which  was  always  apt  to  degenerate 
into  downright  brigandage  when  the  promoters  of  a  particular 
job  obtained  the  temporary  command  of  the  streets  and  the 
assembly  by  employing  gangs  of  hired  ruffians.     The  notables 
of  the  country  towns  were  uncertain  in  their  action  :  some  of 
them  were  affiliated  to  the  trading  corporations,  others  to  no- 
ble houses  ;  but,  as  a  rule,  they  stood  outside  the  passions  and 
interests  of  the  capital,  and  gave  their  wishes  and  occasion- 
ally their   effective    support   to   whichever   cause   or   leader 
was  for  the  moment  safest  and  most   respectable.      If  there 
had   been   a  strict  residential  qualification  for  voting  in  the 
assembly,  so  that  no  man  could  vote  in   a  tribe  who  could 
not  prove   that  he  habitually  resided  in  the   district  of  that 
tribe,  the    Consensus    lialicc    would    have    been    a    practical 
political  force,  for   each   district  would   have   been   virtually 
represented  by  its   leading   men.     As    it  was,  each  district 
was  represented   by  its  permanent  contribution  to  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  capital,  and  the  Consensus  Jtaliiv  too  often  ex- 
pressed   itself  by  crying  in  concert  over  shed    milk.      The 
great  generals  were  always  more  or  less  outside  the  constitu- 
tion from  the  days  of  the  elder  Africanus  to  those  of  Caesar 
and  Agrippa :  no  party  could  trust  them  entirely,  and  they 
could  trust  no  party.     Cicero's  townsman  IMarius  was,  of  all 
Roman  politicians,  the  most  uncertain.     He  owed  his  first  elec- 
tion to  the  consulship  to  the  popular  disgust  with  the  corrup- 
tion and  inefficiency  of  the  noble  commanders  who  had  con- 
ducted the  war  against  Jugurtha,  which,  oddly  enough,  came 
to  a  head  just  when  there  was  a  noble  in  command  who  was 
honest  and  efficient:  he  took  the  side  of  the  senate,  after  some 
hesitation,  in  the  sedition  of  Saturninus ;  but  when  the  party 
of  sedition  was  supported  by  the  Italians,  he  placed  himself  at 


its  head  fell  with  it,  and  rose  with  it  to  his  last  bloody  consul- 
hip.     Sulla,  whose  personal  insouciance  made  him  n.  one  sense 
he  most  disinterested  of  politicians,  was  the  champion  of  the 
senate  as  an  institution  rather  than  of  the  nobdity  as  a  class : 
compared  with  Marius,  he  was  liberal  and  progressive,  and,  it 
must  be  added,  arbitrary.     At  bottom  Manus  was  the  more 
conservative,  even  the  more  constitutional,  of  the  two;  though 
he  was  more  easily  tempted  to  imperil  legal  order  and  the 
public   interest,  through  personal  vanity  and  class  passion. 
Fompeius,  though  he  appealed  to  the  people  to  assure  his  in- 
dependence  of  the  nobles,  wished  to  confirm  his  supremacy 
bv  -ettin-  the  senate  to  recognize  it  as  the  only  security  for 
order-  wliile  Cxsar  was  content  to  carry  his  measures  by  the 
help  of  the  votes  of  the  people,  and  to  ward  off  opposition  by 
the  influence  of  his  armv  and  his  largesses. 

Cicero's  career  was  affected  in  various  ways  by  the  compli- 
cations of  politics.     He  was  at  once  conscientious  and  ambi- 
tious ;  he  shrank  from  doing  harm  himself  and  from  abetting 
the  misdeeds  of  others  who  were  less  scrupulous;  he  shrank 
equallv  from  running  risks  and  giving  offence:  he  was  always 
on  the  watch  for  opportunities  of  bringing  and  keeping  him- 
self before  the  public  in  ways  that  were  safe  and  respectable, 
alwavs  trving  to  get  credit  with  high  and  low,  and  at  the  same 
time'to  cmitribut^  to  the  real  good  of  the  State.     His  natural 
party  were  the  Italian  notables,  the  worthy  middle  class,  who 
were  politicians  out  of  vanity  and  patriotism,  and  awarded 
Iheir  ineffectual  approval  in  a  manner  that  was  generally  equi- 
table at  the  moment,  though  rather  embarrassing  in  the  long 
run  because  ihev  had  no  means  of  controlling  their  idols,  and 
therefore  felt  no  obligation  to  support  any  one  in  particular 
consistentlv.     Thev  were  always  true  to  Cicero,  though  their 
fidelitv  helped  hi.n  little ;  and  it  may  also  be  said  that  he  was 
true  to  them.     Unfortunately,  he  was  already  committed  on 
many  questions  of  persons  and  principle  when  Caesar,  the  only 
one  of  his  influential  contemporaries  who  was  morally  or  in- 
tellectually capable  of  appreciating  him,  thought  the  time  had 
come  to  enter  upon  sustained  and  serious  public  action.     And 
Cicero,  though  the  purest  of  all  the  practical  politicians  of  his 


144 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


time,  was  not  disinterested  enough  not  to  resent  ill-treatment 
After  his  return  from  banishment,  he  was  not  consistent  as  a 
supporter  either  of  the  senate  or  of  Caesar  or  of  Pompeius  for 
all  had  treated  him  ill.     Upon  the  whole,  he  was  most  inti- 
mately connected  with  Pompeius,  whose  general  policy,  thou-h 
ineffectual  and  ill-considered  and  arbitrary,  had  an  air  of  ix- 
spectability  which  reinforced  the  ascendencV  which  his  blame- 
less private   life   and  his   military   successes   and  his   family 
connection  had  given  him.     After  the  death  of  Pompeius  Cic- 
ero's course  wms  clearer:  while  Caesar  lived  he  accepted  the 
clemency  of  the  conqueror  with  such  dignity  as  was  possible- 
and  after  the  heir  of  the  dictator  was  at  variance  with  the  first 
lieutenant,  who  had  usurped  his  power,  he  exerted  himself, 
with  admirable  courage  and  ingenuity,  to  turn  a  Caesarian 
quarrel  into  a  senatorian  reaction;  and,  imperfect  and  short- 
lived as  the   success  of  his  endeavors   was,  he   rendered  a 
greater  service  to  such  republicanism  as  was  possible  than  in 
any  other  part  of  his  checkered  career. 

He  was  born  at  Arpinum,  io6  B.C.,  just  a  year  before  Tu- 
gurlha  was  surrendered  to  Sulla;  he  was  eighteen  when  Sulla 
was  consul  and  drove  Marius  into  exile.     Cicero,  a  year  be- 
fore, had  served  in  the  army  of  Cn.  Pompeius  the  elder  as  a 
comrade  of  the  great  Pompeius,  who  was  nine  months  voun-er 
than  himself,     llirce  years  before  he  had  witnessed  the  "at- 
tempt of  Drusus  to  reconcile  the  senate  and  the  people,  and 
the  sudden  and  violent  death  which  rewarded  it.     Durino-  the 
stormiest  years  of  all,  which  followed  upon  the  consulship  of 
Cmna,  he  was  pursuing  his  studies,  learning  law  from  Sca^n-o- 
la,  and  philosophy  from  the  Stoic  Diodotus,  and  rhetoric  from 
the  Rhodian  Apollonius.     Both  the  latter  selections, 'if  we  are 
to  call  them  so,  are  important ;  the  first  forms  of  cont'emporary 
philosophy  and  oratory  with  which  Cicero  became   familiar 
were  the  severest.     He  exercised  himself  in  arguing  quite  as 
much  as  in  moralizing  with  Diodotus;  for  the  Stoic  was  then 
the  only  philosophical  school  which  had  much  faith  in  formal 
argument.     The  Peripatetics  were  mainly  engaged  in  the  com- 
munication of  knowledge,  and  the  Academics  and  Epicureans 
wished  to  establish  their  respective  points  of  view  by  an  ap- 


CICERO. 


M5 


peal  to  the  fiicts  which  told  for  them.  The  Rhodians  were  at 
that  time  the  only  Greeks  who  possessed  a  school  of  practical 
oratory.  Their  independence  and  their  commercial  position 
gave  importance  to  the  practice  of  their  courts,  especially  their 
maritime  courts,  where  the  cases  argued  were  not  of  a  kind  to 
require  or  suggest  declamation  ;  while  in  the  rest  of  Asia  ora- 
tors had  plenty  of  opportunities  of  display  and  very  few  of 
speaking  before  an  audience  who  had  to  take  action  upon 
their  words,  and  consequently  developed  a  style  of  speaking 
which  was  diffuse,  showy,  ornate,  and  irrelevant,  and  which 
differed  from  the  oratory  of  the  great  Attic  period  in  being  in 
tiie  hands  of  men  who  often  had  Syrian  blood  in  them;  so  that 
it  would  be  instructive,  if  it  were  possible,  to  compare  their 
fine  speaking  with  Arabic  fine  writing. 

Cicero  himself  began  to  write  early.  He  translated  the 
poems  of  Aratus  on  the  stars  and  the  weather  into  hexameters 
during  the  first  year  of  the  Marsic  war;  even  earlier,  if  his  own 
recollections  and  the  traditions  which  Plutarch  collected  can 
be  trusted,  he  had  written  on  the  legend  of  Glaucus  in  tetram- 
eters, and  upon  the  consulship  of  Marius,'  whence  he  quoted 
a  passage  about  the  conflict  of  an  eagle  with  a  dragon,  in  his 
treatise  on  divination,  which  may  fiiirly  be  called  fimciful  and 
spirited.  The  metre  in  both  is  admirably  smooth  and  finished 
for  the  period,  and  shows  how  Cicero  had  profited  by  the 
teaching  of  the  poet  Archias.  The  great  fault  is  that  the  lines 
have  no  flow;  each  contains  a  separate  instalment  of  the 
sense,  and  is,  in  a  way,  complete  in  itself  For  instance,  we 
never  get  an  epithet  in  one  line  and  the  substantive  to  which 
the  epithet  refers  in  another;  and  almost  every  line  ends,  as 
a  clause  in  sober,  old-fashioned  Latin  ought  to  end,  with  a 
substantive  or  a  verb  or  a  participle:  it  is  very  rare  to  find  a 
verb  which  belongs  to  the  sense  of  one  line  standing  by  itself 
at  the  beginning  of  the  next,  which,  after  Vergil,  is  one  of  the 
commonest  of  devices  for  linking  lines  together.  Besides  his 
poetry,  he  translated  several  dialogues  of  Plato  and  the  "Eco- 

*  According  to  llaupt,  the  "Marius"  was  Later,  and  belongs  to  the 
l)criod  after  Cicero's  exile,  when  he  was  most  inclined  to  commit  himself 
to  Caesar. 

I.-7 


146 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


nomics"  of  Xenophon,  and  paraphrased  the  Greek  treatises  on 
rhetoric,  of  which  we  have  a  fuller  and  more  methodical  digest 
in  the  four  books  of  the  "  Auctor  ad  Herennium,"  to  employ 
an  indispensable  barbarism. 

The  first  speech  of  Cicero's  which  has  reached  us  was  that 
for  P.  Quinctius,  delivered  in  the  twenty-sixth  year  of  his  age 
—the  same  year  that  Pompcius  extorted  a  triumph  for  his  en- 
ergy in  i)ursuing  the  remnants  of  the  party  of  JNIarius.  In  the 
year  which  followed,  Cicero  too  had  a  triumph:  he  secured 
the  acquittal  of  Sextus  Roscius  Amerinus,  who  was  accused 
of  parricide  in  order  to  secure  Chrysogonus,  Sulla's  freedman, 
in  the  enjoyment  of  the  property  of  Roscius's  father.  Sulla 
was  still  dictator,  and  Cicero  speaks  with  ostentatious  respect 
of  his  person,  and  abstains  from  fundamental  criticisms  on  his 
policy;  but  still  the  speech  is  an  astonishingly  bold  one,  be- 
cause the  main  line  of  defence  is  that  his  client  is  in  danger 
of  being  sacrificed  to  the  favorite  of  the  dictator. 

The  next  year  Sulla  abdicated,  and  Cicero  went  abroad  af- 
ter defending  against  Cotta  the  freedom  of  a  woman  of  Arre- 
tium  (another  victim  of  Sulla's  system?).  He  was  very  lean, 
and  far  from  strong,  and  he  habitually  overstrained  his  voice 
— a  natural  error  in  a  young  man  making  his  way  as  an  open- 
air  speaker.  At  Athens  he  came  under  the  influence  of  An- 
tiochus  of  Ascalon,  who  was  guiding  the  Academy  in  the 
direction  of  rhetorical  edification,  after  the  excursion  into  the 
barren  territory  of  scepticism,  where  Carneades  and  others 
had  gone  to  gather  weapons  for  the  warfare  against  Stoicism, 
which  was  really  one  phase  of  the  long  conflict  between  "Hel- 
lenism" and  "Hebraism."  He  also  practised  speaking  with 
Demetrius  Syrus,  from  whom  he  apparently  learned  less  than 
from  the  Asiatic  orators  Menippus  of  Stratoniceia  (who,  he 
says,  deserved  to  be  called  Attic  if  Atticism  consisted  in  say- 
ing nothing  inappropriate  or  ineffective),  Xenocles  of  Adra- 
niyttium,  yEschylus  of  Cnidus,  and  Dionvsius  of  Majrnesia. 
With  these  three  he  travelled  for  over  a  year  in  Asia,  and  he 
says  they  were  glad  to  have  him  with  them.  His  old  teacher 
Apollonius  gave  him  more  lessons  at  Rhodes,  trying  to  check 
his  tendency  to  say  too  much,  which  would  be  more  obvious 


CICERO, 


147 


when  he  was  speaking  simply  for  exercise  than  when  he  had 
a  real  cause  to  plead.  Cicero  fully  recognized  the  importance 
of  this  distinction  :  he  is  careful  to  tell  us  that  Apollonius  was 
a  successful  pleader.  On  his  return  to  Rome,  Cicero  felt  him- 
self quite  a  new  creature.  He  married  Terentia,  of  whom  we 
know  little  except  that  she  was  the  mother  of  his  children, 
and  that  he  was  on  very  affectionate  terms  with  her,  although 
lie  parted  with  her  after  thirty-two  years  of  marriage,  after  his 
submission  to  Caisar.  "We  do  not  know  whether  he  was  pro- 
voked at  her  imperfect  management  of  his  embarrassed  money 
matters  during  his  absence  with  the  army,  or  whether  she  was 
simply  trying  to  him  as  he  grew  old  and  irritable,  as  all  pro- 
longed relations  are  apt  to  be.  Very  soon  after  the  divorce 
he  married  his  rich  ward  Publilia,  of  whose  fortune  he  was 
trustee:  very  likely  a  girl  of  seventeen  (who  doubtless  w^as 
proud  of  her  intimacy  with  her  famous  guardian)  had  attrac- 
tions of  her  own,  independent  of  those  of  her  fortune. 

In  the  year  after  his  marriage,  Cicero,  then  in  his  thirty-first 
year,  began  his  official  career.  He  was  elected  quaestor  by  all 
the  tribes,  and  accompanied  Sextus  Peducceus,  the  praetor,  to 
Sicily.  This  was  important,  because  the  intimacies  he  con- 
tracted there  led  naturally  to  his  being  selected  by  the  Sicil- 
ians to  conduct  the  prosecution  of  Verres,  an  energetic  under- 
ling of  the  conservative  party,  who  was  sent  to  Sicily  under 
very  difficult  circumstances.  IMithridates  was  not  yet  deci- 
sively defeated  by  Lucullus  in  Asia,  Pompeius  was  carrying 
on  a  doubtful  struggle  with  Sertorius  in  Spain,  Spartacus  was 
loose  in  Italy,  the  pirates  were  in  command  of  the  seas.  It 
is  not  wonderful  that  in  such  a  state  of  things  Verres  was  in- 
structed by  all  means  to  raise  a  large  revenue  in  Sicily,  for  it 
was  almost  the  only  element  of  the  system  of  finance  unaf- 
fected by  the  calamities  of  the  time,  which  increased  the  ex- 
penses of  the  State  while  diminishing  its  resources.  Verres 
certainly  did  raise  a  large  revenue,  by  deciding  every  point 
that  could  be  debated  between  the  tax -payer  and  the  tax- 
farmer  in  favor  of  the  latter,  without  apparent  regard  to  equity 
or  usage.  He  also  enlisted  the  interest  of  a  large  and  strong 
party  in  Syracuse  and  Messana,  of  which  one  was  beyond  dis- 


148 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


pute  the  first  town  in  the  island,  and  the  other  either  was,  or 
might  with  a  little  encouragement  be  made,  the  second.     He 
does  not  appear  to  have  left  any  friends  in  the  rest  of  the  isl- 
and, nor  to  have  displayed  any  real  vigor  either  in  administer- 
ing Sicily  for  its  own  benefit,  or  even  in  guarding  it  for  the 
be'nefit  of  the  Roman  State.     The  island  naturally  was  full 
of  petty  bitter  feuds  between  cliques  and  individuals  in  each 
city,  who  were  anxious,  or  might  easily  be  encouraged,  to  figlit 
out  their  quarrels  by  the  help  of  the  Roman  governor.    Verres 
was  always  ready  to  take  a  side  in  such  quarrels,  if  he  did  not 
instigate  them;  according  to  Cicero,  the  side  on  which  he 
meddled  was  always  wrong.     He  collected  works  of  art,  and 
an  obsequious  provincial  could  not  avoid  presenting  whatever 
the  governor  was  supposed  to  desire.     He  strained  and  ex- 
ceeded every  precedent  which  regulated  his  personal  emolu- 
ments.    As  might  be  expected  from  an  administrator  of  the 
school  of  Sulla,  he  anticipated  the  frightful  severities  of  the 
police  of  the  Empire,  in  cynical  defiance  of  the  republican  ju- 
risprudence which  had  exempted  all  citizens  not  under  mili- 
tary discipline  from  death  or  stripes. 

is'o  more  convenient  handle  could  be  found  for  the  party 
that  declared  that  senators  could  not  be  trusted  to  try  govern- 
ors of  their  own  order  impartially;  and  Tompeius,  who  had 
returned  from  Spain  the  year  before  (b.c.  71),  thought  the  time 
had  come  to  atone  in  some  measure  for  the  severity  he  had 
shown  to  the  surviving  chiefs  and  adherents  of  the  Marian 
party  by  sanctioning  some  relaxation  of  the  restrictions  laid 
by  Sulla  upon  the  whole  body  of  the  citizens.  The  tribunes 
regained  the  right  of  initiating  legislation,  and  the  knights  and 
treasury  officials'  were  admitted,  the  latter  for  the  first  time, 
to  share  the  control  of  the.  courts  with  the  senate  (by  the  Au- 

1  The  tyibiiniixrariiwtxt  originally  appointed  to  collect  the  tributnm,  each 
in  his  tribe,  and  act  as  army  paymasters  afterwards.  The  latter  function 
was  delegated  to  the  quxstors,  and  the  tribunes  began  to  act  as  judges  in 
the  prxfectures  (the  country  towns  without  magistrates  of  their  own);  and 
as  they  were  directly  elected  by  the  assembly,  they  were  popular,  and  had 
the  further  advantage  of  judicial  experience  and  a  class  interest  separate 
from  that  of  the  "knights,"  who  would  be  prejudiced  against  any  govern- 
ors who  had  defended  the  treasury  from  the  ta.x-farmers. 


CICERO. 


149 


relian  law,  proposed  by  L.  Aurelius  Cotta,one  of  the  praetors  for 
the  year),  in  the  year  that  Hortensius,  the  consul  designate, 
threw  up  his  brief  to  defend  Verres.  Cicero  was  then  aedile 
designate :  that  Hortensius,  an  older  and  more  fiimous  speak- 
er, did  not  venture  to  reply  to  him  is  generally  taken  as  a 
proof  that  Verres  was  not  only  worse  than  the  average  bad 
governor  of  the  period  (which  is  very  nearly  proved  by  the 
fact  that  Cicero,  who  had  never  prosecuted  before,  thought  it 
well,  on  moral  and  prudential  grounds,  to  prosecute  him),  but 
so  much  worse  than  others  that  the  leading  advocate  of  the 
time  could  make  no  defence  for  him.  This  is  far  from  clear. 
When  Hortensius  undertook  the  case,  he  did  not  know  how 
strong  the  popular  feeling  for  the  Aurelian  law  was,  nor  even 
that  the  case  would  be  placed  in  Cicero's  hands;  for  the 
court,  which  had  power  to  select  the  prosecutor,  had  to  choose 
between  him  and  Q.  Cx'cilius,  who  had  been  quaestor  under 
Verres,  and  maintained  plausibly  enough  that,  having  quar- 
relled with  him,  he  was  the  proper  person  to  expose  his  mis- 
deeds. As  Cicero  was  the  choice  of  the  Sicilians,  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  case  would  have  been  much  reduced  if  the  court 
had  placed  it  in  the  hands  of  Cxcilius,  who  would  have  grati- 
fied the  spleen  which,  no  doubt,  he  really  felt,  and  gained 
some  cheap  notoriety,  which  would  have  pleased  him  and 
hurt  nobody.  Least  of  all  did  Hortensius  know  that  Cicero 
would  treat  the  first  great  political  case  he  had  ever  had  to 
deal  with  in  the  business-like  and  self-denying  way  he  did. 
Hortensius,  no  doubt,  expected  to  hear  a  long  rhetorical  his- 
tory of  the  whole  of  Verres's  career  up  to  the  close  of  his 
Sicilian  government,  to  reply  to  this  at  his  leisure,  with  full  lib- 
erty to  multiply  delays  and  pick  out  weak  points  till  the  broad 
facts  of  the  case  were  forgotten.  Cicero  got  up  the  broad  facts, 
and  evidence  in  support  of  them,  with  diligence  and  activity 
which  at  any  time  would  have  been  remarkable,  and  which  at 
that  time  were  portentous;  then  he  simply  established  them 
in  court,  magnanimously  renouncing,  for  the  sake  of  his  cli- 
ents, a  great  opportunity  of  endless  rhetorical  display.  Cicero 
was  ready,  Hortensius  was  not ;  events  were  in  favor  of  Cicero 
and  against  Hortensius ;  and  Verres  went  into  exile.     The 


^50 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


CICERO. 


151 


ancients  had  two  records  of  Cicero's  pleadings— the  report  of 
the  speeches  which  he  actually  made  in  court,  and  the  edition 
which  he  published.  We  have  only  the  latter.  The  first  two 
speeches,  especially  the  former,  the  Divinatio  (as  the  speech 
was  called  whereby  the  court  had  to  divine  which  candidate 
was  fittest  to  be  intrusted  with  the  prosecution),  are  in  the  main 
what  he  delivered;  though  it  is  likely  that  the  Actio  Prima, 
which  actually  decided  the  case,  was  curtailed,  so  as  to  contrast 
yet  more  strongly  with  the  five  books  of  the  Actio  Scciinda, 
in  which,  without  fear  of  contradiction,  Cicero  set  forth  all  that 
he  and  his  clients  believed  of  the  turpitude  of  the  Proprietor 
of  Sicily.  This  proves,  among  other  things,  that  Cicero,  who 
was  then  thirty-seven,  was  not  overwhelmed  with  business. 

He  was  not  disposed  to  adopt  the  role  of  protector-general 
of  oppressed  provincials.  Next  year  he  defended  Fonteius, 
who,  like  Verres,  had  been  three  years  in  office,  and  was  ac- 
cused but  not  convicted.  Cicero,  of  course,  though  his  ora- 
tion has  only  reached  us  in  fra2;ments,  succeeds  in  nivinii  the 
impression  that  it  was  not  such  a  flagrant  case;  and  the  Sicil- 
ians were  "allies"  of  the  Roman  people  in  a  very  different 
sense  from  the  Gauls,  who  had  not  the  same  claims  to  be 
treated  leniently  on  grounds  of  present  prudence  or  historical 
equity.  In  the  same  year  he  pleaded  the  cause  of  Caecina, 
who  claimed  to  inherit  an  estate  which  a  person  whom  he  al- 
leged to  be  the  agent  of  the  testatrix  had  bought  in  his  own 
name.  The  case  was  mixed  up  more  or  less  with  politics.  It 
was  alleged  that  the  plaintiff  was  disqualified,  as  a  citizen  of 
Volaterrce,  a  community  disfranchised  by  Sulla,  from  pleading 
his  title  on  the  merits  of  the  case:  accordingly  Cicero,  while 
making  a  clear  statement  of  what  his  side  supposed  to  be  the 
merits,  rests  the  case  upon  a  technical  side  issue — whether  the 
defendant,  in  resisting  the  entry  of  the  plaintiff  in  a  way  that 
went  much  beyond  the  customary  process  of  ejectment,  had 
not  violated  an  edict  of  Dolabella,  the  praetor  of  the  year, 
against  "  force  committed  with  armed  men." 

Cicero's  next  political  measure  was  as  safe  and  popular  as 
his  prosecution  of  Verres.  The  command  against  the  pirates, 
with  paramount  authority  over  all  Roman  governors  within 


/■ 


fifty  miles  of  the  coast,  had  been  conferred  upon  Pompeius  by 
a  law  moved  by  Gabinius,  which  Cicero  supported  unobtru- 
sively.     As  the  measure  succeeded  admirably,  Cicero,  who 
had  now  been  elected  praetor,  came  forward  with  one  of  his 
most  elaborate  and  splendid  orations  in  support  of  the  Manil- 
ian  law  to  confer  yet  more  extensive  powers  upon  Pompeius 
for  the  war  against  Mithridates.     Lucullus  had  proved  himself 
quite  capable  of  terminating  the  war  to  the  public  advantage; 
but  an  incompetent  officer  had  been  appointed  to  succeed 
him,  and  his  control  over  his  army  had  been  already  weakened 
by  his  unpopularity  with  the  equestrian  order.      He  had  shown 
a  too  ostentatious  preference  for  enriching  himself  and  the 
treasury  with  the  spoils  of  the  enemy  when  expected  to  en- 
rich himself  and  the  revenue -farmers  with  the  spoils  of  the 
allies— if,  indeed,  he  did  not  find  it  a  profitable  bargain  to 
protect  the  allies,  while  they  discharged  their  strict  dues  to  the 
State,  and  to  trust  for  his  reward  to  their  liberality.     Pompeius 
was  appointed,  and  the  appointment  deranged  everything.    He 
was  immensely  the  most  important  person  in  the  State,  and  he 
was  to  be  away  for  years  with  increased  power  and  patronage 
and  prestige  of  all  kinds,  and  all  the  while  he  was  to  be  with- 
out detailed  knowledge  of  home  affairs,  without  any  constitu- 
tional or  extra-constitutional  means  of  giving  timely  effect  to 
his  opinion  upon  them.     Of  all  who  suffered  from  this  abnor- 
mal state  of  things,  none  did  so  more  severely  than  Cicero. 
In  his  year  of  office  as  praitor  he  delivered  one  of  the  speech- 
es which  he  thought  did  him  most  honor  as  an  advocate.     Two 
years  after,  he  thought  his  position  entitled  him  to  canvass  for 
the  consulship,  especially  as  both  his  competitors  were  broken 
men.     He  now  came  for  the  first  time  into  serious  intercourse 
with  Titus  Pomponius  Atticus,  a  fiimous  banker  and  publish- 
er,' to  whom  he  had  written  two  or  three  slight  letters  before 
about  works  of  art  for  his  villa  of  Tusculum ;  but  when  he 
came  to  stand  for  the  consulship  he  was  naturally  anxious  for 
the  influence  a  banker  could  exercise  over  the  nobles  he  ac- 
commodated.    Cicero  had  resolved  to  stand  as  a  conserva- 

'  This  is  tiic  nearest  explanation  to  be  given  of  the  position  of  a  man 
who  coukl  always  dispose  of  the  services  of  a  number  of  trained  copyists. 


^^ 


152 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


tive:  this  point  is  emphasized  repeatedly  in  his  own  speeches 
of  the  period,  and  in  the  candidate's  manual  which  bears  the 
name  of  his  brother  Quintus.  This  hardly  amounts  to  an  in- 
consistency: he  had  never  been  in  the  least  a  revolutionist, 
and  to  have  dwelt  upon  his  want  of  anccblry  would  have 
alarmed  tiic  nobility  into  a  belief  that  his  moderation  had 
been  a  mask.  Besides,  one  of  his  competitors,  Lucius  Sergius 
Catilina,  was  at  that  time  the  leader  of  the  "popular"  party: 
he  was  a  noble  who  had  been  a  passionate  partisan  of  Sulla, 
and,  having  failed  to  enrich  himself  when  confiscations  were 
plenty,  had  become  the  mentor  of  an  ever-wideninii  circle  of 
daring,  well-connected  profligates,  who  were  convinced  that 
the  government  was  in  the  hands  of  an  effete  and  incompetent 
clique,  which  would  be  easily  swept  away  by  the  living  forces 
of  a  needy  and  vigorous  nation,  if  the  latter  had  only  the 
right  men  at  its  head.  At  one  point  Cicero  thought  of  some- 
thing like  a  coalition  with  Catilina,  as  a  consequence  of  his 
aid  in  repelling  a  charge  of  ambitus.  As  it  turned  out,  the 
nobility  were  glad  to  accept  the  "new  man  "  of  unblemished 
respectability  as  their  candidate  against  two  broken  men  of 
family.  Cicero  was  elected  with  Antonius,  and  secured  the 
obsequiousness  of  his  colleague  by  a  promise  to  waive  his 
rights  to  a  province  in  his  favor.  His  consulship  would  have 
been  memorable  under  any  circumstances.  The  different  op- 
ponents of  the  nobility  had  got  their  plans  ready  for  action 
during  the  absence  of  Pompeius.  There  was  a  proposal  of 
the  tribune  Rullus  to  create  a  gigantic  land-jobbing  commis- 
sion for  the  purpose  of  acquiring  by  purchase  land  for  the 
foundation  of  colonies  beyond  the  sea.  The  scheme  was  de- 
cidedly ingenious,  and  not  on  the  face  of  it  revolutionary:  the 
idea  of  the  projectors  was  to  raise  money  by  turning  the  les- 
sees of  State  property  into  freeholders  where,  as  in  Campa- 
nia, land  was  immensely  valuable,  and  to  use  the  proceeds  in 
founding  colonies  where  land  was  cheap.  They  seem  also  to 
have  calculated  on  securing  the  support  of  Cxsar  and  Cras- 
sus  by  providing  situations  for  them  in  Egypt  and  Africa  al- 
most equivalent  to  the  situation  of  Pompeius  in  Asia.  But 
the  powers  they  demanded  were  so  immensely  in  excess  of 


CICERO. 


153 


their  reputation,  and  of  the  public  interest  in  their  projects, 
that  it  was  easy  for  Cicero  to  turn  the  whole  scheme  into  ridi- 
cule, especially  as  the  idlers  of  the  forum  whom  he  addressed 
had  no  serious  wish  to  begin  f^irming  in  Greece  or  Africa.  A 
more  serious— at  least  a  more  embarrassing— proposal  was  to 
remove  the  disabilities  of  the  sons  of  the  proscribed,  who  were 
precluded  from  inheriting  from  their  fiithers  and  from  standing 
for  any  public  office.  As  Cicero  was  closely  connected  with 
the  old  Marian  party,  the  question  was  especially  difficult  for 
him  :  he  made  an  ingenious  speech,  not  undignified  for  the 
situation,  on  the  wisdom  of  abstaining,  at  any  cost,  from  re- 
opening a  question  so  full  of  bitterness.  But  the  great  concern 
of  Cicero's  consulate  was  the  conflict  with  Catilina,  who  if  he 
had  neither  a  programme  nor  a  grievance,  had  numerous  fol- 
lowers, and  some  commencements  of  an  understanding  with 
individuals  more  powerful  than  himself  or  Cicero.  It  is  pret- 
ty well  agreed  that  Crassus,  the  richest  man  in  Rome,  knew 
something  of  Catilina's  plans,  and  was  prepared  in  some  cases 
to  back  them  to  some  extent;  while  Caesar's  admirers  denied 
that  he  had  compromised  himself  by  any  compact  with  an  in- 
cendiary. Perhaps  no  compact,  no  formal  communication 
even,  was  necessary:  Lord  Melbourne  was  too  proud  to  make 
any  bargain  with  O'Connell,  though  he  could  not  have  kept 
office  for  a  session  without  O'Connell's  support.  The  leaders 
whose  power  lay  in  their  insurrectionary  strength  had  already 
made  a.  temporary  coalition  with  Pompeius,  in  which  each  side 
hoped  the  other  would  prove  to  be  duped.  Cicero  had  the 
choice  of  a  showy  consulship  or  of  a  safe  one.  He  might 
have  allowed  the  scheme  of  Rullus  to  fall  flat;  he  might  have 
watched  Catilina  and  kept  the  peace:  he  preferred  to  use  the 
opportunity  to  test  and  discipline  the  strength  of  the  party  of 
order.  He  spoke  repeatedly  against  the  bill  of  Rullus.  He 
placed  no  restraint  upon  the  movements  of  Catilina  or  his  as- 
sociates; he  did  everything  to  excite  alarm  at  their  schemes, 
and  he  took  dramatic  precautions  against  their  results.  He 
proclaimed  his  belief  that  his  own  life  was  in  danger,  he  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  information  from  the  intimates  of  the  con- 
spirators about  the  wild  plans  that  were  under  discussion.    No 

L— 7* 


154 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


action  could  be  taken  against  individual  conspirators  on  such 
evidence,  but  it  told  on  public  opinion,  which  heartily  endorsed 
all  Cicero's  demonstrative  precautions.  At  last,  after  the  fail- 
ure of  Catilina's  canvass  for  the  ensuing  year,  Cicero  succeed- 
ed by  force  of  oratory  in  driving  him  out  of  the  city,  to  put 
himself  at  the  head  of  an  insurrection  in  Etruria.  The  confed- 
erates he  left  behind  him  compromised  themselves  by  a  trea- 
sonable agreement  with  some  Gallic  delegates,  who  were 
stopped  after  they  had  left  the  city  and  confronted  with  the 
conspirators,  whom  it  was  now  possible  to  arrest.  The  con- 
spirators did  not  admit  the  story  of  the  delegates;  and  under 
the  circumstances  neither  the  conspirators  nor  the  delegates 
could  be  trusted  to  speak  the  truth,  for  the  delegates  knew 
they  would  propitiate  the  consul  by  deponing  as  he  wished. 
Cicero  was  at  the  pinnacle  of  glory:  he  had  saved  Rome  from 
the  hands  of  men  prepared  to  massacre  the  senate,  to  fire  the 
city,  to  call  in  the  barbarian.  His  fatal  elation  is  the  measure 
of  the  genuine  popularity,  the  sincere  adulation,  which  was  too 
much  for  his  self-control.  At  the  time  he  had  not  lost  pru- 
dence; indeed,  he  was  too  prudent  for  dignity:  he  ceased  to 
guide  the  senate — he  appealed  to  them  for  guidance.  The 
conspirators  had  not  been  tried :  if  they  were  condemned,  as 
was  still,  on  the  whole,  probable  (though  every  day,  when  the 
danger  was  over,  the  hands  of  the  government  would  be  weak- 
er), there  was  no  court  that  had  full  legal  power  to  inflict  an 
adequate  sentence.  It  was  not  clear  whether  a  vote  of  the 
senate  could  give  the  consul  powers  beyond  the  law,  or  that 
the  necessity  which  existed  was  sufficient  to  justify  such  a 
vote.  The  senate  had  scarcely  more  courage  than  the  consul : 
Cato  proposed  to  decree  the  execution  of  the  prisoners  ;  Caisar 
proposed  to  abide  by  the  law;  the  senate,  as  vindictive  as 
Cato,  was  content  to  authorize  the  execution  by  directing  the 
consul  to  provide  for  the  safety  of  the  State.  Cicero  ordered 
the  execution,  and  the  reaction  began.  A  tribune  of  the 
name  of  Metullus  was  supported  by  the  crowd  in  his  protest 
when  Cicero  wished  to  make  the  customary  speech  on  laying 
down  office,  though  we  need  not  doubt  that  opinion  was  still 
in  his  favor  when  he  cut  short  the  ceremony  by  swearing,  with 
dramatic  effect,  that  he  had  saved  the  State. 


CICERO. 


155 


While  still  exhilarated  by  the  sight  of  all  Rome  rallied 
round  him  in  defence  of  order,  before  he  had  been  invited  to 
hazard  himself  beyond  the  pale  of  law,  Cicero  delivered  the 
very  brilliant  and  amusing  speech  ''Pro  Murena,"  which  shows 
how  little  the  crisis  yet  weighed  upon  him.  One  might  fancy 
that  his  spirits  rose  as  his  own  responsibility  was  coming  to 
an  end.  He  congratulated  the  people  on  having  such  a  con- 
sul as  IMurena  to  protect  them  from  Catilina;  condoled  ironi- 
cally with  the  jurist  Sulpicius  on  his  defeat,  while  professing 
to  regret  his  disappointment,  and  overwhelmed  Cato  w^ith  sa- 
tirical compliments  on  his  philosophy  and  public  spirit.  The 
defeat  and  death  of  Catilina  left  the  militant  democracy  with- 
out a  leader,  for  Caesar  did  not  choose  to  commit  himself.  A 
dissolute  man  of  fashion,  who  professed  himself  the  lover  of 
Caesar's  wife,  came  forward  to  take  the  vacant  post.  His  in- 
trigue with  Pompeia,  Caesar's  wife,  had  culminated  in  his  mak- 
ing a  rendezvous  at  a  rite  attended  by  women  only.  It  was 
believed  that  he  was  detected  in  disguise,  and  it  was  deter- 
mined to  treat  his  outrageous  escapade  as  a  high  crime  against 
the  State.  Clodius  pleaded  an  alibi,  and  Cicero,  though  he 
thought  it  safer  not  to  prosecute,  came  forward  as  a  witness 
to  disprove  the  alibi.  The  trial  was  mismanaged  in  a  way  to 
suggest  that  the  moderate  conservatives  thought  it  decent  to 
bring  Clodius  to  trial  for  an  oftence  alleged  to  have  been  com- 
mitted under  circumstances  then  extremely  offensive  to  all 
decent  and  serious  people,  while  they  were  not  sure  enough 
that  the  respectable  party  were  in  the  majority  to  run  the  risk 
of  crushing  a  man  already  popular  with  the  rabble.  Clodius 
had  already  made  up  his  mind  to  be  a  demagogue:  perhaps 
pique  at  Cicero's  resolve,  first  to  convict  him  and  then  to  turn 
his  acquittal  into  a  moral  defeat,  may  have  weighed  with  him 
in  desiring  to  turn  plebeian  in  order  to  be  elected  tribune. 
Cicero  was  still  able  to  secure  a  prolongation  of  his  brother's 
term  of  office  in  Asia  (for  which  his  brother,  a  clever,  queru- 
lous man,  with  little  real  ability,  wms  far  from  grateful).  It 
appears,  from  his  brother's  elaborate  essay  on  the  government 
of  a  province,  that  Quintus  was  zealously  on  his  guard  against 
peculation,  and  very  irritable  to  the  corrupt  officials  and  na- 


156 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


157 


lives  about  him,  and  anxious  to  get  liomc  from  a  place  where 
he  felt  too  virtuous  to  make  money.  Meanwhile  Tompeius 
had  returned  to  Rome  and  triumphed,  but  found  unexpected 
difficulty  in  obtaining  the  ratification  of  his  acts  in  the  East. 
This  drove  him  into  a  coalition  with  Ciusar  and  Crassus ;  for 
the  nobility,  his  natural  allies,  were  incurably  jealous  both  of 
him  and  of  Cicero,  who,  in  turn,  was  not  sparing  of  epigrams 
against  the  men  who  lived  for  their  fish-ponds — a  fiishionable 
folly  of  the  period,  which  combined  the  maximum  of  expense 
with  the  minimum  of  splendor.  Moreover,  the  senate  was  no 
longer  supported  by  the  equestrian  order,  for  Cato  had  in- 
volved them  in  a  quarrel  by  insisting  that  the  revenue-farmers 
should  be  held  to  a  bargain  which  had  turned  out  unprofitably. 
Cicero's  only  idea  of  defending  himself  against  the  approach- 
ing danger  was  to  exaggerate  his  services,  which  Pompeius 
and  Crassus  had  once  accepted  at  his  own  valuation,  lie 
wrote  in  Greek  and  Latin  upon  his  consulship;  he  composed 
a  poem  on  the  same  inexhaustible  subject,  which  was  probably 
much  the  best  thing  that  had  yet  been  written  in  Latin  hex- 
ameters since  Ennius. 

The  first  measure  of  the  coalition  was  to  provide  for  the  di- 
vision of  the  Campanian  domain,  the  only  substantial  part  of 
the  phantom  schemes  of  Rullus.  The  financial  objection  urged 
by  Cicero  had  lost  its  force  since  the  annexations  of  Pompeius 
had  enlarged  the  revenue.  Cicero  saw  that  his  isolated  posi- 
tion was  becoming  more  and  more  insecure,  but  he  still  re- 
fused to  surrender  his  independence  ;  he  declined  to  serve 
upon  the  commission  for  the  Campanian  domain,  or  to  accom- 
pany Cagsar  as  one  of  his  lieutenants  to  Gaul,  when,  at  the  end 
of  a  stormy  consulship,  he  received  the  command  of  Cisalpine 
Gaul  and  Illyricum  from  the  people,  and  Transnlpine  Gaul 
from  the  senate.  He  believed  that  even  now,  if  he  withdrew 
for  a  time  from  politics,  his  legitimate  influence  as  an  advocate 
would  be  strong  enough  to  screen  him.  But  this  resource  was 
failing  too.  Antonius,  Cicero's  colleague,  was  convicted,  in 
spite  of  his  defence,  for  extortion  in  Macedonia:  a  certain  Mi- 
nucius  Thermus  was  prosecuted  twice,  though  each  time  Cicero 
defended  him  with  success.     He  was  successful  in  securing: 


the  acquittal  of  Valerius  Flaccus,  w^ho  had  governed  Asia  as 
proprx'tor,  after  seconding  Cicero  as  prcetor;  whether  in  con- 
sequence of  his  appeal  to  the  unforgotten  fear  of  Catilina  or 
of  the  wit  which  was  remembered  far  into  the  second  century. 
At  last  the  crash  came  :  at  the  end  of  a  long  string  of  laws — 
sensible  enough  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  populace  of  Rome 
in  receipt  of  outdoor  relief  was  to  continue  to  vote  on  impor- 
tant questions — Clodius  brought  in  a  bill  for  the  banishment 
of  any  person  who  might  have  put  a  Roman  citizen  to  death 
without  trial.  Cicero  took  fright  and  went  into  mourning:  so, 
according  to  an  uncontradicted  boast,  did  20,000  Romans, 
including  almost  the  whole  equestrian  order.  The  consuls, 
one  of  whom  was  Gabinius,  the  henchman  of  Pompeius,  did 
nothing;  Pompeius  professed  to  be  afraid  of  displeasing  Cas- 
sar,  and  would  do  nothing  unless  appealed  to  by  the  consuls. 
Cicero  had  only  the  choice  of  leaving  Rome  or  beginning  a 
civil  war,  in  which  legality  would  have  been  against  him.  He 
left  Rome,  and  a  law  was  passed  to  banish  him  by  name  and 
confiscate  his  property. 

The  revulsion  of  feeling  was  excessive;  all  the  versatile 
sensibility  which  had  been  at  the  disposal  of  so  many  clients 
had  to  be  spent  now  upon  his  own  misfortunes.  His  career 
had  not  tramed  him  in  any  measure  to  reticence  ;  his  letters 
were  full  of  lamentations,  which  looked  unmanly  when  it  was 
all  over,  and  perhaps  found  no  sympathetic  readers  at  the 
lime.  Cicero's  exile  was  generally  unpopular  with  all  classes 
of  citizens  above  the  lowest ;  a  wish  for  his  recall  was  soon 
expressed,  and  would,  no  doubt,  have  been  effective  in  any 
case.  It  was  effective  all  the  sooner  because  Titus  Annius 
Milo,  a  young  man  with  more  money  than  wit  and  more  spirit 
than  money,  made  the  discovery  that  it  was  just  as  easy  for 
him  to  hire  jih'idiators  to  defend  law  and  order  as  for  Clodius 
to  hire  street  ruffians  to  defend  popular  rights.  As  Clodms 
had  no  longer  the  exclusive  command  of  the  streets,  Cicero 
was  restored  fourteen  months  after  his  banishment-— "  carried 
back,"  as  he  said,  *'on  the  shoulders  of  Italy." 

The  position  of  the  confederates  was  still  insecure:  they 
were  not,  and  never  had  been,  popular  enough  to  set  them- 


IP^ 


I* 


41 


158 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


159 


selves  above  the  constitution  with  impunity;  and  Cicero  still 
hoped,  for  some  time  after  his  return,  to  play  an  independent 
part  in  politics.  His  first  concern  was  to  recover  possession 
of  his  property,  which  was  difficult,  because  Clodius  had  con- 
secrated the  site  of  his  house  as  a  temple  to  Liberty.  His 
speeches  on  these  subjects,  if  any  are  genuine,  are  for  the 
most  part  unworthy  of  him,  and  mixed  up  with  declamations 
of  the  first  or  second  century.  The  first,  which  shows  that  his 
powers  had  recovered  themselves  after  the  shock  of  his  ban- 
ishment, is  that  on  the  answers  of  the  haruspices,  whose  vague 
oracles  had  seemed  to  Clodius  capable  af  being  turned  against 
Cicero,  who  showed,  with  wit  and  spirit,  that  they  were  more 
applicable  to  Clodius.  Already  he  had  put  his  name  to  a 
proposal  that  Pompcius,  whom  the  of^tiniatcs  hoped  to  gain, 
should  have  the  control  of  the  corn-market  for  five  years  all 
over  the  world ;  and  his  brother  was  placed  on  Pompcius's 
staff  of  lieutenants.  The  defence  of  P.  Sestius  jiave  him  an 
opportunity  of  affirming  his  conservative  principles,  and  that 
of  M.  Cx^lius  showed  that  he  was  still  capable  of  treating  po- 
litical questions  with  the  happy  levity  that  he  had  shown  in 
defence  of  Murena. 

Meanwhile  the  confederates  were  at  variance,  and  Cicero 
gave  notice  of  a  motion  to  resume  the  powers  of  the  commis- 
sioners of  the  Campanian  domain.  If  the  motion  had  been 
pressed  and  carried,  Italian  affairs  would  have  passed  again 
into  the  hands  of  the  senate.  Caesar  had  to  come  to  Lucca 
and  pledge  his  whole  influence  to  his  colleagues  in  order  to 
overawe  the  reaction  ;  and  even  then  the  notables  of  the  op- 
position had  to  be  gained  over  individually — a  process  which 
very  much  augmented  Cajsar's  power,  for  he  was  the  treasurer 
of  his  party,  being  enriched  by  the  plunder  of  Gaul,  which  he 
dispensed  with  a  generosity  as  spontaneous  as  it  was  politic. 
Cicero  was  among  the  recipients  of  this  bounty:  his  gains  as 
an  advocate  were  very  irregular,  while  their  amount  was  suffi- 
cient to  stimulate  expensive  tastes.  He  believed  that,  for  a 
man  of  taste,  he  was  remarkably  thrifty;  but  from  his  exile  to 
his  death  he  was  in  a  chronic  condition  of  embarrassment. 
He  delivered  a  speech  on  the  consular  provinces  soon,  after 


the  meeting  at  Lucca,  which  was  a  bid  for  leave  to  manage 
the  senate  on  behalf  of  the  confederates;  and  he  sent  his 
brother,  sorely  against  his  brother's  will,  to  serve  as  the  lieu- 
tenant of  Caesar,  whose  command  had  been  prolonged  for  five 
years.  At  this  time  Cicero  was  inclined  to  cast  his  own  lot 
in  with  Caisar.  In  doing  so  he  took  vengeance  on  the  nobil- 
ity for  the  satisfaction  with  which  they  had  abandoned  him  to 
his  fate,  and  he  had  the  further  pleasure  of  piquing  Pompeius. 
With  this  view  he  defended  Vatinius,  the  dmc  datnncc  of  Cae- 
sar, while  he  refused  for  a  long  time  to  defend  Gabinius,  the 
dme  damnec  of  Pompeius ;  actually  giving  evidence  against 
him  on  the  trial  where  the  case  against  him  was  clearest, 
though,  when  he  was  acquitted  upon  this,  he  at  last  consented 
to  be  reconciled,  and  to  prove  his  sincerity  by  defending  him 
upon  a  second  trial.  In  this  year  (54  B.C.)  he  wrote  his  treat- 
ise on  the  Republic:  his  attachment  to  Caisar,  then  at  its 
height,  explains  the  famous  passage  where  he  insists  that  the 
perfect  government  would  be  compounded  of  monarchy,  aris- 
tocracy, and  democracy,  with  an  emphasis  and  air  of  discovery 
quite  disproportionate  if  he  had  meant  no  more  than  to  pay 
the  compliment  to  the  Roman  constitution  which  Polybius  had 
paid  before.  The  great  enterprise  of  foreign  policy  was  being 
conducted  at  Caesar's  absolute  discretion;  and  though  he  was 
absent  from  Rome,  he  practically  guided  affairs  there  also. 
Crassus's  adventurous  mvasion  of  Parthia  had  firiled,  and  its 
chief  result  was  that  Cicero  was  appointed  to  succeed  him  as 
augur.  The  growing  anarchy  at  Rome  threw  Cicero  back 
upon  Pompeius,  who  was  appointed  sole  consul  in  52  B.C.,  as 
it  was  increasingly  difficult  to  get  the  elections  conducted  reg- 
ularly. The  year  before  the  consuls  had  not  been  elected  till 
April.  Pompeius  was  elected  before  the  end  of  February,  as 
Milo,  who  was  standing  for  the  consulship,  had  thought  it  bet- 
ter that  Clodius,  who  was  standing  for  the  praetorship,  should 
not  survive  an  encounter  between  their  respective  bands  of 
bravoes  in  the  latter  half  of  January.  The  death  of  Julia,  the 
wife  of  Pompeius,  had  weakened  the  ties  which  bound  him  to 
Caesar;  and  his  subsequent  marriage  to  Cornelia,  the  daugh- 
ter of  Q.  Metellus  Scipio,  was  a  sign  that  he  was  drawing  closer 


i6o 


LATIX  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


i6i 


to  the  aristocracy,  which  seemed  willing  at  last  to  accept  him 
on  his  own  terms.  However,  he  had  to  dechire  against  Milo, 
who  was  convicted,  partly  on  the  merits  of  the  case  and  partly 
because  the  military  display  ordered  by  Pompeius  emboldened 
the  partisans  of  Clodius,  and  disarranged  the  defence  of  Cic- 
ero, who  sent  Milo,  then  in  exile  at  Marseilles,  the  splendid 
speech  which  he  wished  he  had  delivered.  The  speech  act- 
ually delivered  was  still  e.xtant  in  Quinctilian's  day,  but  the 
fragments  of  it  which  have  reached  us  are  not  enough  to  judge 
by.  He  was  more  successful  in  his  defence  of  Saufeius,  who 
was  mixed  up  in  the  charge  against  Milo,  and  in  his  accusation 
of  T.  Munalius  Plancus  lUusa,  an  ex-tribune.  He  wrote  at 
this  period  a  treatise  on  the  laws  of  his  model  State,  in  which 
the  monarchical  element  is  reduced  to  the  dimensions  of  the 
Roman  consulate,  an  office  which  retained  more  of  the  attri- 
butes of  primitive  monarchy  than  any  other  known  at  the 
time. 

As  a  part  of  the  guarantees  for  order  established  by  Pom- 
peius "in  his  divine  third  consulship,"  it  had  been  arranged 
that  consulars  and  praetorians  should  in  future  wait  five  years 
for  their  provinces,  as  the  scramble  for  provinces  tended  to 
make  the  canvass  for  office  more  violent  and  irregular.  Con- 
sequently, Cicero  had  to  serve  like  other  consulars  who  had 
hitherto  declined  to  take  provinces  in  their  turn.  He  went  to 
Cilicia,  where  he  distinguished  himself  as  an  active,  efficient, 
and  very  disinterested  governor.  His  successes  against  some 
rebellious  mountaineers  were  sufficient  to  deserve  a  solemn 
thanksgiving,  and  would  doubtless  in  quiet  times  have  led  to 
a  triumph.  He  also  had  an  opportunity  of  rebuking  Brutus, 
whose  agents  were  pressing  him  to  abuse  his  authority  against 
the  senators  of  a  town  in  Cyprus,  which  had  contracted  a  loan 
upon  peculiarly  usurious  terms. 

He  was  impatient  to  return  to  Rome;  and  as  no  successor 
was  sent  to  him,  he  turned  his  province  over  to  his  quaestor, 
and  reached  Rome  on  the  last  day  of  50  b.c.  Here  he  found 
everything  in  confusion.  Caesar's  term  of  office  was  coming 
to  an  end  according  to  one  possible  reckoning,  and  the  nobil- 
ity wished  his  career  to  end  with  it;  while  Pompeius  was  de- 


termined to  reduce  him  to  a  subordinate  position.  Cicero 
was  anxious  to  temporize,  and  Caesar  was  anxious  to  be  con- 
ciliatory ;  but  all  overtures  were  rejected,  and  the  senate  and 
the  consuls  declared  for  Pompeius.  Cicero  was  placed  in 
command  of  the  Campanian  coast,  for  Pompeius  did  not  at 
once  avow,  even  to  himself,  his  intention  of  evacuating  Italy. 
AV'hen  he  did  so  in  the  middle  of  March,  49  I3.c.,  Cicero  waited 
for  more  than  two  months  to  follow  him,  and  was  very  uncom- 
fortable all  the  time  he  was  in  his  camp  ;  seeing  clearly  all  the 
faults  and  follies  of  his  own  side,  convinced  that  Pompeius's 
head  was  running  on  Sulla  and  proscriptions,  and  yet  tor- 
mented bv  reirrets  that  he  had  not  followed  him  with  a  blinder 
loyalty.  It  was  an  aggravation  of  his  difficulties  that  Atticus, 
like  most  bankers  in  time  of  commotion,  was  disposed  to  call 
in  all  his  outstanding  capital.  After  the  battle  of  Pharsalia, 
at  the  end  of  September,  48  B.C.,  he  was  able  to  retire  from 
the  contest.  Cicero  went  at  once  to  Prundisium ;  and  when 
Cx'sar,  a  year  after  Pharsalia,  returned  to  Italy  from  Alexan- 
dria, Cicero  was  ready  to  meet  him.  Thenceforward  he  was 
the  recoiinized  intercessor  on  behalf  of  the  survivors  of  his 
party  who  wished  to  reconcile  themselves  after  continuing 
the  struggle  longer;  although  he  still  retained  independence 
enough  to  write  a  panegyric  o\\  Cato,  who,  after  fighting  hon- 
orably to  the  last,  had  committed  suicide  at  Utica.  Caesar 
put  forward  a  lengthy  reply,  respectful  to  both.  The  leisure 
forced  upon  Cicero  by  the  preponderance  of  the  three  confed- 
erates had  produced  the  splendid  work  upon  the  perfect  ideal 
of  oratory,  as  well  as  the  two  treatises  on  politics;  so  now  he 
wrote  little  rhetorical  manuals,  and  a  very  interesting  little 
review  of  his  predecessors  addressed  to  Prutus. 

Soon  after  his  second  marriage  he  lost  his  daughter  Tullia, 
who  had  just  been  divorced  from  her  third  husband,  and  his 
sorrow  threw  him  upon  philosophical  writing.  He  composed 
a  "Consolation,"  a  very  ingenious  discussion  on  our  ultimate 
conceptions  of  good  and  evil ;  and  a  less  satisfactory  series 
of  conversations  on  the  fundamental  problems  of  speculative 
philosophy.  A  more  interesting  work  was  the  "  Tusculan 
Disputations,"  a  course  of  informal  lectures,  in  which  Cicero 


i) 


I 


l62 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


replies  to  successive  objections  from  difTerent  pupils  to  the 
all-sutiicicncy  of  virtue.  The  loss  of  his  daughter  was  not  all 
that  weighed  upon  him.  I'ersonaliy  he  had  little  to  complain 
of,  and  he  quite  recognized  the  full  value  of  Caesar's  politic 
clemency.  The  senate  was  filled  up  with  men  disqualified 
from  acting  upon  its  traditions.  Judicial  and  administrative 
business  was  almost  at  a  standstill,  and  what  there  was  did 
not  need  eloquence  or  infiuence  like  his  to  carry  it  on.  He 
did  what  he  could  to  civilize  Caesar's  adherents:  he  gave  les- 
sons in  rhetoric  to  llirtius,  a  man  of  great  natural  literary 
gifts,  and  Dolabella,  with  whom  his  intimacy  continued  unaf- 
fected l)y  the  divorce  and  death  of  Tullia.  He  amused  him- 
self in  many  ways  ;  among  others,  by  taking  lessons  in  gastron- 
omy, on  which  he  rallies  himself  in  letters  to  old-fashioned 
correspondents;  but  the  intervals  of  depression  were  many 
and  severe,  and  explain,  if  they  do  not  excuse,  his  exultation 
at  the  death  of  Cxsar,  whose  surroundings  were  certainly  of  a 
nature  to  disgust  decorous  contemporaries  with  his  flir-reach- 
ing  and  beneficent  policy. 

The  death  of  Caisar  was  far  from  restoring  public  life  to 
what  Cicero  regarded  as  a  healthy  tone.  The  popular  feeling 
condemned  the  conspirators ;  and  consequently  Antonius, 
when  he  had  obtained  the  ratification  of  Ca3sar's  acts,  was 
practically  dictator,  for  he  strained  the  ratification  to  include 
all  the  projects  which  he  discovered,  or  professed  to  discover, 
in  Caesar's  papers.  Cicero  wandered  from  one  country-house 
to  another,  writing  incessantly  on  the  Nature  of  the  Gods, 
Divination,  Fate,  Friendship,  Old-age,  and  Glory.  He  be- 
gan a  work  on  the  duties  of  life,  and  resolved  to  travel  in 
Greece.  A  Roman  consular,  unless  he  went  into  exile,  could 
not  go  abroad  without  some  pretence  of  public  business. 
Cicero,  as  it  happens,  had  the  choice  of  three:  he  might  have 
gone  to  acquit  his  vows  for  the  restoration  of  liberty,  but  he 
could  not  persuade  himself  that  liberty  had  been  restored;  he 
might  have  got  himself  appointed  "ambassador  at  large,"  but 
this  would  have  committed  him  to  inaction  for  a  definite  pe- 
riod ;  he  decided  to  accept  a  nominal  appointment  as  a  lieu- 
tenant of  Dolabella,  which  could  be  dropped  at  any  moment. 


CICERO. 


163 


His  ship  WMS  driven  back  from  Syracuse  to  the  territory  of 
Rhegium,  where  he  learned  that  Antonius's  position  was  shaken. 
This  was  on  the  2d  of  August ;  by  the  end  of  August  he  was 
back  in  Rome.  He  still  shrank  from  defying  Antonius  in  his 
presence;  and  even  when  he  spoke  he  said  nothing  that  need 
have  made  an  irreparable  breach  —  nothing  nearly  so  severe 
as  his  invectives  against  Piso  or  Vatinius.  Antonius,  however, 
was  resolved  upon  subduing  or  crushing  the  one  conspicuous 
survivor  of  tiie  old  regime.  He  took  seventeen  days  to  com- 
pose a  reply,  and  gave  him  notice  to  come  and  hear  it.  Cicero 
did  not  come,  but  he  composed  a  crushing  rejoinder,  which  he 
would  have  delivered  if  he  had  heard  the  attack.  He  pub- 
lished it  when  Octavian,  the  heir  of  Caisar,  had  formed  an 
army  to  assert  himself  against  Antonius.  Meanwhile  he  fin- 
ished his  moral  treatise. 

From  the  20th  of  December,  44  n.c,  to  the  end  of  June,  43 
r..c.,  Cicero  was  once  more,  as  he  had  been  in  his  consulship, 
the  foremost  politician  in  Rome.  The  senate  was  willing  to 
follow  him  in  all  measures  in  favor  of  Octavian  and  in  favor 
of  the  conspirators,  but  it  was  immovably  resolved  not  to  be 
committed  to  a  combat  a  outrance  with  Antonius.  B  it  Cicero 
was  able  to  prevent  any  agreement  with  Antonius,  and  might 
possibly,  if  the  consuls  had  survived  the  battle  of  Mutina, 
have  forced  Octavian  to  take  up  the  mantle  of  Pompeius. 
As  it  was,  he  was  included  in  the  proscription  which  was  the 
first  act  of  Antonius,  Lepidus,  and  Octavian,  when  their  com- 
pact had  been  ratified  by  their  appointment  as  triumvirs  to 
organize  the  Republic.  It  is  often  said  that  Octavian  dis- 
graced himself  by  consenting  to  sacrifice  Cicero,  because, 
while  each  hoped  to  make  use  of  the  other,  Cicero  had  lav- 
ished a  great  deal  of  panegyric  upon  Octavian,  who  had  repaid 
his  attentions  with  a  great  parade  of  deference.  At  the  time 
it  is  not  likely  that  Octavian,  the  adopted  son  of  Caisar,  had 
any  feeling  so  deep  or  so  creditable  as  his  desire  to  avenge 
his  father ;  if  so,  he  would  feel  quite  honestly  and  naturally 
that  Cicero  deserved  to  share  the  fate  of  the  conspirators 
with  whom  he  had  been  forward  to  associate  himself. 

He  was  overtaken  and  put  to  death  before  he  left  Italy,  on 


i»> 


164 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


165 


December  7,  43  b.c,  in  the  sixty-fourth  year  of  his  age.  He 
met  his  death  with  courage,  but  in  the  weeks  before  it  he 
showed  the  indecision  whicli  was  natural  to  him  in  difficult 
circumstances:  he  neither  waited  nor  escaped  in  time;  he 
doubtless  foresaw  that  life  with  Sextus  Pompeius  or  with  IJru- 
tus  would  be  a  repetition  in  worse  company  of  the  miserable 
life  that  he  had  endured  in  the  camp  of  Pompeius  before 
Pharsalia. 

It  has  become  the  fashion  to  praise  Cicero  as  a  man  and  a 
writer,  and  to  disparage  him  as  a  statesman  and  a  thinker; 
and  recently  his  reputation  has  been  exposed  to  the  attacks 
of  writers  who  take  the  side  of  accomplished  fiicts  in  what 
may  be  called  a  vindictive  spirit.  Cicero  failed  as  a  politi- 
cian, and  it  is  rather  difficult  to  see  how  he  could  have  suc- 
ceeded;  and  resentment  at  his  failure  takes  the  form  of  con- 
tempt for  his  blindness  in  not  seeing  before  trial  that  his 
ingenious  and  well-intentioned  plans  were  impracticable. 
Besides,  his  political  career  was  disfigured  by  faults  which 
seem  natural  to  advocates  who  play  a  leading  part  in  politics; 
for  all  Cicero's  great  political  f^iults  have  their  parallels  in  the 
career  of  Brougham,  who  was  in  so  many  respects  unlike  Cic- 
ero. There  was  the  same  obtrusive  fertility  of  suggestion, 
the  same  readiness  to  patronize,'  the  same  want  of  fixity  of 
political  purpose — due  in  both  to  the  same  disposition  to  fol- 
low their  changing  personal  interest  and  their  changing  per- 
sonal views  of  the  public  good,  rather  than  principles  held  in 
common  with  others;  the  same  want  of  spontaneous  respect 
for  the  dignity  of  those  with  whom  they  had  to  act,  sometimes 
disguising  itself  in  fulsome  praise,  sometimes  expressing  itself 
in  wanton  epigrams  ;  the  same  giddy  elation  at  the  culmina- 
tion of  the  career ;  the  same  tendency  to  be  guided  by  petty 
vindictiveness  when  high  station  seemed  irrecoverably  lost. 
In  both,  too,  there  was  the  same  disposition  to  take  refuge  in 
nitellectual  interests,  and  in  the  display  of  intellectual  attain- 
ments which  were  rather  extensive  than  profound.     In  this, 

*  The  word  is  exact  if  taken  in  the  etvmoloc;ical  sense  as  markinji  the 
disposition  of  the  advocate  to  treat  every  politician  on  his  own  side  as  his 
client. 


as  in  many  points,  Cicero  has  the  advantage,  for  his  intellect- 
ual exercises  did  not  intrude  upon  fields  already  occupied  by 
more  competent  workmen. 

As  we  compare  Cicero's  orations  with  the  masterpieces 
of  Greek  oratory,  we  are  apt  to  compare  his  philosophical 
writings  with  the  masterpieces  of  Greek  philosophy  ;  and  such 
a  comparison  is  fatal.  Considering  how  rapidly  they  were 
thrown  off,  it  is  natural  to  lay  the  greatest  stress  upon  the  in- 
dications that  their  substance  was  taken  with  little  change 
from  Greek  works  of  the  decline,  and  that  Cicero  added  little 
of  his  own  but  the  style  and  the  literary  framework;  especial- 
ly as  he  tells  us  himself  that  he  kept  introductions  ready  by 
him  to  be  fitted  to  works  upon  any  subject.  But  Cicero  was 
a  man  of  much  greater  general  power  than  the  Greek  writers 
on  philosophy  whom  he  condescended  to  follow ;  and  the 
power  of  selection,  statement,  and  judgment  is  itself  enough  to 
found  a  reputation  upon.  We  are  able  to  verify  in  the  case 
of  Paley  what  we  only  suspect  in  the  case  of  Cicero,  and  yet 
Paley  is  in  his  degree  a  classic.  Then,  too,  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered that  a  mind  so  fertile  as  Cicero's,  trained  to  rapid  ex- 
pression, would  work  very  fast  for  a  couple  of  years  when 
suddenly  thrown  upon  a  new  class  of  subjects.  He  wrote 
largely  to  exercise  his  own  ability,  to  compose  without  the 
heat  and  emphasis  of  oratory,  to  improve  and  vindicate  the 
capacities  of  his  language,  which  he  ventured  to  prefer  to 
Greek;  largely,  also,  to  complete  Latin  literature  by  adding 
a  philosophical  department.  But  his  works  are  also  the  ex- 
pression of  his  ripe  judgment  on  matters  of  which  a  thought- 
ful man  of  action  is  qualified  to  judge — better,  perhaps,  than 
a  purely  speculative  thinker. 

The  "Academics"  have  only  reached  us  in  a  very  incom- 
plete form,  and  the  position  they  are  intended  to  maintain 
gains  more  by  being  assumed  than  by  being  stated  and  dis- 
cussed. It  is  briefly  this,  that  our  ultimate  convictions  are  a 
matter  of  common -sense  and  good  feeling;  that  when  we 
come  to  talk  about  them  there  is  plenty  to  say  against  them ; 
and  that,  as  they  cannot  be  assimilated  to  the  fundamental  prop- 
ositions of  the  exact  sciences,  they  cannot  be  sharply  stated 


i66 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


167 


or  pressed  to  extreme  conclusions.    All  this  is  directed  against 
Stoicism,  which  was  on  one  side  a  system  of  closely  fitting  ab- 
stractions, fit,  as  Cicero  knew,  to  extort  assent  rather  than  to 
generate  conviction;  for  which  reason  he  repeatedly  warns 
public  speakers  against  an  exclusive  devotion  to  Stoicism. 
'V\\(:^  New  Academy  practically  coincided  with  Stoicism  as  to 
the  nature  of  truth  and  duty:  but  what  Stoicism  held  strictly 
the  Academy  held  loosely  and  half-heartedly;  what  Stoicism 
urged  as  a  matter  of  inexorable  principle  the  Academy  rec- 
ontmended  up  to  the  point  required  by  decency,  and  praised 
up  to  the  point  inspired  by  generosity.     In  fact,  the  difference 
was  not  unlike  that  between  Puritan  and  Jesuit  morality;  only, 
as  the   morality  of  the  New  Academy  had  no   supernatural 
sanctions,  it  resembled  Jesuit  morality  at  its  worst  rather  than 
at  its  best,  rather  in  its  accommodations  to  the  low  standard 
of  general  expediency  than  in  its  encouragement  of  exceptional 
heroism  ;  while  Stoicism,  which  never  acquired  the  same  power 
as  Puritanism  of  enforcing  conformity,  was  quite  free  in  Cice- 
ro's time  from  the  hypocrisy  of  poor  natures  who  had  adopted 
a  standard  fit  for  the  noble  few.     The  rigorous  dialectic  of 
Stoicism  rested  upon  the  assumption  of  the  absolute  validity 
of  sensible  experience ;  and  in  this  it  was  quite  consistent,  for 
the  abstractions  to  which  the  Stoics  gave  such  exaggerated 
precision  were  taken  direct  from  popular  language,  and  any 
criticism  of  sensation  is  essentially  unpopular.     The  criticism 
of  sensation  by  the  later  Academy,  as  Cicero  represents  it  in 
his  "  Academics,"  is  not  very  thorough,  and  yet  it  is  really  Pla- 
tonic; only  the  Platonic  criticism  of  sensation  was  intended 
to  prepare  the  way  for  a  more  accurate  criterion  of  transcen- 
dental truth,  and  Plato  saw  that  criticism  of  sensation  ought 
to  suggest  the  value  of  instruments  of  precision  ;  and  a  science 
ill  possession  of  such  instruments  would  have  little  reason  to 
fear  the  criticism  of  the  New  Academy,  which  aims  at  estab- 
lishinir,  not  a  bracing  transcendentalism,  but  an  enfeebling  ac- 
quiescence  in  the  verdict  of  educated  common-sense. 

Still  more  disappointing  than  the  "Academics"  is  the  "De 
Fato,"  which  is  not  concerned  with  what  we  suppose  to  be  the 
question  of  fatalism  so  much  as  with  verbal  and  logical  diffi- 


culties as  to  whether  propositions  concerning  things  to  come 
can  be  certain.  The  question  is  rather— Do  we  mean,  when 
we  say  "The  sun  will  certainly  rise  to-morrow  or  not,"  that 
cither  branch  of  the  alternative  is  in  the  nature  of  things 
equally  possible?  than  —  Do  we  mean,  when  we  say  "Cicero 
will  certainly  speak  in  the  senate  to-morrow  or  not,"  that 
either  branch  of  the  alternative  is  equally  likely? 

The  question  of  Divination  is  connected  by  Cicero  himself 
with  that  of  Fate ;  but  the  discussion  is  much  more  interest- 
ing, for  here  the  Stoical  argument  is  a  curious  anticipation  of 
much  modern  argument  in  defence  of  orthodoxy.  Divination 
is  defended  because  man  needs  a  revelation  of  the  will  of 
liigher  powers;  and  it  is  assumed  that  it  follows  from  the  gen- 
eral doctrine  of  providence  that  there  must  be  a  provision 
for  the  need;  and  the  universal  belief  in  some  non-scientific 
means  of  ascertaining  the  future  is  treated  as  its  own  justifi- 
cation, just  as  the  religious  instincts  of  mankind  are  appealed 
to  now  as  a  sufficient  ground  for  assuming  what  they  are  al- 
leged to  affirm.  This,  in  turn,  is  supplemented  by  a  reference 
to  history  for  all  the  wonderful  predictions  which  are  supposed 
to  have  been  fulfilled  beyond  the  power  of  mere  rational  fore- 
sight. Cicero's  reply  to  these  arguments  is  less  modern  than 
the  arguments  themselves,  for  the  science  of  his  day  had  not 
the  pretension  to  give,  even  in  the  distant  future,  a  complete 
explanation  of  all  the  elements  of  historical  civilization;  and 
the  orthodoxy  of  his  day  did  not  rest  upon  one  series  of  phe- 
nomena, which,  whether  admitting  a  naturalistic  explanation 
or  not,  was  certainly  unique  in  character,  but  upon  a  discon- 
nected mass  of  more  or  less  authenticated  occurrences,  few 
of  which  had  any  ideal  impressiveness,  and  few  any  perma- 
nent importance.  Consequently,  though  Cicero  drew  a  line 
between  faith  and  reason,  he  did  not  draw  it  at  any  of  the 
places  where  the  line  is  drawn  now;  he  did  not  undertake  to 
prove  that  some  traditions  proceed  from  higher  knowledge 
than  reason  can  reach;  he  did  not  try  to  fix  upon  certain 
feelings  as  too  strong  or  too  sacred  to  be  reasoned  about. 
The  principle  of  his  concession  to  piety  (which  is  quite  sincere 
so  fiir  as  it  goes)  is  that  it  is  well  for  each  man  and  each  com- 


r68 


LATIX  LITERATURE. 


inunity  to  practise  without  discussion  tiic  traditions  recom- 
mended to  each  by  the  authority  of  public  custom.    He  sneers 
at  the  art  of  the  amspiccs^  which  was  not  a  native  Roman 
form  of  divmation.      He  treats  his  own  mvstery  of  au-ury  as 
a  matter  of  simple,  venerable  routine.     11 J  is  not  ashamed  of 
the  wisdom  of  his  ancestors,  who  established  a  discipline  that 
neither  needed  nor  admitted  rational  verification.     He  justi- 
fies them  by  one  very  pregnant  remark,  that  the  Roman  state 
used  divination  to  allay,  not  to  create,  reli-ious  anxietv.    When 
something  unaccountable  and  alarming  happened,  the  author- 
ities took  the  time-honored  means  to  lind  out  somethin-  mys- 
terious to  do;  and  when  it  was  done,  the  public  had  as  -ood 
reason  for  being  reassured  as  they  had  had  for  being  alarmed  • 
but  there  were  few,  if  any,  Roman  precedents  for  seeking  guid- 
ance for  practical  action  in  supposed  indications  of  the^will 
of  Heaven  rather  than  in  sound  human  judgment.     IJut,  this 
concession  apart,  his  criticism  is  worthy  of  a  countryman  of 
Knnius:  he  is  full  and  ingenious  upon  the  theme  that  out  of 
many  guesses  some  must  be  right;  remarks  that  the  most  ex- 
traordinary predictions  require  to  be  better  attested;  proves 
that  the  alleged  revelation  is  far  from  satisflictory ;  that  it  is 
given,  if  given,  very  capriciously;  and  that  it  is  hard  to  see 
how  those  who  receive  it  are  tlie  better  for  it. 

In  the  more  fundamental  question  treated  in  the  "De  Na- 
tura  Deorum,"  Cicero's  attitude  reminds  us  of  Hume's  in  the 
"Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion:"  in  both  the  author  means 
to  give  the  sceptic  the  best  of  the  argument,  and  in  both  there 
is  too  little  reverence  left  to  protect  the  defenders  of  the  faith 
trom  his  flippancy  :  in  both  the  sceptic  thinks  that  faith  has  a 
better  foundation  in  tradition  than  in  argument,  and  in  both 
the  sceptic  is  represented  as  arguing  against  his  real  opinion 
and  in  Cicero  against  the  .-author's  opinion  too.     In  Cicero  the 
traditional  view  is  not  represented  at  all,  while  the  Epicurean 
who  represents  the  all-sufficiency  of  common -sense  has  no 
equivalent  in  Hume.     Here,  as  in  the  work  on  ''  Divination  " 
the  orthodox  argument  is  the  most  modern  part  of  the  whole- 
all  the  commonplaces  of  '•  natural  theology  "  appear,  and  be- 
sides, we  have  some  clever  Stoical  dialectic,  to  prove  that' our 


CICERO. 


169 


idea  of  perfection  must  necessarily  be  subordinated  to  the 
highest  reality;  and  consequently,  as  there  can  be  no  higher 
reality  than  the  universe,  we  must  affirm  of  the  universe  every 
perfection  we  can  think  of,  including  that  of  being  a  rational 
and  immortal  animal.     The  sceptic  turns  his  main  strength 
against  what  the  Stoic  has  in  common  with  Paley.    The  Stoic 
deity  was  a  watchmaker  who  lived  in  his  watch,  and  Cicero  is 
distinctly  of  opinion  that  many  parts  of  the  universe  are  gro- 
tesque and  offensive,  though  he  feels  that  the  impression  made 
by  the  beauty  and  majesty  of  the  whole  is  irresistible.     ]5e- 
sides,  a  future  state  of  retribution  was  not  then  an  article  of 
natural  theology,  and  consequently  the  difficulties  connected 
with  the  inequalities  of  fortune  among  men  reinforced  those 
connected  with  the  general  struggle  for  existence  with  greater 
eifect  than   now.     Besides,  the  Stoics  never  mastered  their 
Heraclitean  physics,  and  did  not  know  what  would  become 
of  their  deity  when  the  periodical  conflagrations  which  Hera- 
clitus  foretold  arrived,  and  were  embarrassed  between  their 
own  conception  of  the  universe  as  a  stable  organism  and  Her- 
aclitus's  conception  of  the  rational  fire  as  the  eternal  process 
by  which  all  transitory  beings  appear  and  disappear.     The 
Epicurean,  by  comparison,  gets  off  easily;  he  is  allowed,  if 
he  likes,  to  persist  in  his  tissue  of  arbitrary  assertions,  after 
it  has  been  shown  that  they  are  arbitrary,  and  do  not  in  the 
least  amount  to  a  rational  ex-planation  of  men's  traditional 

ideals. 

Epicurus  is  more  severely  treated  in  the  moral  works, 
though  we  find  frequent  ad  Iiomiiicvi  arguments  based  on  the 
stricUiess  and  simplicity  of  his  personal  practice,  and  the  vig- 
or with  which  he  denounced  excess  and  insisted  on  the  hap- 
piness of  the  philosopher  even  in  the  midst  of  pain.  But  the 
happiness  of  the  Epicurean  philosopher  had  a  purely  physical 
basis.  The  founder  of  the  school  had  said,  quite  consistent- 
ly, that  he  could  be  content  to  live  if  he  lost  his  sight  and 
hearing,  and  even  his  taste  and  smell,  so  that  he  could  keep 
his  appetite  and  susceptibility  to  sexual  pleasure,  while  if 
he  lost  these  life  would  really  not  be  worth  having:  Cicero 
took  the  last  stipulation  out  of  its  context  to  be  shocked  at. 

I.-8 


f. 


♦  «;. 


lyo 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


CICERO. 


171 


In  spite  of  this  injustice,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  "  De 
Finibus"  compares  favorably  with  ahiiost  any  Enghsh  ethical 
treatise  of -the  eighteenth  century.     In  one  respect  it  is  de- 
cidedly superior:  both  the   Stoic   and  the   Epicurean  know 
what  they  are  talking  of.     When  the  Stoic  speaks  of  virtue, 
he  does  not  mean  vaguely  anything  that  it  is  well  to  do;  when 
the  Epicurean  speaks  of  pleasure,  he  does  not  mean  vaguely 
anything  for  which  men  can  or  do  wish.     Nor  does  the  Aca- 
demic attempt  to  correct  the  disputants  by  the  explanation 
that  each  one  sees  one  side  of  the  proverbial  shield ;  he  ac- 
knowledges that  the  debate  is  a  real  one,  though  he  finds  the 
arguments  on  both  sides  unconvincing.     Pleasure  to  the  Epi- 
curean is  always  something  to  be  received;  it  is  something  to 
be  enjoyed  more  purely  and  more  securely  as  man's  life  ap- 
proximates to  that  of  a  healthy  gregarious  animal,  liking  sun- 
shine and  food  and  women  and  wine  and  company,  and  using 
his  reason  as  a  multiplying  mirror  for  these  sources  of  happi- 
ness.    It  would  not  be  very  misleading  to  say  that  the  pleas- 
ure of  Epicurus  is  exclusively  an  aftair  of  the  afferent  nerves 
and  of  those  connected  with  the  solar  plexus.     The  Stoic,  on 
the  other  hand,  starts  with  the  conception  that  our  activity 
has  a  normal  development  of  its  own ;  that  a  man  of  whole- 
some nature,  who  finds  himself  a  member  of  a  sound  society, 
finds  it  his  nature  to  act  in  a  certain  way,  just  as  it  is  the  nat- 
ure of  a  tree  in  suitable  soil  to  grow  to  a  certain  shape.     The 
growth  of  the  tree  is  an  end  in  itself;  a  well-grown  tree  is 
perfect  of  its  kind,  and  that  is  enough.     The  difference  be- 
tween a  man  and  a  tree,  according  to  the  Stoics,  is  not  that 
man  needs  anything  more  than  to  be  perfect  of  his  kind,  but 
that  to  be  perfect  of  his  kind  he  has  to  choose  and  intend  his 
proper  end,  because  he  is  capable  of  rational  voluntary  action. 
Since  a  normal  development  of  activity  is,  according  to  the 
Stoics,  the  only  thing  completely  subject  to  rational  choice, 
and  at  the  same  time  its  adequate  satisfactory  object,  it  ceases 
to  be  a  paradox  that  virtue  is  the  only  good.     The  exposition 
of  this,  which  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  Cato,  is  very  clear  and 
vigorous,  and  in  its  form  is'probably  original;  for  Cicero  con- 
gratulates himself  (through  another  speaker)  on  having  broken 


through  the  Stoical  custom  of  logic -chopping  to  attain  to  a 
free  continuous  argument. 

The  criticism  of  Epicureanism  is  decisive;  it  is  a  doctrine 
that  leaves  out  ail  that  is  best  in  man,  and  especially  all  that 
is  best  in  a  Roman;  for  Epicureanism,  a  much  clearer  and 
more  consistent  doctrine  than  Benthamism,  has  no  place  for 
public -spirited  activity.     The  true  Epicurean  is  simply  a  laz- 
zarone  clothed  and  in  his  right  mind,  and  aware  of  his  advan- 
tages; and  Cicero  had  considerable  experience  of  the  fiilse 
Epicurean,  whose  activity,  so  far  as  he  could  give  an  account 
of  it  to  himself,  was  simply  a  means  to  accumulating  the  ma- 
terials for  an  old-age  of  coarse  indulgence  and  extravagance, 
and  naturally  maintained  that  even  Epicurus  had  cause  to 
blush  for  such  disciples.     In  life,  as  Cicero  and  serious  people 
generally  understood  it,  there  was  no  room  for  "  pleasure " 
derived  from  some  material  object  of  enjoyment,  or  for  "glad- 
ness," the  vague  irrational  exhilaration  that  depends  upon  the 
physical  state,  and  generally  interferes  with  any  steady  activ- 
ity.    Both  were  set  down  quite  correctly  as  "  disturbances  of 
the  mind,"  and  were  separated  rather  too  absolutely  from  the 
tranquil  satisfactions  which  attend  the  gratification  of  natural 
appetites  and  the  successful  activity  of  our  powers.     The  en- 
joyment of  a  cheerful  meal  differs  in  kind  from  the  enjoyment 
of  a  debauch  ;  though,  if  we  watch  the  transition,  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  fix  a  point  at  which  the  difference  is  more  than  one 
of  degree.     The  same  may  be  said  of  the  difference  between 
temperate  enjoyment  of  success  and  the  half-crazy  exultation 
which  was  not  uncommon  in  the  ancient  world  and  is  not  un- 
known in  the  modern.     The  question  whether  the  "appetites" 
were  to  be  moderated  or  abolished  was  really  for  Cicero  a 
question  whether  it  was  right  or  possible  to  take  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  debauchee  at  rare  intervals  or  in  safe  doses — a 
theory  which  commended  itself  to  a  good  many  respectable 
Romans  who  did  not  study  philosophy. 

The  point  at  which  Stoicism  was  really  open  to  criticism 
was  not  so  much  tiiat  it  made  too  little  allowance  for  natural 
feeling  (though  Cicero  thought  it  might  have  made  more),  but 
that  it  took  no  account  of  success.     It  was  difficult  to  maintain 


W 


172 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


that  the  results  of  action  were  really  indifferent.  If  a  patriot 
saved  his  country,  the  act  was  its  own  reward;  it  required 
nothing  further  in  the  shape  of  popularity  or  praise  or  self- 
complacency.  But  how  if  a  citizen  did  his  duty  and  failed  to 
save  his  country,  and  perhaps  by  doing  his  duty  and  ignoring 
that  other  men  were  certain  not  to  do  theirs,  did,  so  far  as 
could  be  calculated,  more  harm  than  good?  How  if  a  man 
recognized  the  direction  in  which  activity  was  desirable,  and 
saw  that  with  his  natural  endowments  activity  in  that  direc- 
tion would  be  ineffectual?  The  only  reply  that  a  Stoic  could 
make  to  such  criticism  was  to  repeat  his  demonstration  that 
normal  voluntary  action  was  the  adequate  object  of  rational 
choice,  and  that  the  ideal  standard  must  be  maintained  at  any 
cost.  Here,  too,  the  Academic  has  to  give  up  the  ideal,  at 
any  rate  as  a  standard:  excellence  is  generally  ranked  above 
success,  and  real  excellence  the  Academic  is  content  to  rank 
highest;  but  real  excellence,  he  insists,  is  seldom  really  un- 
successful. It  is  also  very  seldom  attainable,  and  he  doubts 
whether  it  can  be  the  object  of  every  life  to  attain  it.  Carne- 
ades  thought  it  surprising  that  no  one  had  taken  up  the  very 
defensible  position  that  life  bad  no  end  at  all  for  a  man  be- 
yond itself;  that  for  a  man  to  get  what  was  fit  for  him,  and  to 
do  what  he  was  fit  for,  was  the  chief  good,  or  at  any  rate 
there  was  no  other,  beyond  the  simple  play  of  human  faculty 
in  human  intercourse.  The  w\ay  of  expressing  this  was  curi- 
ously technical.  Discussion  had  brought  to  light  certain  nat- 
ural prerequisites  to  both  virtue  and  pleasure,  such  as  eating, 
drinking,  moving,  sleeping,  talking,  learning  (for  no  one  can 
live  without  instruction).  Now,  all  these  seem  good  in  their 
place  for  their  own  sake,  apart  from  anything  to  which  they 
may  lead.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  any  further  good  which 
does  not  include  and  presuppose  these  first  gifts  or  needs  of 
nature;  and  though  it  seems  natural  to  treat  them  as  means 
(was  this  why  Carneades  did  not  affirm  for  himself  that  they 
were  the  end?),  it  is  hard  to  prove  that  any  end  which  we  pur- 
sue by  them  yields  more  than  themselves. 

The  interest  of  the  treatise  *' De  Finibus"  is  purely  specu- 
lative; the  interest  of  the  "Tusculan  Disputations"  is  purely 


173 


practical.     One  of  Cicero's  pupils  after  another  puts  forward 
some  one  of  the  evils  which  the  natural  man  fears,  and  Cicero 
demolishes  his  objections  with  much  affectionate  earnestness 
and  a  certain  parade  of  what  is  meant  for  Socratic  dialectic. 
This  is  a  very  poor  substitute  for  the  real  interchange  of 
thought  between  equals  which  we  have  in  Cicero's  other  works. 
Landor  might  have  been  less  ready  to  praise  the  method  of 
Cicero's  Dialogues  at  the  expense  of  Plato's,  if  he  had  sus- 
pected that  the  continuous  speeches  were  often  extracted  from 
Greek  treatises;  as,  for  instance,  the  speech  of  Velleius  in  the 
''De  Natura  Deorum,"  from  the  works  of  Philodemus,  a  con- 
temporary  Epicurean,  of  which  large  fragments  have  been  dis- 
covered at  Plerculaneum.     Still,  so  far  as  he  apprehends  the 
question  (and  he  generally  apprehends  it  as  well  as  any  man 
of  the  time),  Cicero  succeeds  in  giving  the  force  with  which 
conflicting  views  appeal  to  the  instructed  practical  judgment. 
Put  the  "Tusculan  Disputations"  are  a  work  of  despair.    When 
Cicero  wrote  them,  Italy  was  given  over  to  Caesar  and  the 
host  of  tribunes  and  centurions  who  had  conquered  license  in 
his  train.     Everything  but  good  conscience  seemed  lost  be- 
yond recovery;  and  Cicero  strove  to  convince  himself,  in  con- 
vincing the  young  yet  uncorrupted  by  the  world,  that  to  keep 
a  good  conscience  through  everything  is  enough,  and  more 
than  enough ;  that  to  know  this  is  our  main  concern  ;  and  that 
glory  and  success  and  all  externals  are  so  secondary  that  the 
inquiry  as  to  whether  they  add  anything  more  or  less  to  virtue 
only  serves  curiosity,  if,  indeed,  it  does  not  lower  courage. 
Even  the  style  is  affected  by  the  reckless  earnestness  of  the 
writer,  and   becomes   more    animated   and  pathetic,   and   at 
the  same  time  less  pure.     The  discussion  whether  vita  bcata 
will  mount  the  rack  with  the  philosopher  is  a  model  of  the 
careless  personification  which  misses  being  picturesque  and 
succeeds  in  being  illogical;  and  it  is  one  of  the  praises  of 
Latin  literature  that  it  generally  abstains  from  this  slovenly 
sort  of  personification,  and  only  personifies  to  make  a  direct 
and  vivid  appeal  to  the  imagination. 

The  smaller  treatises— the  "Lx^lius"  and  the  "Cato"— are 
probably,  like  the  "  De  Officiis,"  founded  upon  single  Greek 


I* 


174 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CICERO. 


175 


works  whicli  Cicero  adapted  with  a  well-founded  confidence 
that,  as  a  great  writer,  he  could  improve  the  style,  and  that  a 
Roman  of  rank  ought  to  be  able  to  improve  the  substance. 
There  is  the  same  impatience  of  mere  discussion  which  meets 
us  in  the  "Tusculan  Disputations."  Lailius  and  Cato  are  lect- 
urers, with  a  youthful  audience;  and  their  pleasure  in  it  is,  no 
doubt,  a  reflection  of  the  generous  pleasure  Cicero  was  still 
able  to  take  in  the  voun^:.  One  interestinc:  feature  in  both  is 
the  anticipation  of  the  thought  which  is  beginning  to  console 
a  few  rare  spirits  for  the  certainty  of  death.  Cicero  felt  as 
strongly  as  any  disciple  of  the  "Religion  of  Humanity"  that 
the  best  part  of  the  lives  of  those  who  have  lived  for  others 
still  lives  on  in  others,  and  few  disciples  of  the  school  have 
expressed  the  feeling  so  simply  and  so  welk  This  was  sup- 
ported in  him  by  the  philosophical  hope  of  a  personal  life  for 
the  glorified  spirit,  set  forth  with  enthusiastic  eloquence  in  the 
magnificent  dream  of  Scipio.'  Cicero  did  not  live  to  see  the 
two  thoughts  which  comforted  him  popularized  by  being  com- 
bined in  the  faith  or  fiction  of  apotheosis,  for  he  obviously 
treats  the  position  of  Antonius,  the  flamen  of  Divus  Julius,  as 
a  very  sorry  joke. 

Something  has  been  said  already  of  Cicero's  political  trea- 
tises ;  it  should  be  added  that  in  the  "  Laws  "  the  actual  laws 
are  in  decidedly  archaic  Latin,  and  that  very  great  stress  is 
laid  on  the  importance  of  keeping  the  character  of  Roman 
worship  unchanged.  Its  ceremonies  were  valuable,  both  be- 
cause they  cost  little  money  and  because  they  cost  much  time 
and  care.  Plato's  exclusion  of  poets  was  replaced  by  an  ex- 
clusion equally  respectful  of  the  New  Academy;  happily  there 
was  no  need  to  exclude  the  loungers  of  the  Garden.  We 
have  lost  most  of  the  discussion  on  justice  in  the  "  Republic  ;" 
but,  in  a  sense,  we  can  see  it  was  an  advance  on  that  with 
which  Plato's  "  Republic  "  opens.  Carneades  did  not  outrage 
good-sense  and  common  experience  by  an  ideal  portrait  of  an 
unredeemed  successful  villain,  whose  prosperity  should  make 

*  Preserved  by  the  sagacity  of  Macrobius  from  the  wreck  of  Cicero's 
"Republic,"  and  more  valuable  than  all  that  has  been  recovered  by  the 
diligence  of  Cardinal  Mai. 


it  doubtful  whether  it  was  worth  while  to  be  just.     He  con- 
fined himself  to  illustrating  a  position  which  has  never  been 
refuted — that  in  actual  society  there  is  a  real  conflict  of  inter- 
ests; that  one  man's  advantage,  rightly  understood,  may  be 
incompatible  with  the  rights  of  another,  or  with  the  good  of 
the  community,  and  then  asking  for  reasons  to  prove  that  a 
man  is  to  be  just  against  himself.     The  reply  to  these  objec- 
tions, so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  fragments  preserved  to 
us,  was  mainly  an  appeal  to  our  natural  sociability  and  to  all 
that  is  expressed  by  the  modern  phrases  of  "solidarity "  and 
"social  organism."     Of  course,  so  far  as  the  analogy  which 
the  latter  phrase  suggests  holds,  it  would  be  decisive.    In  the 
individual  organism,  no  one  organ  can  thrive  really  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  rest,  just  as  no  outward  prosperity  can  compen- 
sate for  injury  to  the  health  of  the  body;  whence  Plato  had 
argued  that  for  no  earthly  gain  could  it  be  worth  while  to  in- 
jure the  health  of  the  soul.     Unfortunately,  neither  analogy 
is  exact,  and  the  analogy  to  which  Plato  appeals  has  a  false 
look  of  exactness  which  has  led  Plato  and  others  into  much 
unreal  rhetoric.     We  do  not  know  whether  Cicero's  rhetoric 
was  unreal,  though  we  do  know  from  his  own  boasts  in  the 
"  Lxlius  "  that  it  was  earnest  and  elaborate. 

Of  the  rhetorical  works  only  the  "  De  Oratore  "  need  de- 
tain us;  for,  admirable  as  the  "Brutus"  is,  with  its  fine,  ex- 
act, and  generous  appreciation  of  scores  of  forgotten  speakers, 
there  is  little  to  say  of  it  here  beyond  the  extracts  already 
given.  The  "  De  Oratore  "  is  certainly  the  most  finished  of 
all  Cicero's  treatises,  and  the  coming  and  going  of  the  sec- 
ondary speakers  is  admirably  managed  to  bring  out  the  dig- 
nity of  the  principals,  and  to  convey  an  impression  of  the  lofty 
courtesy  of  the  highest  Roman  society.  The  scenery  of  the 
dialogue,  so  to  speak,  is  on  a  level  with  Plato,  except  at  his 
very  best,  although  there  is  much  less  play  of  thought,  as,  in- 
deed, the  subject  suggests  less.  The  real  subject  is  the  double 
function  of  the  orator  as  a  public  speaker  and  an  advocate. 
Crassus,  the  greatest  orator  before  Cicero,  brings  out  the  con- 
ception of  the  public  speaker  as  a  man  who  must  be,  first  of 
all,  perfectly  virtuous,  then  perfectly  wise — a  master  of  the 


176 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


philosophy  of  Greece  and  of  the  truer,  more  practical  teaching 
of  Roman  sages  like  Lo^lius  and  Coruncanius  and  the  elder 
Cato.     lie  must  have  a  competent  knowledge  of  everything- 
that  can  come  under  discussion,  though  subordinate  sciences^ 
such  as  civil  law,  will  be  studiously  kept  in  their  proper  place! 
It  must  be  remembered  that  at  Rome  there  were  no  newspa- 
pers, no  sermons,  hardly  any  books;  that  the  general  public 
was  not  in  the  habit  of  reading  such  books  as  there  were. 
When  a  famous  citizen  spoke  on  public  affairs  in  the  Assem- 
bly, or  on  an  exciting  case  before  the  courts,  he  nn'ght,  if  he 
pleased,  put  himself  forward  to  supply  in  his  own  person  an 
equivalent  for  the  many  forms  of  instruction  and  entertain- 
ment which  the  Romans  lacked,  each  of  which  in   our  own 
day  forms  the  basis  of  a  separate  profession.     On  the  other 
hand,  the  parties,  and  perhaps  the  court,  might  think  what  was 
very  interesting  to  the  corona  (the  ring  of  spectators  who  gath- 
ered round  the  parties  and  their  respective  adherents)  rather 
superfluous,  for  the  corona  could  go  away  at  pleasure,  and  the 
parties  and  the  court  were  bound  to  remain,     'i'here  was  ob- 
viously room  for  a  more  business-like,  less  pretentious,  less 
discursive  style  of  speaking  than  that  which  Crassus  cultivated, 
and  it  is  of  this  style  that  Antonius  constitutes  himself  the 
theorist.'     The  discussion  as  to  the  comparative  merits  of  the 
two  styles  is  indecisive,  and  only  serves  to  bring  out  the  con- 
ception of  each,  and  to  show  that  really  able  speakers,  what- 
ever their  ideal  of  their  profession  may  be,  have  necessarily 
much  in  common;  perhaps,  too,  to  show  that  Cicero  could 
idealize  his  predecessors  in  a  way  to  bring  out  their  charac- 
teristic excellences  and  veil  their  defects.     Pie  was  glad  to  be 
able  to  deny  that  his  Crassus  was  less  wordy  andliis  Anto- 
nius more  copious  than  the  originals.     The  contrast  is  impor- 
tant from  another  point  of  view:  it  is  clear,  both  from  the 
*' Brutus  "  and  the  preface  of  the  lost  translation  of  the  speeches 
ofyEschines  and  Demosthenes  in  the  case  of  Ctesiphon,  that 
Cicero's  reputation  in  his  later  years  was  not  uncontested.    A 

»  It  seems  that  Cicero  intended  also  to  make  Antonius  the  representa- 
tive of  the  theory  of  Aristotle  (set  forth  in  a  lost  dialogue),  and  Crassus 
the  representative  of  the  theory  of  Isocrates. 


CICERO. 


177 


school  of  Atticists  had  grown  up,  mostly  purists  in  politics  as 
well  as  in  style,  who  wished  to  exclude  everything  superfluous 
and  get  rid  of  amplification  and  emofion,  and  be  simple,  busi- 
ness-like, convincing,  and  elegant.     They  probably  foiled  to 
realize  that  there  had  been  occasions,  and  perhaps  were  still 
when  it  was  worth  while  to  electrify  the  court  by  passionate 
pleadings;  but  generally  eloquence  was  directed  not  to  gain 
the  suffrages   of  the   court,  which,  even  in  important  cases 
might  consist  of  a  single  judge,  but  to  influence  the  audience  ' 
and  the  Atticists  were  quite  right  in  thinking  that  this  trait 
was  anythmg  but  Attic,  for  an  Attic  orator  had  never  occasion 
to  separate  the  audience  and  the  court.    They  were  also  prob- 
ably right  in  thinking  that,  for  practice  in  Roman  courts  in 
ordinary  cases,  Lysias  was  a  better  model  than  Demosthenes 
It  is  curious  that  Cicero  should  have  imagined  that  a  trans- 
lation of  yEschines  and  Demosthenes  was  a  vindication  of  his 
own  style.     Compared  with  Calvus,  no  doubt  even  Demosthe- 
nes was  full  and  ^schines  was  passionate;  but  Cicero  was 
certainly  diftuse,  even  compared  with  ^^schines 

As  compared  with  Demosthenes,  it  is  his  great  praise  to  be 
amusing  and  interesting:  he  does  not  take  our  concern  for 
granted  as  Demosthenes  does,  who  trusts  simply  to  the  con- 
tagion of  his  own  earnestness,  whereas  Cicero  has  studied  all 
methods  of  engaging  and  relieving  our  attention.     He  varies 
everything  that  can  be  varied;  he  amplifies  almost  everything 
that  can  be  amplified;  he  is  fond  of  side  issues.     In  the  de''- 
lence  of  Sex.  Roscius,  his  first  great  speech,  he  rests  his  case 
not  on  the  innocence  of  his  client,  which  he  is  content  for  the 
most  part  to  asseverate,  but  on  the  nefarious  manoeuvres  of 
Chrysogonus.     So,  too,  in  the  defence  of  Cluentius  we  hear 
quite  as  much  of  the  trial  in  which  Cluentius  was  supposed  to 
have  outbribed  his  mothers  husband  as  of  the  char-e  of  poi- 
soning that  was  actually  before  the  court;  and,  long'after  the 
attair  of  Catilina,  the  supposed  necessity  of  protecting  all  who 
had  helped  Cicero  to  save  the  state  from  his  nefarious  enter- 
prise figured  largely  in  his  speeches.     He  was  rather  apt  to 
irame  improbable  defences  and  to  take  up  more  ground  than 
could  be  really  held.     For  instance,  it  is  obvious  that  there 

I.— 8* 


1 78  LATIN  LITERATURE. 

was  no  malice  on  cither  side  in  the  affray  between  Clodius 
and  Milo;  but  as  Clodius's  partisans  chose  to  assert  that  Milo 
had  laid  a  plot  to  assassinate  Clodius,  Cicero  roundly  retorted 
that  it  was  Clodius  who  had  laid  a  plot  to  assassinate  Milo, 
and  his  whole  speech  is  pervaded  by  this  rash  assumption. 
Throughout,  also,  Milo  is  represented  as  a  pure  and  spotless 
patriot;  although,  even  before  his  last  outbreak,  Cicero  had 
pretty  well  made  up  his  mind  that  he  was  a  madman,  and  ex- 
pressed his  belief  with  his  usual  frankness  in  his  outspoken 
correspondence.  Perhaps  Cicero  wrote  in  defence  of  Milo 
with  some  exaggeration  of  enthusiasm,  because  in  the  actual 
trial  he  had  spoken  with  less  than  his  usual  courage  and  failed 
in  the  result  more  completely  than  he  was  accustomed  to  fail. 
But  it  does  not  appear  that  after  his  consulship  he  ever  was 
really  supreme  as  an  advocate:  he  was  always  the  greatest 
living  orator,  though  few  of  the  orations  which  he  handed 
down  to  us  belong  to  his  later  years — except  the  "  Philippics," 
which,  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  are  more  remarkable  for 
the  skilful  pertinacity  with  which  a  political  object  is  pursued 
under  great  difficulties  than  for  their  worth  as  orations.  For 
instance,  it  was  voted  that  under  the  alarming  circumstances 
of  the  time  military  dress  should  be  worn  in  the  streets  of 
Rome;  and  Cicero  harps  upon  this  decision  in  a  way  that  was 
probably  edifying  and  useful  to  right-thinking  gossips  at  the 
time,  but  is  the  reverse  of  impressive  to  posterity.  In  gener- 
al, the  difficulties  under  which  Cicero  spoke  are  too  apparent, 
and  the  necessity  of  putting  on  an  air  of  heroism  interferes 
with  our  appreciation  of  the  diplomatic  ingenuity  displayed  in 
the  speeches,  and  to  better  advantage  in  the  letters  to  Plancus 
and  other  commanders  whom  Cicero  had  hopes  of  securing  to 
the  interests  of  the  senate.  Probably  even  the  great  Second 
Philippic,  which  has  generally  been  recognized  as  Cicero's 
masterpiece,  gained  in  reputation  a  good  deal  by  the  subse- 
quent history  of  Antonius,  who  was  completely  sacrificed  to 
Augustus  by  all  Roman  writers;  whence  it  followed  that  all 
Cicero's  attacks  upon  him  were  entirely  justified.  At  the 
time,  it  is  hard  to  think  that  the  conduct  of  Antonius  was 
really  an   outrage  upon  the  sensibilities  of  a  senate  whose 


1 80 


LA  TIN  IJTFI?A  TTTk^  // 


CICERO. 


179 


ranks  had  been  filled  with  Caesar's  officers,  who  felt  that  in 
o-ivin^  Decimus  Brutus  a  hesitating  support  against  him  they 
were,  after  all,  only  espousing  the  quarrel  of  one  old  comrade 
a^^ainst  another,  and  consoled  themselves  by  the  fact  that,  if 
Brutus  had  helped  to  kill  their  old  commander,  he  was  in  alli- 
ance for  the  moment  with  their  commander's  heir.  Apart 
from  this,  Cicero's  denunciations  of  mere  debauchery  and  cru- 
elty must  have  rung  rather  hollow  upon  the  ears  of  contem- 
poraries for  the  most  part  only  less  shameless  than  Antonius, 
and  far  less  vigorous :  though  Cicero  himself  had  every  right 
to  treat  the  conventionalities  which  he  reproached  Antonius 
with  disregarding  as  serious,  and  political  profligacy  had  not 
gone  so  far  that  a  man  in  Antonius's  position  could  travel  slip- 
shod in  the  dark  without  some  discredit  when  the  charge  was 
brought  home  to  him — to  say  nothing  of  drunkenness  on  pub- 
lic occasions.  On  the  other  hand,  the  invective  loses,  because 
it  is  clear  that  Cicero's  honest  convictions  might  have  slept  if 
Antonius  had  been  willing  to  keep  terms  with  him.  For  this 
reason  the  speech  stands  below  the  invective  against  Piso, 
which  makes  no  pretence  of  serving  any  purpose  except  Cice- 
ro's hearty  contempt  for  a  vulgar  blusterer  who  had  done  him 
what  injury  he  could,  and  had  been  foolish  enough  to  chal- 
lenjie  an  altercation  with  him  after  his  fortunes  had  mended. 
Of  Cicero's  letters  it  is  not  easy  to  speak  as  they  deserve 
within  moderate  compass:  they  have  always  a  charming  air 
of  frankness  and  dignity,  even  when  the  writer  is  embarrassed 
and  has  to  calculate  the  eftect  of  every  word.  The  long  series 
of  letters  "  ad  Familiares  "  are  all  more  or  less  of  this  cate- 
gory. The  letters  to  Atticus  show  how  great  the  strain  must 
have  been,  for  they  prove  his  need  of  entire  unrestrained  ex- 
pansion, and  his  need  of  leaning  upon  another  judgment.  In 
both  points  the  correspondence  reminds  us  of  Dickens's  let- 
ters to  Forster.  It  is  also  the  clearest  proof  of  Cicero's  fun- 
damental honesty,  and  of  how  little  he  was  really  the  dupe  of 
his  vanity,  and  of  the  miscalculation  which  led  him  to  exag- 
gerate his  public  services  in  the  presence  of  the  public. 


i8o 


LA  TIJV  LITER  A  TUKE. 


CICERO'S    CONTEMPORARIES    AXD   SUCCESSORS. 

A  curious  and  intercstiug  relic  of  tlie  beginning  or  tlie  end 
ot  tlie  age  of  Cicero  is  tlie  treatise  on  rhetoric  addressed  to 
Ca.us  Herenn.us  by  an  unknown  writer,  probably  Cornificius 
who  used  the  sanie  Greek  text-book  as  Cicero  in  liis  two  book 
L)e    nvenfone  "     He  follows  his  model  much  more  closely 

and  dogmatic,  where  Cicero  is  apt  to  lose  himself  in  discus- 
son.        i,e  two  books  of  Cicero  arc  longer  than  the  four  of 
he  author  who  wrote  for  Herennius.     'Jhey  both  agree  that 
the  choice  and  arrangement  of  topics  is  the  most  extensile 
part  of  the  art;  and  when  Jie  has  exhausted  this  Cicero  pauses 
and  concludes  all  of  his  treatise  that  iias  reached  us      The 
unknown  goes  on  to  treat  of  memory  and  of  the  arts  of  voice 
and  gesture,  wh.ch  occupy  the  remainder  of  the  third  book  • 
the  fourth,  which  is  the  most  interesting,  contains  the  wSer'J 
views  o   style  in  the  largest  sense,  illustrated  by  choice  mor- 
se s  of  h,s  own  composition.     This  was  an  innovation  which 
filled  h,m  w,th  uneasy  pride:  his  Greek  models  and  his  Latin 
rivals  had  always  drawn  their  illustrations  from  approved  and 
recogmzed  classics,  which  was  tantamount  to  a  confession 
from   US  pouit  of  view,  that  they  were  unequal  to  practise  the 
art  which  they  professed.     He  thinks  it  as  absurd  to  teach 
era  ory  by  a  series  of  extracts  from  other  speakers  as  for  a 
sculptor  to  teach  sculpture  by  exhibiting  frngmenls  of  the 
work  of  other  sculptors,  or  for  an  athlete  to  undertake  to  train 
a  runner  by  standing  still  and  discoursing  on  the  performances 
of  celebrated  runners  in  the  past.     The  second  comparison 
diminishes  the  arrogance  of  the  first,  for  the  author,  whoever 
he  was,  cannot  have  been  a  celebrated  speaker.     He  makes  a 
merit  of  writing  on  the  subject  at  all,  as  he  has  private  'affairs 
to  attend  to;  but  he  is  fond  of  exercising  himself  in  speakin- 
and  expects  Herennius,  who  likes  exercising  with  him,  to  iiu^ 
prove  with  such  opportunities.     He  is  not  exactly  a  ieacher 
of  rhetoric,  but  a  private  gentleman,  studious  of  the  art  and 
recognized  among  his  friends  as  accomplished  in  the  practice 


CICERO'S   CONTEMPORARIES   AND  SUCCESSORS.     i8i 

of  it.  Probably,  if  asked  why  he  declaimed  at  home  oftener 
than  he  spoke  in  the  courts  or  the  assembly,  he  would  have 
said  that  his  station  did  not  call  upon  him  to  be  a  conspicu- 
ous politician,  or  his  temper  to  force  himself  into  politics.  His 
authorities  are  all  the  famous  orators  from  Loelius  to  Crassus, 
which  naturally  leads  us  to  think  that  he  was  a  mature  man 
when  Cicero  was  a  youth  ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  traces 
which  might  lead  us  to  fancy  that  he  knew  of  Cicero  and  did 
not  admire  him,  and  knew  of  Lucretius  and  agreed  with  him. 
It  is  certainly  strange  that  a  Roman  who  had  not  read  Lucre- 
tius should  enumerate  not  only  the  fear  of  death,  but  religion 
among  the  motives  of  crime.  It  is  also  curious  that  somebody 
who  was  not  Cicero  should  have  a  son  Tullius  and  a  wife  Te- 
rentia.  Phrases  like  "  Et  inimico  proderas  et  amicum  Isede- 
bas  et  tibi  non  consulebas,''  "Nee  reipublicce  cons.iluisti  nee 
amicis  profuisti  nee  inimicis  restitisti,"  look  like  criiicisms  of 
Cicero's  conduct  in  the  decline  of  his  fortune.  His  refusal  to 
be  on  the  Campanian  domain  commission  was  an  advantage 
to  his  enemy  Clodius,  an  offence  to  his  friend  Pompeius,  and 
left  his  own  safety  unprovided  for.  When  he  went  into  exile, 
it  might  fairly  be  said  he  neither  served  the  state,  nor  stood 
by  his  friends,  nor  withstood  his  enemies.  After  his  return, 
when  he  was  inclined  to  revenge  himself,  with  Ccesar's  help, 
upon  the  nobility  who  had  betrayed  him,  it  might  seem  fair 
to  say,  "Inimicis  te  placabilem,  amicis  inexorabilem  prcebes." 
What  follows  might  pass  for  a  scathing  invective  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  thorough  opti mates  of  his  conduct  during  the 
civil  war  : 

"In  otio  tumultuaris;  in  tumultu  es  otiosus.  In  re  frigidis- 
sima  cales;  in  ferventissima  friges.  Tacito  quum  opus  est 
clamas;  quum  tibi  loqui  convenit,  obmutescis.  Ades,  abesse 
vis;  abes,  reverti  cupis.  In  pace  bellum  quaeritas,  in  bello 
pacem  desideras.  In  contione  de  virtute  loqueris;  in  prailio 
pra?  ignavia  tuba^  sonitum  perferre  non  potes." 

The  only  part  which  an  admirer  of  Cicero  might  think  in- 
appropriate in  the  mouth  of  his  enemies  is  the  first  half-sen- 
tence. Though  Cicero  busied  himself  a  good  deal  in  promot- 
ing the  abortive  reaction  of  public  opinion  against  Pompeius 


l82 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


and  his  confederates,  his  action  was  hardly  of  a  kind  to  be 
described  as  "tumultuous."  All  the  rest  would  suit  well 
enough:  he  was  loud  in  criticism  in  the  camp  of  Pompeius, 
where  he  would  have  done  well  to  hold  his  peace ;  in  the  de- 
bates which  preceded  the  war  he  took  no  part.  When  he  was 
with  Pompeius,  he  wished  himself  away;  when  he  was  safe  in 
Cilicia,  he  wished  himself  back  in  Rome.  When  the  confed- 
erates were  united,  he  had  a  mind  to  disunite  them  or  to  op- 
pose their  united  forces.  When  Pompeius  was  drifting  into 
hostilities,  and  when  he  was  engaged  in  them,  Cicero  was  for 
peace  at  almost  any  price.  In  the  campaign,  when  he  joined 
Pompeius  at  last,  he  was  so  nearly  a  neutral  as  to  be  almost 
proscribed  by  the  ultras,  who  doubtless  thought  he  would  have 
fought  if  he  had  had  the  courage.  Another  touch  is  less  cer- 
tain in  its  application:  it  is  a  vigorous  apostrophe  to  Cassius, 
probably  the  celebrated  judge  and  author  of  the  much  mis- 
quoted "  Cui  bono,"  against  the  impudence  of  a  witness  who 
makes  a  speech  for  the  prosecution ;  which  was  rather  a  fa- 
vorite device  of  Cicero's  when  he  sympathized  with  a  prosecu- 
tion that  he  had  not  courage  to  conduct  in  person. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  style  of  the  unknown  is  any- 
thing but  an  advance  upon  Cicero's.  Though  pure  and  clear 
and  even  elegant,  it  is  so  dry  and  stiff  that  it  is  difficult  to 
suppose  he  wrote  after  him ;  but  we  know  that  Pollio,  one 
of  the  most  celebrated  speakers  of  the  age  of  Augustus,  was, 
compared  with  Cicero,  simply  rough  and  unfinished,  only 
reaching  here  and  there  the  level  of  agreeable  finish  which 
Cicero  constantly  maintained.  It  is  the  more  noticeable, 
therefore,  that  the  writer  to  Herennius  sets  the  ideal  of  finish 
very  high,  much  higher  than  an  l\nglish  writer  or  speaker 
would  set  it.  For  instance,  if  it  were  necessary  to  throw  the 
blame  of  the  revolt  of  a  colony  on  a  revolutionary  party  at 
home,  one  would  think  it  quite  sufficient  to  begin  a  passage 
not  meant  to  be  particularly  impressive  as  follows:  "Our  al- 
lies, when  minded  to  wage  war  upon  us,  would  certainly  have 
reasoned  again  and  again  how  much  lay  in  their  power  to  do, 
if,  indeed,  they  were  acting  altogether  of  themselves,  and  had 
not  many  helpers  from  among  us,  evil  and  daring  men.     For 


CICERO'S  CONTEMPORARIES  AND  SUCCESSORS.    183 

all  are  wont  to  ponder  long  who  mean  to  work  in  mighty  mat- 
ters." The  author's  criticism  is:  "Discourse  of  this  kind 
cannot  hold  the  hearer's  attention,  for  it  is  all  at  sea,  does  not 
grasp  one  point  and  clasp  it  firm  in  perfect  words."  It  is  a 
failure,  in  short,  in  the  style  in  which  this  is  a  success  : 

"Ye  see,  judges,  with  whom  we  wage  this  war — with  allies, 
with  men  accustomed  to  fight  for  us,  and  both  by  diligence 
and  valor  to  uphold  our  empery  with  us.  These,  on  the  one 
part,  needs  must  know  themselves  and  their  means  and  their 
resources;  on  the  other  part,  none  the  less  by  reason  of  neigh- 
borhood and  fellowship  in  all  things  were  able  to  know  and  to 
deem  of  the  power  of  the  Roman  people  in  all  things.  When 
these  determined  to  wage  war  with  us,  what  matter  was  it,  I 
pray  you,  that  made  them  bold  to  enterprise  the  war  when 
they  understood  that  far  the  greater  part  of  our  allies  stood 
f^ist  in  their  duty ;  when  they  saw  on  their  own  part  that  nei- 
ther multitude  of  soldiers,  skill  of  generals,  nor  treasure  of 
money  was  ready  at  need;  or,  in  a  word,  any  matter  of  the 
matters  that  are  needful  for  the  service  of  war.?  If  they  were 
waging  war  for  boundaries  with  neighbors,  if  they  thought  the 
whole  contest  depended  upon  one  battle,  still  they  would  come 
thereto  with  better  equipment  in  all  things;  how  much  less 
would  they,  being  what  they  are,  essay  with  their  petty  forces 
to  take  away  the  empery  of  the  wide  world,  to  which  empery 
all  nations,  kings,  and  peoples  have  yielded  themselves,  partly 
of  force,  partly  of  good-will,  being  overcome  either  by  the  arms 
or  the  bounty  of  the  Roman  people?  Some  one  will  ask. 
What,  did  not  they  of  Fregellai  move  of  their  own  choice? 
Truly  it  was  much  the  harder  for  them  to  move  that  they  saw 
how  all  the  rest  had  come  off.  For,  without  experience  of 
things,  such  as  are  not  able  to  seek  ensamples  concerning  ev- 
erything soever  from  things  done  aforetime  do  most  easily  fall 
into  that  error  for  lack  of  knowledge ;  but  such  as  know  what 
has  befallen  others  are  able  easily,  by  the  fortune  of  others,  to 
provide  for  their  own  prospects.  Was  there  nothing,  then,  to 
lead  them  on,  no  hope  to  make  them  bold  to  take  up  arms? 
But  who  can  believe  that  such  madness  possessed  any  as  to 
make  him  dare  to  assault  the  empery  of  the  Roman  people 


i84 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


with  no  force  to  make  him  bold?  Therefore  there  must  needs 
have  been  something.  What  else  can  that  be  except  what  I 
say?"  Of  course  this  is  more  distinct  and  emphatic,  but  the 
ga'in  involves  a  disproportionate  expense  in  elaboration.  The 
point  that  the  revolt  of  Fregella^  cannot  have  been  unsupport- 
ed is  obvious,  whether  true  or  false ;  and  the  longer  it  is  dwelt 
on,  the  longer  a  sceptical  hearer  has  to  divine  an  alternative 
reason  for  a  strange  event. 

It  is  easier  to  approve  the  author's  taste  in  the  specnnen 
he  gives  of  the  simplest  style  to  which  an  orator  can  de- 

scend. 

"When   my  client  came  into  the  baths,  he  began   to  be 
rubbed  down  after  his  douche.     Presently,  when  he  thought 
it  time  to  go  down  into  the  hot  bath,  the  other  party  called 
across  the  bath, '  Here,  young  fellow  !  your  people  have  been 
hustling  ;  you  will  have  to  make  amends.'     My  client  blushed  ; 
at  his  a^ge  he  was  not  used  to  being  hailed  by  a  stranger.     The 
other  party  began  to  say  the  same  and  the  like  much  louder. 
My  client  just  managed  to  say,  '  Well,  you  must  let  me  think 
about  it.'     Then  the  other  party  did  begin  to  shout  with  that 
voice  which  is  fit  to  bring  a  blush  from  the  most  hardened 
brawler, 'You  are  so  sharp  and  impudent  that  you're  not  con- 
tent to  practise  even  in  the  middle  of  the  forum:  you  must 
get  behind  the  scenes  and  to  places  of  that  kind.'    The  young 
fellow  was  disturbed;  and  no  wonder,  for  he  still  felt  the  lect- 
ures of  his  pedagogue  buzzing  in  his  ears,  and  had  never  heard 
such  abuse  as  that.     For  where,  pray,  should  he  have  seen  a 
rascal,  bankrupt  of  blushes,  who  might  well  think  he  had  not 
a  rag  of  character  to  lose,  and  so  might  do  everything  without 
risking  his  reputation?" 

The  unsuccessful  attempt  in  the  same  style  deserves  all  the 
author  can  say  of  it:  "The  other  party  came  up  to  my  client 
in  the  baths;  says  thereafter, '  Your  servant  here  hustled  me.' 
Thereafter  my  client  says  to  him,  'I'll  think  it  over.'  Then 
the  other  grew  abusive,  and  called  out  more  and  more  in  the 
presence  of  many."  As  the  writer  says,  this  has  no  style  or 
composition  or  choice  of  vocabulary.  He  has  not  been  at 
pains  to  construct  a  large  specimen  of  the  tumid  style,  which 


CICERO'S  CONTEMPORARIES  AND   SUCCESSORS.     i8c 

is  the  danger  to  which  those  who  aim  at  the  impressive  style 
are  most  exposed. 

"  Whosoever  traffics  with  foemen  to  betray  the  fatherland 
will  never  pay  a  fitting  penalty;  no,  not  though  he  be  driven 
headlong  to  be  engulfed  of  Neptune.  So  it  repenteth  him 
who  hath  fashioned  mountains  of  war,  abolished  fair  fields  of 
peace." 

This  corresponds  to, '^  Who  is  there  among  you,  judges,  to 
be  able  to  devise  lit  and  due  punishment  for  a  man  who  has 
devised  to  betray  tlie  fatherland  to  enemies?  What  misdeed 
can  be  compared  with  this  wickedness?  what  worthy  chastise- 
ment be  found  for  this  misdeed?"  and  so  on  for  twenty  or 
thirty  lines  more,  winding  up  with  a  rather  tame  display  of  in- 
genuity. The  writer  knew  that  the  worst  that  could  be  done 
with  a  traitor  was  to  banish  him,  and  so,  when  he  lias  spent 
all  his  rhetoric  on  heightening  the  guilt  of  treason,  he  con- 
cludes that  his  words  are  too  weak  for  the  horror  of  the  fact  • 
but  he  finds  this  easier  to  bear,  because  the  judges  will,  out 
of  their  abounding  zeal  for  the  country,  drive  the  traitor  head- 
long from  the  country  which  he  sought  to  bring  under  the 
yoke  of  filthy  enemies. 

The  author  is  not  satisfied  with  a  specimen  of  each  of  the 
three  styles  which  an   orator  requires  to  practise:  he  gives 
specimens  of  most  of  the  different  figures  or  ways  in  which  a 
point  can  be  put ;  and  it  is  among  these  that  we  find  the  pas- 
sages that  read  like  criticism  of  Cicero.     That  the  criticism 
is  veiled  is  hardly  surprising,  for  Cicero  himself  shrank  from 
criticising  his  contemporaries,  as  we  see  from  the  amount  of 
pressure  that  he  describes  in  the  "  Brutus,"  before  he  will  pay 
his  tribute  of  vague  eulogy  to  Caesar  and  candid  courtesy  to 
Hortensius,  and  justify  his  own  self-complacency  by  a  depre- 
catory description  of  his  own  training  and  endeavors.     Who- 
ever the  author  was,  he  had  more  reason  to  avoid  challenging 
a  collision  with  Cicero  than  Cicero  had  to  shun  collisTons 
with  others,  though  Cicero  lacked  the  best  defence  for  his  rep- 
utation.    With  all  his  endeavors,  he  never  founded  a  school 
of  oratorv. 

The  only  speaker  who  seriously  tried  to  form  himself  upon 


i86 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


him  was  M.  Claudius  IVIarcellus,  consul  51  B.C.,  who  was  in 
exile  at  Mytilene  when  Cicero  wrote.     He  was  a  vehement 
opponent  of  Cxsar,  and  delayed  his   return   from   exile  for 
nearly  a  year  after  he  had  been  pardoned.     He  was  an  ac- 
complished and  very  painstaking  speaker,  who  naturally  fol- 
lowed the  greatest  and  most  laborious  of  contemporary  ora- 
tors; and  his  fine  voice  and  dignity  of  presence  gave  grace  to 
the  imitation.     Afterwards  he  was  completely  forgotten,  and 
the  praise  which  Cicero  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Brutus,  high 
as  it  is,  sounds  a  little  perfunctory.     Something  of  the  same 
perfunctory  tone  is  to  be  traced  in  all  that  is  said  of  the  elo- 
quence of  C.  Julius  Caesar:  his  greatness  left  men  under  the 
impression  that  he  was,  or  might  have  been,  a  consummate 
orator,  for  in  the  early  part  of  his  career  he  had  been  a  fre- 
quent and  effective  speaker.     Cicero  gives  us  to  understand 
that  he  and  Marcellus  were,  among  politicians  of  mark,  the 
only  speakers  to  be  named  in  the  same  breath  with  himself. 
As  he  leaves  Brutus  to  characterize  Marcellus,  so  he  sets  At- 
ticus  to  characterize  Cxsar.     It  is  clear  that  Caesar's  special 
distinction  was  that  he  spoke  better  Latin  than  any  statesman 
of  the  day.     Cicero  was  a  great  master  of  the  language,  but 
he  had  learned  it,  while  Cxsar  knew  it  by  hereditary  instinct. 
Again,  Cxsar  was  content  with  the  language  as  it  stood  at  its 
best,  and  only  cared  for  the  utmost  attainable  consistency  of 
usage,  while  Cicero  wished  to  enrich  and  vary  the  language, 
and  in  the  judgment  of  Cxsar  succeeded  admirably.     Being 
a  very  able  man,  he  naturally  had  some  share  of  most  of  the 
recognized  merits  of  the  day.     The  praise  which  both  Cicero 
and  Tacitus  give,  after  they  have  done  justice  to  his  Latin  and 
his  general  ability,  turns  upon  something  that  they  call  "splen- 
dor."    All  the  orators  of  Cicero's  age,  according  to  Tacitus, 
stand  together  on  a  far  higher  level  than  his  own  contempo- 
raries, and  "splendor"  is  the  special  grace  of  Cxsar.     Cicero 
is  a  little  fuller.     There  was  nothing  tricky  or  puzzling  in 
Cxsar's  way  of  speaking  :  everything  was  clear  and  bright  as 
in  full  sunshine;    his  voice,  his  figure,  his  bearing  when  he 
spoke,  had  all  something  high-bred  and  magnificent  about 
them.     This  seems  to  apply  to  the  speeches  of  his  maturity; 


CICERO'S  CONTEMPORARIES  AND  SUCCESSORS.     187 

according  to  Suetonius,  when  young  he  had  imitated  the  easy, 
humorous  vein  of  the  elder  Cxsar.     Perhaps  the  prosecution 
of  Dolabella  might  have  succeeded  better  if  the  prosecutor, 
then  only  twenty-two  years  old,  had  been  unmistakably  seri- 
ous.    Apparently  this  was  not  the  speech  by  which  later  stu- 
dents judged  him;  and  later  students  judged  him  amiss,  for 
he  took  very  little  pains  about  the  publication  of  his  speeches; 
and  Augustus  had  to  protest  with  some  vigor  that  most  of  the 
speeches  which  circulated  in  his  name  were  an  entirely  inad- 
equate compilation  from  the  public  records  and  private  tradi- 
tion.    Apparently  the  speech  for  a  certain  Samnite,  Decius, 
was  authentic,  and  therefore  critics  fastened  upon  it  and  found 
it  tedious;  as  they  found  Brutus's  speech  on  behalf  of  King 
Deiotarus.     Neither  speaker  was  in  a  position  to  be  passion- 
ate and  effective  at  all  hazards  :  when  the  ascendency  of  Sulla 
or  of  Cxsar  was  at  its  height,  the  advocate  of  a  Samnite  or  of 
a  king  who  had  sided  with  Pompeius  was  obliged  to  be  cau- 
tious.    Either  speech  may  have  been  a  well-considered  mani- 
festo on  behalf  of  a  defeated  party,  all  the  more  valuable  at 
the  time  for  being  too  temperate  for  posterity.     Cxsar  took 
no  pains  to  preserve  the  elaborate  addresses  which  he  issued 
daily  when  he  was  curule  xdile  and  was  restoring  the  statues 
of  ]\Lirius.     Perhaps  Quinctilian,  who  flnds  in  his  speeches 
the  same  vigor,  the  same  rapid  insight,  the  same  decisive  en- 
ergy as  in  his  campaigns,  may  be  thinking  of  the  brief  records 
of  what  he  said  when  his  position  in  the  state  was  secure.    The 
phrase  is  not  merely  conventional,  for  he  thinks  a  student 
might  gain  by  studying  Cxsar  as  well  as  Cicero,  and  so  add 
some  additional  vigor  to  the  completeness  and  grace  which 
he  might  learn  from  Cicero.     As  a  man  of  action  he  could 
be  round  and  peremptory  beyond  the  ordinary  measure  of 
speakers  who  lived  upon  the  applause  of  an  audience. 

An  exceedingly  elegant  speaker,  who  had,  and  sought,  no 
political  position,  was  M.  Calidius.  He  hardly  stood  above 
the  common  crowd  of  advocates,  but  among  them  he  was  quite 
unique.  If  he  had  had  the  power  of  contagious  passion,  he 
would  have  been  a  great  orator:  as  it  was,  he  was  a  most  ex- 
quisite and  ingenious  advocate,  who  never  missed  the  real 


i88 


LA  TLV  LITEKA  TURK. 


point  of  a  case,  and  delighted  connoissems  by  tlie  perfect 
clearness  ofhis  explanation  and  by  the  felicity  of  his  diction, 
which  seemed  perfectly  natural  and  appropriate,  in  spite  of 
an  abundant  display  of  ornament  of  all  kinds— rhetorical  fic^. 
urcs,  musical  cadences  (which  were  never  obtruded),  and  met 
aphors  which  came  in  without  effort.      He  dealt  much  in  aph- 
orisms of  a  kind  whose  application  it  was  difficult  to  discover 
until  they  had  been  enunciated  in  his  smooth,  easy,  transpar- 
ent language      He  is  only  known  by  the  high  praise  which 
Cicero  gives  him,  which  perhaps  is  higher  because  he  had 
once  treated  him  very  cruelly  in  open  court.     Calidius  ac- 
cused one  Cn.  Gcliius  of  an  attempt  to  poison  him,  and  set 
lorth  the  case  with  his  accustomed  neatness  and  precision 
Cicero  sa.d  what  was  to  be  said  in  reply,  and  then  told  Ca- 
lidius he  was  a  great  deal  too  cool  about  such  a  char-e  to 
have  believed  in  it.     While  making  it  he  had  never  slapped 
his  forehead  or  his  thigh;  he  had  not  so  much  as  stamped  his 
loot.     So  far  from  moving  the  court,  he  had  almost  sent  it  to 
sleep. 

_    The  generation  who  were  young  when  Cicero  was  celebrated 
inc  uded  three  considerable  speakers  who  passed  away  while 
still  young:  C.  Curio,  .M.  Ca^lius  Rufus,  and  C.  Licinius  Cal- 
vus.     Of  these  Curio  was,  upon  the  whole,  the  most  important 
as  a  politician,  and  perhaps  not  the  least  effective  as  an  ora- 
tor.    Cicero  regrets  that,  after  trying  to  make  his  way  with 
the  approval  of  the  nobility  and  all  respectable  citizens,  he 
decided  to  pay  his  debts  by  siding  with  Cx-sar.     He,  like  his 
father,  was  noted  rather  for  energy  than  for  skilful  argument 
or  literary  culture.     He  was  not  indiflerent  to  purely  oratori- 
ca  training  though,  according  to  Cicero,  he  was  more  remark- 
able for  zeal  than  diligence. 

M.  Cffilius  Rufus  pained  Cicero  in  the  same  wav,  though  he 
lived  ong  enough  to  turn  against  Caesar  as  too  conservative 
out  of  an  insatiable  desire  to  fish  in  troubled  waters  His 
speeches  were  more  read  than  Curio's,  though  he  filled  less 
space  in  history.  He  made  his  three  best  speeches  compara- 
tively early  and  unlike  Calidius,  who  spoke  best  in  defence, 
he  was  celebrated  as  an  accuser.     He  prosecuted  C.  Antonius 


fc> 


CICERO'S  CONTEMPORARIES  AND  SUCCESSORS.     189 

in  59  B.C.  for  his  malversations  in  Macedonia,  and  L.  Sempro- 
nius  Atratinus;  the  third  accused  was  cither  D.  La^lius  or  Q. 
Pompeius  Rufus,  who  was  tribune  53  B.C.,  and  who  was  sedi- 
tious in  support  of  .Milo.    Wlien  curule  icdile  he  dehvered  sev- 
eral harangues  to  the  people  which  were  all  in  favor  of  strict- 
ness of  administration  :  one,  on  the  variety  of  frauds  in  the 
management  of  aqueducts,  had  been  read  with  diligence  by 
Frontinus  in  the  latter  part  of  the  first  century  a.d.  "^Hc  was 
celebrated  both  for  his  wit  and  for  a  certain  air  of  elevation 
He  had  a  very  happy  knack  of  inventing  details  and  pourin- 
contcmpt  upon  his  opponents.     Phrases  like  a  ">/-//////<r  ciy 
temnestra"  and  a  "barley-husk  rhetorician"  made  a  reputa- 
tion which  it  is  not  easy  to  explain.     \xx  many  places  it  was 
thought  he  anticipated  the  tone  which  passed  for  elevation 
and  brilliancy  among  fashionable  speakers  in  the  reign   of 
Vespasian,  who  thought  the  average  speaking  of  that  genera- 
tion tame  and  homely.     Quinctilian  praises  his  **  asperity" 
he  knew  how  to  set  the  minds  of  the  court  on  edge  against  a 
prisoner,  which  is  a  different  gift  from  the  power  of  iirtlamin- 
men's  mmds,  which   Cicero  claims  for  himself  and  for  any 
first-class  orator.     Cx^lius  left  the   court  cool,  but  he   made 
them  bitter.     The  longest  passage  we  have  from  him  is  a  la- 
bored description  of  the  trouble  Antonius's  concubines  and 
centurions  had  to  rouse  him  from  his  drunken  sleep  to  fight 
Catalina.     Cicero  would  have  delighted  in  contrastino-  such 
behavior  with  the  ideal  of  a  general  officer,  especially^!  gen- 
eral who  had  to  defend  Rome  against  a  Catalina.     But  there 
IS  not  a  hint  of  this  in  Cxlius:  he  is  content  with  a  finished 
picture  of  a  contemptible  sot.     Coarse  as  the  description  is 
It  IS  quoted  with  approbation  by  Quinctilian,  and  was  not  one 
of  the  passages  which  savored  of  the  shabby  diction  and  dis- 
jointed, ill-fitting  phrases  that  marked  Cselius  as  slill  one  of 
the  ancients. 

Like  Cailius,  C.  Licinius  Calvus  marks  a  stage  in  the  transi- 
tion from  Cicero  to  the  eloquence  of  the  days  of  Nero  Both 
were  born  in  the  same  year  and  day,  and  Calvus,  too,  distin- 
guished himself  young:  he  was  twenty-seven  when  he  accused 
\  atmius  (54  B.C.),  and,  though  he  lived  some  five  years  loncrer 


IQO 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


none  of  his  other  speeches  were  worth  reading.     He  was  the 
son  of  C.  Licinius  Macer,  himself  an  acrid  politician,  and  a 
zealous,  if  not  effective,   speaker,   and   a  diligent   historian. 
Like  his  father,  he  attacked  all  that  was  foremost  in  the  state. 
But,  where  his  father  had  attacked  the  nobility,  he  attacked 
Caesar  and  Pompeius,  against  whom  he  also  made  war  with 
epigrams  in  the  manner  of  his  friend  Catullus.     In  the  same 
spirit  he  lent  himself  to  the  growing  public  which  was  tiring 
of  Cicero,  as  their  predecessors  had  tired  of  Hortensius.     He 
dwelt  on  the  contrast  between  Cicero's  exuberance  and  the 
terser  energy  of  the  Attic  orators.     Cicero  had  been  consid- 
ered Attic  compared  with  the  Asiatic  exuberant  luxuriance  of 
Hortensius;  but  Calvus  was  determined  that  his  Attic  purism 
should  make  Cicero  seem  Asiatic  in  his  turn.     As  late  as 
Quinctilian's  day  there  were  still  some  who  preferred  him  to 
Cicero.     The  most  definite  testimony  of  his  power  was  the 
acclamation  of  Vatinius,  who  could  not  refrain  from  starting 
up  in  court  with  a  cry,  "  Pray  you,  judges,  am  I  to  be  undone 
because  he  is  eloquent?"  Fragm.ents  from  his  speeches  against 
Vatinius  are  remarkable  for  their  intensity  of  conviction.     He 
began  :  "  I  am  going  to  accuse  the  boldest  man  of  our  city  of 
faction.     He  is  rich  and  mean,  with  an  evil  tongue."     He 
dared  him  to  harden  his  impudent  forehead  to  say  that  he  de- 
served to  be  made  praitor  before  Cato.     If  he  was  acquitted, 
it  was  not  only  the  law  of  embezzlement,  but  the  law  of  trea- 
son ;  not  only  the  law  of  treason,  but  the  Plautian  law  (against 
sedition);  not  only  the  Plautian  law,  but  the  law  against  bri- 
bery ;  not  only  the  law  of  bribery,  but  all  laws  and  judgments 
altogether,  that  would  be  brought  to  no  effect.     He  told  the 
court  that  they  all  knew  there  had  been  bribery,  and  that  all 
knew  that   they  knew  it.     He  concluded,  as  \isual,  with  a 
prayer  that  Jupiter  and  all  the  immortal  gods  might  do  him 
good  as  surely  as  he  was  persuaded  in  his  mind  that  there 
was  evidence  to  convince  any  child  of  Vatinius's  guilt.     And 
this  speech  was  not  only  animated  by  intense  and  acrimonious 
conviction,  but  adorned  with  a  choice  vocabulary  and  with 
plenty  of  skilfully  veiled  aphorisms.     His  cadences  were,  for 
the  most  part,  severe ;  that  is  to  say,  the  proportion  of  long 


CICERaS  COXTEMPORARIES  AXD  SUCCESSORS.    191 

syllables  with  consonants  was  large,  and  the  short  syllables 
were  made  to  depend  unmistakably  upon  the  long;  the  voice 
was  not  allowed  to  play  among  a  number  of  short  open  sylla- 
bles, and  then  rest  upon  two  or  three  long  syllables  at  the 
end.  It  was  quite  a  wonderful  phenomenon  when,  in  defend- 
ing Messius,  who  had  been  accused  three  times  over,  he  con- 
descended to  cadences  like  "Credite  mihi  judices  non  est 
turpe  misereri,"  which  were  soft,  not  to  say  incoherent,  com- 
pared with  the  ringing  phrases  in  which  the  eager  tones  had 
travelled  in  serried  movement  from  one  strongly  accented 
syllable  to  another.  I'he  severity  of  method  which  Calvus 
adopted  in  his  speeches  against  Vatinius  had  probably  been 
instinctive.  Afterwards  he  made  a  system  of  correcting  him- 
self and  retrenching  superfluities,  till  he  became  meagre  and 
tiresome;  but  to  the  last  he  was  always  well  before  the  pub- 
lic, and  was  an  effective  critic  of  Cicero. 

In  this  work  he  was  joined  by  another  uncompromising  re- 
publican, M.  Prutus,  the  nephew  of  Cato,  the  nominal  leader 
of  the  conspiracy  against  Caesar,  who,  though  he  gave  him  of- 
fice, refused  him  a  career.  Cicero,  who  was  a  correspondent 
of  Calvus,  in  spite  of  oratorical  jealousies,  was  intimate  with 
Brutus,  who  also  criticised  his  speeches  with  quite  as  much 
candor  as  friendliness.  Brutus  was  very  rich,  very  well  edu- 
cated, and  very  industrious:  and,  though  there  were  one  or 
two  stories  which  suggested  that  he  was  avaricious,  he  was 
thought  to  be,  upon  the  whole,  a  very  high-principled  and  con- 
sistent man.  Cicero  thought  it  tragical  that  a  man  with  such 
a  training  should  have  no  chance  of  speaking  in  the  courts  or 
the  senate  and  making  himself  felt  as  he  deserved,  at  a  time 
when  Caesar's  single  will  decided  all  the  questions  which  had 
hitherto  been  settled  by  the  friction  of  public  opinion,  per- 
sonal and  family  influence.  "Public  business"  was  at  a 
standstill  in  the  sense  in  which  Romans  understood  it,  and 
Brutus  was  just  beginning  to  enter  public  life  when  the  crash 
came.  He  had  the  opportunity  of  defending  Appius  Clau- 
dius, his  father-in-law,  and  of  delivering  a  speech  in  his  honor 
at  his  funeral,  and  these  were  the  only  speeches  he  made  un- 
der normal  conditions.     He  defended  King  Deiotarus  in  Cjc- 


192 


LATIN-  LITERATURE. 


sar's  camp  at  Nicomedia,  and  harangued  the  people  from  the 
Capitol  after  the  slaughter  of  Citsar,  and  published  his  ha- 
rangue after  sending  it  in  vain  for  Cicero  to  correct.  Cicero 
thought  his  speeches  in  general  listless  and  disjointed:  there 
was  no  flow  of  passion  to  carry  the  hearers  from  one  head 
of  the  discourse  to  another;  the  diction  was  perfect,  the  dis- 
quisition a  masterpiece  of  ingenuity;  there  were  plenty  of 
brilliant  points  well  put,  but  Cicero  said  that  in  Drulus's  place 
he  would  have  written  with  more  heat.  Brutus's  coldness  did 
not  come  from  want  of  courage.  lie  wrote  a  speech  in  rivalry 
with  Cicero  to  show  how  Milo  ought  to  have  been  defended, 
taking  the  line  that,  as  the  republic  was  well  rid  of  Clodiusi 
Milo  was  not  to  blame  for  putting  him  out  of  the  way. 

Brutus  was  born  three  years  before  Calvus,  though  his  rep- 
utation, such  as  it  was,  came  later.     He  was  born  ten  years 
before   C.  Asinius   Pollio,  sixteen  years   before   M.  Valerius 
Messalla.     Pollio  lived  almost  to  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Au- 
gustus, and   Messalla   lived  halfway  through   it.     Jjoth  were 
reckoned  the  last  orators  of  the  old  school.     The  triumvirs 
were  far  more  oppressive  than  Caesar  had  ever  been,  but  when 
the  proscriptions  were  over  *' public  business"  went  on  again 
at  Kome.     Pollio,  like  Calvus  and  Brutus,  was  dissatisfied 
with  Cicero  as  an  orator,  and  both  in  his  speeches  and  his 
histories  attacked  his  political  honor  as  well  as  his  oratory. 
His  own  ambition  was  versatile:  he  was  not  only  an  historian 
and  an  orator,  but  a  writer  of  tragedies ;  and  boUi  as  a  trage- 
dian and  as  an  orator  his  tastes  were  antique.     Accius  ami 
Pacuvius  were  to  be  traced  in  his  speeches  and  in  his  plays. 
Having  from  the  first  been  an  intimate,  and  at  first  almost  an 
equal,  of  Antonius  and  Octavian,  his  position  in  the  state  was 
independent  of  his  literary  and  oratorical  gifts,  which  he  exer- 
cised mainly  as  accomplishments.     He  said  himself  that,  as 
he  could  manage  a  case  nicely,  he  came  to  have  many  cases 
to  manage;  and,  having  many  cases  to  manage,  he  could  not 
manage  them  so  nicely.     He  was  very  painstaking,  and  ar- 
gued his  cases  more  thoroughly,  apparently,  than  any  other 
speaker.     He  was  famous  for  "diligence,"  as  Calvus  was  fa- 
mous for  "judgment."     He  was  also  tamous  among  his  ad- 


CICERO'S  CONTEMPORARIES  AND  SUCCESSORS. 


193 


miiers  for  harmonious  cadence,  the  one  ornament  that  he  did 
not  eschew.     It  seems  he  corrected  himself  into  being  dull, 
as  Calvus  corrected  himself  into  being  meagre  ;  he  overloaded 
his  speeches  with  arguments  of  all  kinds,  and  was  afraid  of 
superliuity  of  everything  else;  he  came  so  very  fiir  short  of 
beinir  as  brilliant  and  a^ireeable  as  Cicero  that  he  seemed  to 
belong  to  an  earlier  generation.     Many  of  his  speeches  were 
on  charges  of  poisoning  which  were  brought  against  Greek 
rhetoricians  and  other  adherents  of  Cx'sar,  and  show  what  a 
venomous  atmosphere  of  scandal  and  suspicion  pervaded  the 
city   after  the   campaigns   of  Mutina   and    Philippi.     It  was 
noticed  that  he  was  the  first  orator  of  consequence  who  had 
ever  pleaded  before  the  centumviri,  a  court  which  seems  to 
have  represented  the  jurisdiction  of  the  comitia  centuriata, 
and  was  specially  concerned  with  questions  of  inheritance. 
He  defended  the  heirs  of  Urbinia  against   a  claimant   who 
professed  to  be  her  son,  and  who  could  find  no  better  advo- 
cate than  T.  Labienus,'  who  was  extremely  unpopular  among 
all  the  large  class  who  hoped  for  a  revival  of  respectability 
and   prosperity  iiiulcr  Augustus,  because  he   insisted   upon 
dwelling  on  the  seamy  side  of  things.     Consequently,  Pollio 
was  able  to  make  it  an  arirument  that  the  other  side  must 
have  a  bad  case  since  no  decent  counsel  would  take  it  up. 

Messalla,  like  Pollio,  began  to  speak  before  the  war  of 
Pharsalia.  \\\  his  first  case  he  was  opposed  to  Sulpicius 
Kufus,  the  first  jurist  of  the  age  of  Cicero,  and  a  not  unsat- 
isfactory speaker.  But  the  greater  part  of  his  activity  fell 
after  he  had  reconciled  himself  with  Octavian,  by  whose  favor 
he  rose  to  be  consul  in  the  year  of  Actium.  He  had  the 
honor  of  completing  the  reduction  of  Aquitaine,  and  was  re- 
warded with  a  triumph  ;  but  to  the  last  he  stood  somewhat 
aloof  from  the  new  monarchy.  He  was  not  in  any  sense  in 
opposition  ;  but  his  position  was  very  like  that  of  great  nobles 
under  the  Republic,  who  had  more  dignity  than  influence, 
'fhis  position  affected  his  oratory  in  a  curious  way.  He  al- 
ways began  in  a  tone   of  deprecatory  irony  :  he  had   weak 

'  The  son  of  Cscsar's  lieutenant,  who  had  joined  Pompeius  on  the  out- 
break of  the  civil  war. 

I.-O 


194 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


I  I 
L 


health,  he  was  not  a  match  for  the  counsel  on  the  other  side 
in  ability  or  influence,  the  court  must  not  expect  much  from 
him.  He  had  really  his  full  share  of  patrician  pride ;  he 
was  most  exact  in  the  refinement  of  his  Latinity,  and  when 
he  went  to  hear  M.  Porcius  Latro,  a  celebrated  declaimer,  he 
admitted  that  he  was  eloquent,  in  a  language  of  his  own, 
which  was  not  Latin.  In  spite  of  his  deprecatory  beginnings 
and  a  general  want  of  energy,  his  speeches  had  an  air  of  di^s- 
tinction  and  refinement  worthy  of  Iiis  ancient  and  illustrious 
house.  Compared  with  Cicero,  he  was  mellower  and  more 
agreeable  '  (were  there  readers  who  found  Cicero's  endless 
eager  display  a  little  crude  and  oppressive  .^),  and  he  took 
more  pains  with  his  vocabulary.  Festus  illustrates  this  by 
quoting  a  passage  where  he  called  a  bad  woman  "this  decay 
and  destruction  of  all  the  house."  Tlie  same  half-archaic, 
half-metaphorical  use  oi  tabes  was  common  in  Sallust ;  but 
Cicero,  though  on  his  guard  against  any  approach  to  vulgar- 
ity, and  quite  sufficiently  ready  to  admit  a  metaphor  on  its 
own  merits,  was  so  much  opposed  to  archaism  and  caprice  as 
seriously  to  limit  his  vocabulary  in  some  directions  and  throw 
him  back  upon  the  commonplace. 

'  "Mitior  ct  dulcior." 


LATER  AXiXALISTS  Al^D  MEMOIR-WRITERS. 


195 


CHAPTER  HI. 

LATER  HISTORIANS  OF   THE  REPUBLIC. 
LATER   ANNALISTS   AND    MEMOIR-WRITERS. 

We  know  comparatively  little  of  the  annalists  and  In'sto- 
nans  of  the  period  between  the  Gracchi  and  Sulla  except 
their  names,  and  whether  they  wrote  in  Greek  or  Latin  •  for 
the  most  part,  they  were  little  quoted  after  the  age  of  Cicero 
who  found  them,  upon  the  whole,  unreadable,  though  on  one 
occasion,  when  he  was  trying  to  occupy  himself  w'ith  litera- 
ture in  the  interval  between  the  African  and  the  Spanish  war 
he  expressed  his  vexation  at  not  having  the  history  of  Ven- 
nonius :  perhaps  he  wanted  it  for  his  work  on  the  ancient 
orators. 

§  I.  The  most  important,  and  probably  the  earliest,  was 
Cn.  Gelhus,  whom  his  namesake  Aulus  quotes  now  and  their 
for  odd  phrases,  while  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  seems  to 
have  taken  him  for  his  principal  source  of  the  early  history 
and  others  had  done  so  before  him,  for  on  one  occasion  he 
quotes  Gelhus  and  his  school,  perhaps  Greek  litterateurs  and 
grammarians  like  himself,  who  were  attracted  to  a  writer  so 
copious  that  he  filled  two  books  or  more  before  he  came  to 
the  rape  of  the  Sabines.^  There  were  at  least  thirty  books  al- 
together, and  it  is  generally  held  that  they  are  not  to  be  re- 
gretted, for  none  of  the  other  sources  of  Roman  antiquities 
bear  out  the  numerous  details  of  ancient  law  and  usa-e 
which  it  is  held  that  Dionysius  took  from  him. 

§  2.  M.  ^milius  Scaurus,  the  well-known  Princeps  Sena- 
tus,  wrote  three  books  on  his  own  life  which  Cicero  compared 

nnrtlMi.^''"^''?^  ^^'''^^''' '''"  '^'^  ^^  ^^^^^"^"^'  ^^'^^^^  ^he  S^biiie  women 
parted  the  combatants,  came  in  the  third  book. 


196 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


lo  Xenophon :  they  were  full  of  grammatical  oddities,  like 
sagittis  confidus  instead  of  confixits,  and  poteratur  and  possUur, 
for  which  there  is  more  to  be  said  :  it  is  rather  illogical  to 
say  a  thing  is  able  to  be  done  ;  though  if  Scaurus  had  retiect- 
ed  that  possum  is  compounded  with  the  substantive  verb,  he 
would  hardly  have  attempted  to  endow  it  with  a  passive. 

P.  Rutilius  Rufus,  whose  orations  have  been  mentioned  al- 
ready, wrote  an  autobiographical  history  of  his  own  times, 
apparently  both  in  Greek  and  Latin,  during  his  retreat  at 
Smyrna. 

Q.  Lutatius  Catulus,  the  successor  of  Scaurus,  who  divided 
with  Marius  the  glory  of  conquering  the  Cimbri,  wrote  an 
account  of  his  victories  addressed  to  his  friend  the  poet  Fu- 
rius,  for  which  Quinctilian  reproduced  Cicero's  compliment 
to  Scaurus.  He  also  wrote  four  books  at  least  of  what  he 
called  Communis  Historia,  perhaps  in  opposition  to  the  His- 
toria  Sacra. 

Rutilius  and  Catulus  both  belong,  in  one  sense,  to  the  pe- 
riod of  Sulla,  but  they  made  their  reputations  before  he  made 
his  ;  while  Cn.  Aufidius,  almost  the  last  of  the  Greek  histo- 
rians, a  blind  prx^torian  who  had  a  keen  sight  in  letters,  as 
Cicero  said,  was  a  contemporary,  if  we  may  trust  Velleius 
Paterculus,  of  Q.  Claudius  Quadrigarius,  L.  Valerius  Antias, 
and  L.  Cornelius  Sisenna. 

§  3.  The  first  of  these  has  sometimes  been  identified,  on 
no  very  clear  grounds,  with  a  translator  of  Acilius  Glabrio, 
who,  to  judge  by  Plutarch,  also  began  his  history  with  the 
capture  of  Rome  by  the  Gauls— at  least,  he  stated  that  the 
official  lists  before  that  date  were  wholly  untrustworthy. 
Nothing  is  known  of  the  date  of  Quadrigarius  except  the 
mention  of  him  in  Velleius.  His  history  did  not  go  back 
beyond  the  capture  of  Rome  by  the  Gauls,  and  extended  at 
least  to  the  capture  of  Athens  by  Sulla,  82  B.C.  It  was  a 
favorite  work  when  the  reaction  set  in  against  the  richness 
of  the  Augustan  age  and  the  epigrammatic  style  which  came 
in  afterwards.  There  is  no  writer  whom  Aulus  Gellius  quotes 
with  more  predilection ;  and  Fronto,  whose  word  was  law 
when  archaism  came  into  fashion,  pronounced  that  Claudius 


o 


T  A  'rrXT    T  TTJ7T?  A  TTTPP 


LA  TER  AiVXALiSTS  AND  MEMOIR.  WRITERS.       197 

had  written  iepide  while  Valerius  Antias  wrote  invenuste  and 
Sisenna  lofigiuque. 

It  is  assumed  that  he  belonged  to  a  plebeian  branch  of  the 
Claudian  house,  as  the  praenomen  Quintus  is  never  known  to 
appear  in  the  patrician    line;  his   surname   is   probably  de- 
rived from   an   ancestor  with   a   taste  for  magnificence,  but 
there  is  little  trace  of  party  feeling  of  any  kind  in  his  history. 
He  seems  to  have  limited  his  subject,  not  because  he  antici- 
pated modern  criticism,  but  simply  because  he  did  not  wish 
to  entangle  himself  in  the  labyrinth  of  the  old  Fasti.     He 
was  as  careless  as  any  one  in  the  numbers  which  he  reported, 
and  Livy  records  two  occasions  where  he  outdoes  Valerius 
Antias,  giving  forty  thousand  killed  and  taken  where  Valerius 
gives  ten,  and  twenty-seven  thousand  where  he  gives  twenty. 
In  spite  of  this,  Livy  uses  him  very  freely  from  the  middle 
of  the  fifth  book  of  the  first  decade,  and  returns  to  him  at  the 
beginning  of  the  fourth  decade,     \x^  the  third  it  is  generally 
held,  since  the  investigations  of  Nissen,  that  he  confined  him- 
self pretty  closely  to  Polybius  and  Cailius  Antipater.     Nor 
did  he  abandon  Polybius  in  the  later  books,  though  after  the 
second  Punic  war  Polybius  ceased  to  be  an  adequate  guide 
for  Roman  history.     Even  Nissen  renounces  the  endeavor  to 
ascertain  what  is  taken  from  Claudius  and  what  from  Vale- 
rius Antias,  though  it  is  clear  that  the  trial  of  Scipio  contains 
an  amalgam  of  the  accounts  of  both. 

His  style  certainly  deserves  the  praise  bestowed  upon  it 
A  man,  without  disparagement  to  his  judgment,  might  find  it 
a  relief  after  Livy,  just  as  nowadays  a  reader  might  turn  with 
relief  to  Froissart  from  Gibbon  or  Robertson.     Claudius  to 
judge  by  his  fragments,  was  a  very  clear,  lively,  and  distinct 
writer,  who  makes  a  succession  of  separate  and  vivid  impres- 
sions in  an  unforced  and  natural  w^ay.     Now  this  succession 
of  vivid  impressions,  coming  too  thick  for  the  reader  to  be 
long  detained  by  any,  is  precisely  what  Tacitus  aims  at  and 
accomplishes  by  the  most  elaborate  and  recherche  combina- 
tions and  suggestions.     Here  is  a  specimen  of  the  reception 
of  Metellus:  ''Macedonicus  Romam  venit ;  vix  superat  quin 
tnumphans  descendat.     Contione  dimissa  Metellus  in  Capi- 


198 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


tolium  venit  cum  multis  mortalibus,  inde  domum  proficiscitur ; 
tota  civitas  eiim  reduxit." 

§  4.  Valerius  Antias  was  probably  a  descendant  of  L.  Va- 
lerius Antias,  who  was  prastor  B.C.  202,  so  that  no  inference 
can  be  drawn  from  his  name  that  he  was  not  a  native  Roman, 
though  his  family,  no  doubt,  belonged  to  the  colony.  The 
latest  date  mentioned  in  his  history  is  91  B.C.,  and  there  were 
at  least  seventy-five  books  of  it.  For  the  early  history  of  the 
republic  he  was  certainly  the  principal  source  of  Livy,  who, 
for  the  most  part,  reports  his  monstrous  numbers  without 
comment  or  suspicion.  Later  on,  when  he  can  compare  him 
with  other  writers,  he  exclaims  at  his  exaggerations,  even 
when  they  admit  of  some  defence  ;  for  instance,  a  Greek 
writer  says  that  on  one  occasion  the  Romans  captured  sixty 
scorpions  large  and  small :  Valerius  says  they  captured  six 
thousand  large  and  thirteen  thousand  small.  Now,  if  Silenus 
was  speaking  of  the  engines  and  Valerius'  of  the  bolts  to  be 
discharged  from  them,  there  would  be  no  contradiction,  for 
three  hundred  and  thirty  or  forty  bolts  is  not  an  excessive 
average  for  a  single  engine.  He  owes  his  bad  name  to  Livy, 
who  used  him  more  than  other  writers  because  he  was  fuller, 
though  he  seems  to  think  that  his  scale  of  numbers  is  above 
theirs.  Vanity  cannot  have  been  the  motive  of  his  exaggera- 
tions, as  the  losses  of  the  Romans  when  defeated — e.g,^  at  the 
battle  of  Orange — are  quite  as  astounding  as  the  losses  of 
the  enemy  when  the  Romans  were  victorious.  It  is  not  pos- 
sible to  account  for  all  his  numbers  on  one  theory,  except, 
indeed,  we  think  they  were  invented.  None  of  them  are  real- 
ly stranger  than  the  early  census  of  the  Roman  people ;  and 
these,  though  far  in  advance  of  what  we  can  easily  imagine 
to  be  accurate,  are  very  detailed,  and  show  a  slow  though 
steady  increase,  not  without  occasional  fluctuations.  It  would 
explain  this  to  suppose  that  the  census  registered  not  only 
the  inhabitants  of  Rome  and  its  territorv,  but  also  the  citizens 
of  other  cities  who  were  entitled  to  take  up  the  Roman  fran- 
chise if  domiciled  at  Rome.  The  most  natural  explanation 
of  the  monstrous  numbers  killed  and  taken  is  to  be  found  in 

^  As  we  know  that  Licinius  Macer  did. 


LA  TER  ANNALISTS  AND  MEMOIR-  WRITERS.       i qo 

an  indiscriminate  use  of  funeral  orations,  where  it  would  be 
natural  first  to  record,  with  some  exaggeration,  the  number  of 
the  force  defeated,  then  to  identify  this  with  the  enemy's  loss  • 
for  the  same  heroes  were  praised  funeral  after  funeral,  and,  as 
new  heroes  came  to  be  added,  the  praise  of  the  old  would  be 
at  once  abridged  and  heightened.     Still,  when  all  is  said,  it  is 
probable  that  invention,  still  half-unconscious,  counted  for  a 
good   deal.     For   instance,  the   older   legend  knew  of  thirty 
Sabine  women  each  of  whom  gave  her  name  to  one  of  the 
thirty  wards  of  Rome,  each  of  which  probably  corresponded 
to  one  of  the  thirty  districts  of  the  Roman  territorv.     This  is 
guess-work  on  the  face  of  it,  though,  as  each  of  the\vards  had 
a  name  that  was  exactly  like  a  woman's  in  form,  the  guess 
lay  near  at  hand.     But  what  are  we  to  think  when  Vaferius 
knows  of  exactly  five  hundred  and  eighty-three.?     It  would 
be  a  favorable  conjecture  that  some  antiquary  had  made  a 
list  of  just  so  many  families  as  old  as  Romulus  :   if  so,  it  fol- 
lowed that  each  of  them  must  have  had  a  mother,  who,  as  the 
inmates  of  the  asylum  had  no  wives,  must  have  been  a  Sabine 
captive.     Besides,  we  are  familiar  with  the  habit  of  compara- 
tively modern  historians,  who  state  motives  and  results  with- 
out evidence,  and  without  a  sense  that  they  are  inventing  or 
even  drawing  inferences  :  it  would  not  be  strange  if  this  sfage 
which  we  are  just  leaving  behind  had  been  preceded  by\ 
stage  in  which  concrete  facts  were  asserted  with  the  same 
innocent  confidence. 

It  is  certain  that  Valerius  Antias  did  not  trouble  himself 
about  documents:  for  instance,  he  told  the  story  of  T.  Quin- 
tals Flamininus,  who  executed  a  prisoner  under  sentence,  to 
please  a  favorite,  without  reading  Cato's  speech  against  him. 

His  reputation,  which  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  witnesses, 
must  have  been  due  to  his  being  so  much  fuller  than  the  rest,' 
for  his  style  was  undistinguished,  and  the  grammarians  cite 
him  so  little  that  it  seems  as  if  he  wrote  the  common  lan- 
guage of  the  day  at  a  time  when  every  author  who  respected 
himself  liked  to  display  his  acquaintance  with  previous  litera- 
ture and  his  theories  of  grammar.  The  one  exception  to 
this  is  of  a  nature  to  prove  the  rule.     Gelh'us  (probably  after 


200 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Valerius  Piobus)  gives  several  instances  of  the  reduplicated 
perfects  like  "momordi,"  "spopondi,''  which  Valerius  wrote 
with  an  e^  though  the  stronger  vowel  held  its  ground  in  later 
literature.  'I'his  is  just  like  the  tendency  we  fuul  in  the  liter- 
ature of  the  early  eighteentii  century  to  substitute  the  familiar 
weak  perfect  for  the  exceptional  strong  one — "  catcht,"  for  in- 
stance, for  "caught."  AVhen  we  are  told  that  he  wrote  in- 
veniistCy  we  are  probably  to  understand  a  total  absence  of 
charm  and  also  a  tedious  diftuseness.  If  his  books  were  as 
long  as  Livy's,  the  earlier  and  the  later  portion  must  have 
been  treated  at  2:rcater  lenc^th,  while  the  Punic  and  Pvrrhic 
wars  must  have  been  shorter  ;  for  the  storv  of  Numa  and  hov/ 
he  made  Picus  and  T'aunus  drunk  comes  in  the  second  book, 
while  the  twenty-first  dealt  with  events  which  happened  156 
B.C.,  so  that  Valerius's  twenty-hrst  book  carried  the  reader 
more  than  eighty  years  later  than  Livy's. 

§  5.  L.  Cornelius  Sisenna  was  a  much  more  considerable 
personage,  but  not  so  popular  as  an  historian  as  Valerius. 
Cicero,  our  chief  authority  about  him,  gives  us  the  impression 
that  he  had  a  sort  of  claim  to  be  a  superior  person  without 
the  energy  to  carry  it  through:  he  had  a  chance  in  the  law- 
courts  ;  he  was  the  junior  of  Sulpicius  and  the  senior  of  Ilor- 
tensius,  but  both  eclipsed  him  in  turn,  He  was  a  sort  of  an 
orator  and  a  sort  of  an  historian,  in  Cicero's  judgment  a  bet- 
ter historian  than  any  of  his  predecessors  ;  he  was  also  a 
grammarian  and  a  novelist.  As  an  orator  he  made  himself 
ridiculous  by  his  affected  diction  ;  he  thought  that  common 
words  had  no  literary  value,  and  he  substituted  coined  words, 
like  "sputatilica,"  which  any  court  hack  could  rally  him  upon. 
His  history  was  the  work  of  his  later  life,  probably  composed 
after  78  b.c,  when,  as  we  know  by  a  decree  of  the  senate,  he 
was  praetor.  It  is  uncertain  whether  it  went  back  to  the  first 
years  of  the  city:  it  is  clear  that  he  wrote  of  the  beginnings 
of  the  city,  but  this  may  have  been  in  some  separate  work  : 
it  may  also  have  been  in  the  introduction  to  his  principal 
work  on  the  Marsian  war  and  the  achievements  of  Sulla. 
Sallust  thought  his  work  excellent  and  diligent,  but  not  free- 
spoken  enough  ;  we  know  very  little  of  it  except  that  in  the 


LATER  ANNALISTS  AND  MEMOIR^IVRITERS. 

second  book  he  had  an  elaborate  argument  against  the  si^r. 
nificance  of  dreams  from  an  Epicurean  point  of  view  in  con- 
nection with  the  dream  of  a  certain  CjEcilia,  which  he  nar- 
rated at  the  beginning  of  the  Social  War.     Apparently  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  episodical  matter  in  his  history.     Tacitus 
.  quotes  a  story  of  two  brothers  who  met  on  opposite  sides  in 
the  Civil  War,  and  one  killed  the  other,  and  when  he  reco<r- 
nized  him  killed  himself.     He  enlivened  his  history  with  doubt 
ful  stones,  as  we  learn  from  Ovid;  and,  besides,  he  translated 
the  Milesian  tales  of  Aristides,  which  were  licentious  advent- 
ures.   Pronto  recommended  him  as  the  most  elegant  of  licen- 
tious writers,  but  the  quotations  from  his  tales  and  from  the 
history  are  extremely  meagre,  so  that  it  is  difficult  to  jud-e 
what  merits  either  had.     What  struck  Cicero  besides  the  af- 
fected archaism  was  an  incompleteness  of  trainino-  •  it  seem- 
ed as  if  the  only  Greek  author  he  had  read  was  aitarchus 
who  wrote  a  romantic  history  of  Alexander  the  Great     What 
struck   Gellius   when  he  read  him,  if  he  read   him,  was  his 
fondness  for  adverbs  in  im,  like  "fluctuatim"  and  ''saltuatim" 
and  "veliicatim,"  which  occurs  in  a  passage  wbere  Sisenna 
announces  his  intention  of  preserving  the  unity  of  subiect  at 
the  expense  of  the  unity  of  time. 

§  6.  A  contemporary  and  friend  of  Sisenna  was  C  Licinius 
Macer  like  him  an  orator  as  well  as  an  historian,  who  appar- 
ently did  not  keep  up  the  kind  of  respectability  which  Sisenna 
did.  Cicero  speaks  of  him  always  with  a  sort  of  bitter  re- 
spect:  there  was  no  denying  that  he  mastered  his  cases  thor- 
oughly, but  he  had  no  manners  and  no  character,  and  not 
much  style.  As  an  historian  he  was  ingenious,  but  he  lacked 
Cxreek  culture,  and  his  insertions  of  speeches  and  letters  were 
nothing  but  a  display  of  impudence. 

He  seems,  like  Gellius,  to  have  busied  himself  with  such 
learning,  often  doubtful,  as  could  be  collected  from  purely 
Roman  sources.  Dionysius  quotes  him  twice  in  company 
vvith  Gelhus  for  not  paying  proper  attention  to  chronology 
the  first  case  is  not  a  very  bad  one ;  it  is  simply  that  Tar- 
quinius  Superbus  is  made  to  fight  at  the  battle  of  Lake  Re- 
gillus,  when  Dionysius  calculates  he  was  ninety-six  at  least 

L— Q* 


202 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


Livy  complains  that  he  extols  his  own  family  too  highly,  be- 
cause he  narrates  that  the  author  of  the  Licinian  Laws  named 
a  dictator  when  consul  with  the  laudable  object  of  disappoint- 
ing a  colleague  who  wished  to  stay  at  Rome  and  hold   the 
elections  to  make  sure  of  being  returned  again.     In  general, 
Livy  quotes  him  with  more  respect,  because  he  was  the  first . 
writer  who  had  consulted  the  Libri  Lintei,  or  lists  of  magis- 
trates which  were  preserved  in  the  Temple  of  ISIoneta,  having 
himself  been   a  mint  commissioner.     These  citations  throw 
little  light  on  the  general  plan  of  his  work,  and  the  only  real- 
ly interesting  fragment  has  been  preserved  by  a  late  Greek 
grammarian.      In  this   IVLacer  explains  that  Romulus   insti- 
tuted the  festival  of  the   IJrumalia,  at  which   he   kept   open 
house  for  such  as  had  no  house  of  their  own,  and  advised  the 
senators  to  do  the   like,  because  he   had  been   taunted  with 
havin"-  had  no  house  of  his  own  in  his  childhood  \  but  the 
writer  is  aware  that  the  institution  dates  from  a  time  when 
there  was  no  work  to  be  done  in  winter,  and  many  who  had 
no  means  of  living  through  a  winter  without  working.     It  is 
a  mere  accident  that  he  explains  this  by  an   incident  in  the 
early  life  of  Romulus,  for  Licinius  ascribed  everything  to  him 
systematically,  even  the  year  of  twelve  months  which  general 
tradition  ascribed  to  Numa. 

§  7.  Another  writer  who,  like  Licinius  Macer,  referred  to 
official  documents  was  Q.  .-f'Jius  Tubero,  whose  historical 
labors  had  begun  when  he  was  in  Asia  on  the  staff  of  the 
younger  Cicero,  in  60  n.c.  His  history  had  an  edifying  char- 
acter ;  but  we  do  not  know  much  else  of  it,  not  even  whether 
the  author  finished  his  work  or  left  it  to  be  finished  by  his 
namesake  Quintus.  Livy  quotes  him  as  appealing  to  the 
Linen  Books  on  the  question  of  the  consuls  of'the  year  323 
B.C.  Macer  quoted  them  too,  and  they  differed  ;  but  Livy 
does  not  make  it  clear  whether  Tubero  read  the  books  differ- 
ently or  trusted  them  less. 

§8.  The  fashion  of  Greek  memoirs  lasted  longer  than  that 
of  Greek  histories.  Sulla  was  engaged  up  to  a  few  days  be- 
fore his  death  on  the  twenty-second  book  of  his  "Memoirs," 
which  were  addressed  to  Lucullus  ;  and  Lucullus  himself  in 


LATER  AXXALISTS  AND  MEMOIR-WRITERS.       203 

his  youth  cast  lots  whether  lie  should  compose  in  prose  or 
verse,  or  Greek  or  Latin,  and,  as  the  lot  fell  upon  Greek  prose, 
composed  his  recollections  of  the  Marsic  war  in  Greek,  taking- 
care  to  prove  that  he  was  a  Roman  by  inserting  a  few  solecisms, 
i?  9.   More   important  were  the  ciironological  tables  of  T. 
Pomponius  Atticus,  which  bore  the  title  of  "Annals,"  and  were 
full  of  the  most  laborious  synchronisms.     Every  Roman  mag- 
istrate was  given,  with  the  wars  and  events  and  treaties  of  hts 
year  of  office  ;  and  he  even  contrived  to  introduce  pedigrees 
upwards  and  downwards.     In  the  same  spirit  he  wrote  family 
histories  of  the  Junii  and  the  Marcelli,  at  the  request  of  the 
families ;  which  proves  that  the  fiimily  archives  were  not  very 
well  kept,  and  that  there  were  extraneous  materials  for  com- 
])leting  them. 

It  seems  that  in  his  "  Annals  "  Atticus  was  anticipated  by 
his  biographer  Cornelius  Nepos,  whose  first  name  is  unknown. 
He  was  a  native  of  the  region  of  the  Po,  and  lived  somewhere 
between  94  and  24  rc.  His  first  work  was  written  in  the 
lifetime  of  Catullus,  according  to  whom  it  was  the  first  at- 
tempt of  the  kind  in  Italy.  It  consisted  of  three  volumes  of 
chronological  tables,  which  traced  everything  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world  to  his  own  time,  and  was  regarded  as  a  col- 
lection of  nursery  tales  in  the  fourth  century  (Auson.  Ep.  16), 
for  all  the  deities  from  Saturn  downwards  were  treated  as 
men  and  women  whose  adventures  had  to  be  given  under  the 
proper  dates. 

He  wrote  elaborate  Lives  of  Cato  and  Cicero,  in  the  latter 
of  which  he  was  thought  by  Gellius  to  have  made  mistakes; 
and  the  elder  Pliny,  of  all  writers,  taxes  him  with  credulity 
for  the  strange  tales  in  his  geographical  work  on  the  marvels 
of  foreign  countries,  in  which,  by-the-bye,  he  gave  distances 
without  giving  directions.  He  attempted  poetry,  to  judge  by 
the  younger  Pliny's  citation,  as  an  outlet  for  passions,  which 
he  did  not  allow  to  disturb  his  life.  But  his  real  work  was 
biographical  :  he  wrote  a  book  of  Examples,  which  seem  to 
have  been  specimens  of  ancient  and  modern  virtue,  for  Sue- 
tonius quotes  him  as  saying  that  at  the  siege  of  Mutina  Octa- 
vian  never  drank  above  thrice  at  supper. 


LA  TIX  LITER  A  TURK, 

The  same  tendency  shows  itself  in  the  only  work  of  which 
we  have  large  fragments-^  The  Lives  of  Illustrious  Men 
This  fell  into  several  divisions— the  lives  of  generals  ;  the 
lives  of  poets,  grammarians,  historians;  and  each  section  was 
subdivided  into  those  who  were  Romans  and  those  who  were 
not  in  order  that  readers  might  co.npare  the  two  and  discover 
which  set  the  best  example.  (3ut  of  this  collection  we  have 
nearly  or  quite  entire  the  section  on  foreign  generals,  and  the 
Lives  of  Cato  and  Atticus  from  the  section  of  Roman  histo- 
rians. In  the  former  of  these  the  author  refers  to  his  fuller 
Life  of  Cato  for  further  details.  ^ 

The  lives  of  foreign  commanders  fall  into  three  divisions 
—the  Greeks,  the  kin-s  who  were  also  generals,  and  the  bar- 
barians Hamilcar  and  Hannibal ;  Datames,'  curiously  enough, 
ficrurin-  among  the  Greeks.     The  selection  is  rather  capri- 
crousi^Brasidas  and  Aratus,  who  surprised  so  many  citadels, 
and  PhilopcxMnen  and  Cleomenes  III.  are  omitted.      Herodo- 
tus is  not  used  for  the  Lives  of  Themistocles  and  ^^Iiltiades: 
probably  Nepos  thought  the  latest  Greek,  book  the  best.     He 
is  very  fond  of  extolHng  frugality.      Agesilaus  is  praised  for 
not  enriching  himself  in  the  least  by  his  victories,  and  gomg 
back  to  his  shabbv  old  palace  at  Sparta  without  a  wish  to  im- 
prove •  just  as  he  is  praised  for  trying  to  earn   money  as  a 
condottiere  for  the  state  after  the  disaster  of  Leuctra  (as  a 
matter  of  fact,  his  services  in  that  line  fall  at  a  very  much  later 
d  -ite)  •  and  little  or  nothing  is  said  of  the  abortive  resistance  in 
Peloponnesus  which  practically  occupied  the  interval  between 
Leuctra  and  Mantinea.    On  the  other  hand,  Cornelius  is  care- 
ful to  explain  that  A-esilaus  was  not  really  a  king  any  more 
than  Pausanias  or  Hannibal  (for  we  learn  from  him  that  the 
title  of  king  was  still  attached  to  an  annual  office  at  Carthage). 
There  is  a'good  deal  of  caprice  in  the  Life  of  Hannibal.    We 
learn  nothing  of  his  tactics,  but  a  good  deal  of  his  more  or  less 
fabulous  stratagems-how  he  eluded  Fabius  by  turning  oxen 
loose  with  lighted  fagots  tied  to  their  horns,  and  how  in  his 

•  A  Cai  ian  of  the  fourth  century  n.c,  who  did  the  Great  King  consider- 
able  service  against  rebelhous  satraps,  till,  being  in  a  position  to  rebel 
himself,  the  king  procured  his  assassination. 


LATER  AXXALISTS  AXD  MEMOIR-IVR/TERS. 


205 


old-age  lie  neutralized  the  naval  superiority  of  Eumenes  over 
Prusias  by  teaching  Prusias's  seamen  to  throw  clay  jars  full 
of  live  snakes  aboard  Eumenes's  ships.  Some  historical  points 
are  given  wliich  we  do  not  find  elsewhere,  as  that  Hannibal 
was  deprived  of  his  military  command  at  the  instance  of  the 
Romans  before  his  judicial  reforms  at  Carthage,  and  that,  be- 
fore Hamilcar  put  down  the  rebelhous  mercenaries,  the  Car- 
iliaginians  had  applied  for  help  to  Rome  and  had  been  prom-* 
ised  thev  should  have  it. 

In  tlie  same  way,  we  learn  that  Phocion  was  brought  for- 
ward by  Demosthenes  because  he  was  dissatisfied  with  Chares, 
and  about  IMiocion  we  learn  little  else;  for,  apparently,  his  rep- 
utation for  *' virtue,''  in  the  sense  of  being  incorruptible  by 
money,  was  better  known  than  his  military  efficiency  and  po- 
litical insight,  both  of  which,  tliough  limited,  were  above  the 


average. 


The  Lite  of  Pelopidas  is  equally  meagre,  for  the  author 
fears  that  he  shall  be  betrayed  into  general  history,  and,  be- 
sides, his  favorite  sources  gave  him  little  information.  He 
complains  that  Pelopidas  was  unknown  except  to  professed 
historians.  Epaminondas  was  better  known.  Cornehus  tells 
almost  as  many  anecdotes  about  him  as  Plutarch,  though  he 
tells  much  less  of  wliat  he  did  to  make  history.  One  differ- 
ence is  worth  noticing:  Plutarch  makes  him  say  when  dying 
that  he  leaves  two  daughters,  the  victories  of  Leuctra  and 
Mantinea;  while  Cornelius  makes  him  reply  to  Pelopidas,  who 
urged  him  to  many  and  leave  children  to  the  state,  that  he 
left  one  immortal  daugliter  (the  victory  of  Leuctra),  who  was 
better  tiian  a  son  like  Pelopidas's  own;  whereupon  Cornelius 
observes  upon  the  tendency  of  all  great  men  to  have  degen- 
erate sons,  as  if  it  were  an  ascertained  fact. 

The  Life  of  Atticus  is  the  fullest  and  most  interesting;  it 
was  written  before  27  iJ.c.,  when  Octavian  received  the  title 
of  Augustus.  'Hie  Life  explains  the  way  in  which  Cicero 
clung  to  him  much  better  than  Cicero's  own  letters,  for  so 
many  appeals  without  response  give  one  a  stronger  sense  of 
Atticus's  selfishness  than  of  his  sweetness  of  nature.  Cornelius 
docs  not  disguise  the  selfishness,  but  he  shows  the  sweetness 


I  I 


206 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


of  nature  which  marked  Atticus  both  in  his  home  and  his 
friendships.  Still  clearer  is  the  impression  of  his  prudence  : 
he  entertained  every  Roman  of  rank  who  came  to  Athens, 
and  this  involved  an  extra  expense  of  between  only  £2  and 
£^  a  month.  Cornelius  had  seen  his  accounts.  No  doubt 
the  item/67///^'  for  keeping  the  store-room  full  was  considera- 
bly heavier  than  siimptiis  for  such  casual  outlay.  What  Cor- 
nelius specially  admires  is  that  he  increased  his  fortune  five- 
fold without  making  any  difference  in  his  style,  and  that  he 
preferred  training  valuable  slaves  to  buying  showy  ones. 

§  10.  The  position  of  Vario  is  one  of  the  puzzles  of  Roman 
literature.  He  was  a  contemporary  of  Cicero  and  Caisar,  and 
they  both  looked  up  to  him  ;  he  was,  beyond  dispute,  the  most 
learned  of  the  Romans  ;  his  reputation  lasted  through  many 
changes  of  literary  fashion.  Seneca  recommends  him  as  edi- 
fying, and  St.  Augustin  quotes  him  as  instructive  on  all  sub- 
jects ;  and  we  do  not  know  in  the  least  what  sort  of  a  writer 
ho  was,  except  that  Seneca  and  Quinctilian  were  right  in  af- 
firming that  he  was  not  eloquent,  and  that  he  was  immensely 
methodical  in  his  enormous  compilations.  For  instance,  his 
twenty-five  books  on  the  Latin  language  were  divided  into 
three  parts — etymology,  how  words  were  fixed  upon  things, 
which  filled  seven  books ;  six  books  on  declension  ;  and 
twelve  books  on  syntax.  The  work  from  the  fifth  book  on- 
ward was  dedicated  to  Cicero,  in  redemption  of  a  promise 
which  was  grudgingly  fulfilled,  after  all;  for  instead  of  an 
elaborate  dedication,  he  only  observed  parenthetically  that 
this  part  of  the  work  was  addressed  to  him.  We  have 
Books  V.  to  X.  in  an  unsatisfactory  state,  and  they  give  an 
impression  of  the  work  of  a  laborious  amateur ;  and  his  fre- 
quent allusions  to  other  parts  of  the  work  strengthen  it.  There 
was  a  book  on  what  could  be  said  for  etymology,  and  another 
on  what  could  be  said  against  it,  while  the  latter  part  of  the 
treatise  on  etymology  turned  into  a  list  of  rare  words  in  prose 
and  poetry. 

His  three  books  on  agriculture  were  finished  when  he  was 
eighty-one.  The  first  is  on  vegetable  crops  of  all  kinds,  the 
second  on  live-stock,  the  third  on  preserves  of  birds  and  fish  : 


LATER  ANNALISTS  AND  MEMOIR-IVRITERS. 

they  are  in  tlie  form  of  dialogues,  each  addressed  to  a  separate 
friend,  though  all  three  are  addressed  to  his  wife.     These 
represent  the  latest  and  the  smallest  part  of  his  writin-s      In 
his  youth  he  had  written  to  Accius,  the  tragic  poet,  on°he  an- 
tiquity of  letters.     Besides  many  other  grammatical  works 
resumed  m  ins  great  work  on  the  Latin  languao-e  he  had 
written  upon  the  Roman  poets.     Ho  wrote,  to°o,  nine  books 
"de  U.sciphnis,"on  the  "seven  liberal  arts,"  and  medicine 
and  architecture,  which  were  used  by  iMartianus  Capella  •  and 
fifteen  books  on  civil  law,  which  are  believed  to  have  been  the 
foundation  of  the  work  of  I'omponius,  a  celebrated  jurist  of 
the  reign  of  .Augustus.     To  s.iy  nothing  of  minor  works,  like 
the  two  calendars  for  the  use  of  husbandmen  and  shinmen 
also  the  twenty-two  speeches-mostly,  no  doubt,  funeral  cnco- 
miums-and  thirty  pohiical  memoirs,  and  the  account  of  the 
three  campaigns  in  which  he  served  as  lieutenant  of  Pom- 
peius  against   the  pirates,  against  Mithridates,  and   against 
Cx'sar   and   Marius,  he  wrote    linee   enormous  collections  • 
forty-one  books  on  antiquities,  of  which  one  was  introductory 
twenty-four  were  on  human  antiquities  since  men  existed  in 
societies,  before  they  instituted  worship,  and  the  last  si.xteen 
on  divine  antiquities,  in  which  he  laid  down  the  principle  that 
of  three  kinds  of  theology,  political,  poetical,  and  physical,  the 
former,  which  contained  the  doctrine  of  authorized  rites  and 
ceremonies,  was  far  the  most  valuable;  seventy-si.v  books  of 
edifying  dialogues  on  various  subjects,  each  identified  with 
some  mythical  or  historical  character;  one  hundred  and  fifty 
books  of  satires  in  the  vein  of  Menippus,  in  which  prose  and 
verse  were  mingled  at  random,  and  biting  plainness  of  s6eech 
did  duty  for  wit.     These  last  were  a  work  of  Varro's  middle 
life,  for  they  were  in  hand  60  ac,  thirty-three  years  before  his 
death.    1  he  only  other  of  his  works  which  needs  mention  here 
IS  the  "  Imagines,"  in  fifteen  books,  one  of  which  was  a  pref- 
ace, while  the  other  fourteen  contained  parallel  lives  of  illus- 
trious Greeks  and  Romans,  each  of  which  w.as  illustrated  bv 
a  portrait,  probably  only  in  outline.    The  work  was  published 
afterwards  without  illustrations.     Varro,  though  he  survived 
Ciesar  some  seventeen  years,  was  born  sixteen  years  before 


o  LA  TIN  LI TERA  TURE. 

200 

him,  and  this  explains  the  rugged,  archaic  style  of  all  liis  frag- 
ments :  he  grew  up  before  the  new  fashion  of  culfvaUon,  and 
he  never  conformed  to  it.  Cxsar,  on  the  contrary,  m  anguage 
as  in  everything  else,  was  a  model  of  elegance  from  the  first. 

C.BSAr's   •'  CO.M.MENTARIES." 

Of  Cresar's  oratory,  what  little  can  be  said  has  been  said 
elsewhere.     As  an  historian  he  is  without  an  equal ;  and  it 
may  even  be  said  that  Hirtius,  the  best  of  his  pupils,  is  with- 
out a  superior.    Osar  himself  is  the  one  character  in  his  age 
that  we  can  at  once  like  and  esteem.     Cicero  was  amiable, 
■ind  in  spite  of  his  weaknesses  and  pettinesses,  respectable  for 
his  steadv,  conscientious  insight  and  public  spirit.     Cato  was 
impracticable:    Pompeius  was  ungenerous:    few  of  Cssars 
ow-n  adherents  had  a  scrap  of  character  in  private  life :  they 
were  rapacious,  corrupt,  or  debauchees.    Caesar  himself  had  a 
reputation  in  iiis  youth  for  gallantries  of  all  kinds,  which  was 
probably  much  exaggerated  by  the  shameless  license  of  lan- 
lua-^e,  which  itself  implies  that  the  general  stahdard  of  con- 
duct is  low;  but  the  two  most  respectable  o    his  opponents 
testify  that  this  was  his  only  vice.     Cato  said,  as  far  back  as 
his  consulship,  he  was  the  only  man  who  came  sober  to  the 
overthrow  of  die  stale.    Cicero  said,  when  he  had  established 
his  authority  in  Italy,  that  the  sobriety  and  diligence  of  the 
monster  were  incredible.     Perhaps   the  bitterness  of  which 
there  were  signs  towards  the  end  may  have  resulted  from  the 
excesses  of  his  early  manhood  ;  although  it  is  sufficiently  ac- 
counted for  bv  labors  much  greater  than  those  under  which 
exemplary  statesmen  have  been  worn  out  at  the  age  at  which 
Ctesar  died  by  violence,  still  in  the  hopeful  contemplation  of 

lar^^e  schemes.  . 

'  Ft  is  certainly  wonderful,  when  we  consider  how  thorough- 
ly revolutionarv  and  unscrupulous  Cxsar's  career  was,  how 
blameless  it  was  from  all  points  of  view,  except  that  of  he 
believer  in  the  divine  right  of  the  Roman  nobility,  or  in  the 
divine  ri-ht  of  the  natives  of  Gaul  to  be  made  war  upon  under 
the  rules"  of  the  Geneva  convention.  He  never  gives  us  the 
impression  which  his   modern  eulogists  do,  of  his   having 


CESAR'S  COMMEA'TAJilFS 

^^'  209 

trampled  upon  a  great  many  things,  once  properly  sacred  but 
then  obsolete  and  cumbersome.      The  distich  of  P:urip'ides 
which  it  is  said  he  often  quoted  '  is  itself  a  sign  that  he  had  a 
tolerably  easy  conscience.     He  could  hardlv  help  feelin-'that 
ins  situation  was  irregular,  when  he  was  asserting  liis  personal 
rights,  at  the  cost  of  a  civil  war,  against  a  partner  who  had  all 
the  constituted  authorities  upon  his  side,  except  a  few  tribunes 
ot  the  commons.    At  tlie  same  time,  he  had  always  been  scru- 
pulous y  fair  aiK    generous  in  Iiis  dealings  with  Pompeius; 
and  when  his  selfishness  made  the  jealousy  of  the  nobility 
eltoctual,  Cxsars  proposals   were  still  conspicuously  liberal 
and  disinterested,  if  we  admit  that  he  had  a  right  to  make 
proposals  at  all-if  we  do  not  imagine  that  it  was  his  duty  to 
obey  the  senate  and  the  consuls,  as  ordinary  subjects  obey  a 

He  insists  more  than  once  in  the  (iallic  war  upon  his  own 
clemency,  and  this  surprises  a  modern  reader,  who  takes  the 
trcmen.lous   lists  of  killed  and   prisoners  literally,     lly  ,i,e 
common  law  of  war,  which  Cx-sar  applied  without  change  on 
a  very  large  scale,  ,t  rested  practically  with  the  soldiers  Aeth- 
er quarter  shou  <1  be  given.     Captives  were  liable  to  slavery 
uu  ess  protected  by  an  express  convention.    The  large  bodies 
ofGaus  who  from  time  to  lime  engaged  Caesar  no  doubt  ex-' 
aggerated  their  own  numbers  ;  but  the  superior  arms  of  the 
Komans  and  the  gregarious  courage  of  ,he  Gauls  made  the 
hglitmg  unusually  bloody.    The  captives  supplied  prize-money 
enough  to  defray  the  cost  of  conquering  G:lul,  to  pay  Cesar's 
debts,  to  emich  his  army,  and  to  keep  the  nobility  quiet.    And 

n!  ,1  ''i^'n  ^°''"  "'•'"  "°'  ^"'  '■■"'l^'y  °"'^-  '^'''"se  who  were 
neither  killed  nor  taken  iu  battle  (by  Caesar's  statistics  thev 
>"...st  have  been  a  minority  of  the  male  population)  were  al- 
owed  to  retain  their  lands  ami  a  good  deal  of  their  institu- 
tions, and  were  treated  wi.h  considerable  forbearance  bv  the 
representatives  of  the  conquering  power.  The  first  experi- 
ence of  Roman  rule  had  often  been  like  the  experience  of  the 
natives  of  Ireland  ;  the  first  experience  the  Gauls  had  of  it 

'  "If  men  must  sin,  the  fairest  prize  of  sin 
.Shoiikl  be  a  throne  :  else  jjiety  is  well." 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 
2IO 

WIS  more  like  the  experience  of  the  natives  of  India.  It  is 
m,e  r.t  the  poor  and  distant  tribes  of  the  northwest  were 
r  ate  more  harshly  than  the  tribes  of  Central  Gaul,  wh.ch 
had  'iven  greater  p,^vocation  ;  but  the  same  reasons  of  m>h- 
tarv  convenience  told  in  favor  of  Aciiiitania.  ,     ,  .. 

C^s^r-s  clemency  to  Romans,  tiio.glt  not  mKalculatnig, 
was  more  disinterested  :  it  sprang  from  a  native  generos. ty 
which  no  opposition  could  tiro,  no  treachery  exhaust.  1  he 
liuhlsiasm  of  his  followers  was  boundless.  The  grea  oath 
of  his  chief  lieutenants,  from  Antony  downwards,  was  Ita  \  o 
rJ^^aie  moriar  "  They  wished  to  leave  the>r  loader  >n  the 
wo"  d  vl  ey  died,  Is  other  Romans  wished  to  leave  then^ 

clS  en  or  thei'  brothers  ;  if  they  lost  hin,,  ^  -  -orU    woul 
be  enptv  to  them,  just  .as  it  would  bo  to  a  father  who  had 
DC  cmpiv   L^  I        >J  „,.,rchiU  wore  wearv  of  hmi : 

lost  his  children.     Napoleon  s   "•*^,^''^'^/.y^  J\?4,  Napo- 
he  said  himself,  "When  I  am  dead,  ^«  dt,a  ouf ,     but  Mai  o 
eon  ws  cynical,  and  there  is  not  a  trace  of  cyn.csm  ur  Ca.- 
ir    There  is  n;t  a  word  in  his  writings,  or  in  the  anecdotes 
about] 'mo  indicate  that  he  despised  or  disliked  h,s  fellows 
'nd  this    s  wonderful,  considering  his  i,nn,ense  super.onty, 
Td  a  lo  his  entire  unscrupulousness.     Another  contras    .s, 
H?.t  hels  extremely  generous  in  his  treatment  of  h.s  subo  - 
d    ah     never  tluows  the  blame  on  their  mistakes  and 
when  he  has  to  narrate  their  failures,  excuses  them  as  far  as 
;Sble,  without  stating  or  implying  that  there  .s  a  fault  to 

"HTs'-^reat  work  was  written  year  by  year  for  se^^n  years 
in  the  intervals  of  his  campaigns,  with  an  ease  and  rap.chty 
wh    h  astonished  Hirtius.     It  does  not  profess  to  b     a  te- 
torv  but  onlv  materials  for  history ;  though,  as  H.rt.us  and 
Cicero    udiciously  observe,  the  m.aterials  were  so  excelle  t 
Sat  no\n  elligen't  historian  ventured  to  use  them  for  a  work 
oftts  own.     C.sar-s  "  Commentaries  "  ^^ ^^^^^f^. 
conquest  of  Gaul,  and  few  parts  of  anccnt  ^^'^'°:>  =^'     ';\^  . 
Iv  so  well  told  :  but  they  are  not  qu.te  a  history  such  as  1  ac 
U,s  w"u  d  h.ve  given  u^,  still  less  such  a  history  as  we  shot, 
•e  d"  ired  from  a  modern  writer.    For  ^^:^^  \?  '^ 

•   .„r  (hot  r-vsnr  went   nto  Cisalpme  Gaul,    to 
almost  every  wmter  that  C«sai  wcm  uuv  ^       i 


CESAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 

hold  the  district  courts,"  {ad  conventiis  agendas).  Now,  Cce- 
sar's  administration  of  Cisalpine  Gaul  must  have  had  .a  his- 
tory which  deserved  to  be  told,  for  the  extension  of  Roman 
citizenship  to  the  country  between  (he  Alps  and  I>o  was  an 
important  point  of  his  ijrogramine. 

Again,  it  appears  that  tlie  Germans  established  their  set- 
tlements in  the  two  provinces  to  the  west  of  the  Rhine  durin- 
his  tenure  of  power ;  but  he  does  not  tell  us  this  expressly'^ 
he  only  tells  us  how  he  defeated  the  Germans  when  thev  at- 
tomptwl  to  coerce  friendly  tribes,  or  to  assist  unfriendly  tribes 
and  almost  suggests  that  whenever  tliey  crossed  the  Rhine 
they  were  driven  back  with  loss.     So,  too,  he  never  tells  us 
what  were  the  relations  he  established  with  the  conquered 
tribes  in  Gaul,  how  much  of  their  institutions  he  left  to  them 
how  much  authority  he  claimed  for  himself  or  his  renresenta' 
tives  over  the  native  tribes.     He  leaves  it  certainly  to  be 
understood  that  the  only  occasion  on  which  he  exercised  any- 
h.ng   like  jurisdiction  was  in  what   might  be  called  slafe 
trials;  but,  in  general,  he  tells  us  nothing,  and  Hirtius  his 
contmuator,  tells  us  nothing,  of  his  civil  administration      Na- 
p.er,  ,n  wTiting  of  the  Peninsular  War,  intended  to  write  be- 
fore all  things  a  military  history,  yet  he  tells  us  much  more 
.n  proportion  of  the  relation  of  Wellington  to  the  Inquisition 
and  the  Spanish  Constitutionalists.     Nor  can  it  be  said  that 
Ca;sar  confines  himself  rigidly  to  military  history  •  he  de- 
scribes not  only  the  Germans,  with  whom  he  was  the  first  civ- 
ilized  writer   to  come   in   contact,  but   the  Gauls,  who  were 
pretty  well  known  from  other  sources— as  Strabo  thinks  at 
much  greater  length  than  was  necessary  to  make  his  narra- 
tive intelligible :  in  fact,  he  seems  to  use  the  avowed  incom- 
pleteness of  commentaries  to  enable  him  to  say  just  as  much 
as  he  wished      As  a  military  history  the  "Commentaries"  are 
full ;  they  tell  us,  with  a  frankness  that  perhaps  is  intended 

t\ir^".T'    ''  "°"T  °^"'  ^"''^^^''"■'^  movement.s,  great  and 
sinall.      I  here  is  nowhere  any  attempt  at  picturesqueness 
The  surrender  of  Vercingetori.v,  one  of  the  most  romantic 
scenes  in  ancient  history,  is  dismissed  in  a  couple  of  w-ords  • 
we  only  know  the  details  from  Dion,  a  writer  of  the  third  cen' 


212 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


CESAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 


213 


cuted  after  Caesar's  triumph^  ^^^  ^.^ .,  ^^^^^ 

Cxsai's  narrative,  both  of  the  <^-il"C  ^  j. 

is  ingeniously  arranged  to  ^^'^^^J^^^^^^^Z^^:^,  an'd  the 

^K-.fj^n      He  tries  lo  show  tnat  ne  conqucicu  ^ 
ambition,     nc  uicb  lu  Ar^mrentlv  the  migra- 

neither  of  which  he  was  responsible,  deteimmea  a 

,on<l  il«  Khlnc  l.e  i.  >vUlins  to  represent  i.s  »' "  1*  "'  ,„ 

senate.     Ki  the  same  way.  Cxsa.  gives  us  to  m 
rr^own  ;^;:::iS:;na\^^     so  -ch  to  ten  ^  or  ^ns 

:::. -^s,  how  nttie  he  tells  us  of  i.s  pi.^:  ^j^^^^-^^:;:):^ 

to  claim  credit  for  making  any      It  is  true  J^'^^,*^;  .j, 

nart  except  towards  the  close  of  his  career,  he  ^^''^^^^^y  % 

vl\tclled;  but  so  was  Napoleon  in  tl-  -rnpaign  o^^^^^^^^^ 
rengo,  although  this  campaign  was  planned  for  a  countr> 


roads  and  maps,  more  favorable,  therefore,  to  elaborate  com- 
binations.    The  impression  that  Caesar  and  his  lieutenants 
give  us  is,  that  he  had  a  quick  eye  for  what  was  essential  and 
feasible,  and  could  execute  it  with  such  courage  and  rapiditv 
as  commonly  disconcerted  his  opponents.    It  is  clear,  too,  that 
he  had  a  singular  faculty  for  keeping  his  army  in  hand,  and 
for  keeping  it  in  good  heart.     He  was  a  strict'disciplinarian, 
never  allowing  his  soldiers  to  discuss  his  action  :  his  army  at 
no  time  bore  any  resemblance  to  a  French  revolutionary  army, 
having  been  in  the  first  instance  recruited  and  officered  under 
a  comparatively  regular  state  of  things.     One  of  the  worst 
crimes  of  Titurius  Sabinus  seems  to  have  been  his  appealino- 
to  the  soldiers  in  order  to  reinforce  his  own  alarms,  and  there*^ 
by  overbearing  his  wiser  colleague,  who  wished  to  remain  in 
the  camp  until  relieved  by  Coesar.     The  narrative  is  clear  and 
terse,  but  too  full  to  be  rapid  :  there  is  less  ornament,  or  rath- 
er less  elaborate  description,  than  even  in  Thucydides.     I'he 
only  things  which  could  be  spared,  though  we  should  be  sorry 
to  miss  them,  are  the  descriptions  of  individual  heroism.    For 
instance,  the  account  of  Cicero's  defence  of  his  cantonments 
would  be  quite  sufficiently  intelligible  without  the  splendid 
episode  of  the  two  centurions.     ''\w  that  legion  there  were 
two  centurions  of  such  excellent  valor  that  they  stood  high 
for  promotion,  Titus  Pullo  and  Lucius  Vorenus  "  (the  second 
names  might,  by  an  easy  conjecture,  be  Englished  ''Chick" 
and  "Gobble").     "They  were  always  disputing  with  one  an- 
other about  who  was  to  get  first  preferment,  and  every  year 
they  had  a  very  bitter  strife  for  their  step.    Pullo  was  the  one 
to  say,  when   there  was  very  sharp  fighting  going  on  at  the 
works,  'Why  think  twice,  Vorenus  ?     Can  you  look  out  for  a 
better  chance  to  prove  your  valor  .^    This  is  the  day  to  decide 
the  case  between  us.'     When  he  had  said  that,  he  advanced 
beyond  the  works,  and  charged  at  the  densest  body  of  the 
enemy  he  could  see.     Then  Vorenus  would  not  stay  within 
the  works  either:  he  followed,  knowing  that  everybody  was 
watching  and  judging  him.     When  he  got  within  short  range, 
Pullo  threw  his  javelin  against  the  enemy,  and  pierced  olie 
who  came  forward  to  meet  him  :  as  he  was  wounded  and 


y: 


LA  TIN-  LITER  A  TURE. 

senseless  they  covered  him  with  shields,  and  all  ihrew  their 
™ns  at  o'ne  enemy,  and  gave  him  no  chance  o   retreat 
PMllo  had  his  shield  pierced,  and  a  dart  stuck  m  hs  bet. 
Th    ad  en   forced  hfs  scabbard  aside,  and  balked  h.s  r.ght 
liul  'd    n  1  e  tried  to  draw  his  sword  ;  and  the  enemy  sur- 
':"  did   him   while    thus   hampered.      Vore.,us   though   no 
friend  of  his,  came  up  and  helped  hun  n>  -  ^"".',,ete'   1" 
mnltitude  turned  at  once  upon  hnn  f'^j"  ^  "''°; ,,/ '^"X" 
Vorenus  charged  briskly  with  the  sword,  and  wen   to  wo.k  at 
close  quarters ;  killed  one,  and  made  the  rest  give  ground 
till  pressing  on  too  eagerly  he  got  down  on  lower  ground  and 
Jt^umbled.  ^Vhen  he  was  hemmed  in,  Pullo's  turn  came  to 
l^   g  him  help :  and  both,  after  plentiful  slaughter,  came  back 
safe  and  sound  within  the  lines,  covered  wuh  glory,     bo  fort- 
une phed  each  of  them   in  their   strife  and  contention,  so 
St  an^dy  that  of  two  enemies  each  helped  and  saved  the 
otherf  and  it  could  not  be  determined  which  of  the  two  was 
to  be 'preferred  to  his  fellow  for  valor." 

The  style  is  perceptibly  more  archaic  than  u,  the  mo,e 
business-like  parts  of  the  narrative  ;  one  might  almost  sus- 
pe  t  that  Cxsar  was  condescending  to  show  that  he  appre- 
dated  the  finer  parts  of  the  old  annalists;  for  Cxsar  was  a 
iterary  connoisseur,  and  found  time  to.;"''^^;" J""};;;^;' 
and  spent  all  the  evening,  when  he  visited  Cicero  after  1  hai- 
salia,on  philological  discussion.     The   greater  part  of  the 
"  Commentaries,"  however,  have  been  written  without  any  La  - 
in  modd,  for  Su  la  and  LucuUus  wrote  in  Greek;  and  though 
Ca^  history  was  disproportionatdy  full  when  he  came   o 
speak  of  his  own  services,  he  cannot  have  writ  en  on  anything 
like  so  large  a  scale.     The  only  Greek  work  which  C«;sar 
can  have  had  before  him   as  worth  imitating  would  be  the 

"Anabasis"  of  Xenophon,  a  writer  '""^'^ ™°''%"rrdn"t'o 
ec^oistical,  and  whose  one  achievement  in  life  was  1  is  hdp  to 
diirisophus  on  one  long  and  difficult  march,  -  ^'cMemaik- 
able  as  it  was,  had  more  significance  for  P°l'''<i=^/ j^'f  ^.^ '^^ 
for  military.  Ccesar  must  therefore  be  considered,  though 
the  greater  part  of  his  work,  a  thoroughly  original  write 
ddn^  with  mastery  what  had  never  been  done  before.     Now 


CAESAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 


215 


and  then  we  have  a  sort  of  hitch :  for  instance,  the  manners 
and  customs  of  the  Germans  are  described  twice  over,  once 
when  Cxsar  has  to  tell  of  his  campaign  against  the  tribes 
driven  across  the  Rliine  by  the  Suevi,  and  once  in  contrast 
to  the  Gauls,  as  a  prelude  to  the  campaign  against  the  Trev- 
iri  and  their  German  allies.  The  latter  description  is  full 
and  systematic,  and  both  are  delightfully  unprejudiced :  he 
praises  them  for  things  that  would  shock  a  Roman,  without  ^ 
anv  intention  of  satire.  For  instance,  the  Suevi  are  so  tall 
because  they  live  much  more  upon  milk  and  mutton  than 
upon  corn,  and  spend  much  time  in  hunting  and  exercise  ev- 
ery day,  and  perfect  freedom  of  life,  with  no  business  and  no 
lessons,  and  doing  nothing  against  their  will  from  boyhood 
up.  He  also  mentions,  without  the  least  embarrassment,  that 
the  Germans  were  much  more  "virtuous"  in  the  technical 
sense  than  the  Romans  :  it  is  a  simple  peculiarity,  like  the 
belief  that  no  number  of  cavalry  who  used  saddles  were  a 
match  for  men  who,  like  themselves,  rode  barebacked.  A 
more  curious  trait  is  that  the  Germans  prohibited  the  impor- 
tation of  wine,  not  because  it  tended  to  riot,  but  because  it 
tended  to  laziness.  Apparently  by  the  time  of  Tacitus  this 
objection  had  disappeared.  It  would  have  been  interesting 
to  hear  a  little  more  of  the  trade  of  Germany  than  the  enig- 
matical remark  that  they  only  tolerate  merchants,  not  because 
they  v;ished  to  import  anything,  but  because  it  was  well  to 
have  some  one  to  buy  the  plunder  of  their  annual  w^ars. 
They  must  have  taken  money  in  some  form  for  their  plun- 
der, and  spent  it  on  something.  Another  surprise  is  that 
the  Germans  were  much  more  materialist  in  religion  than 
the  Gauls,  as  they  worshipped  nothing  but  the  visible  objects 
of  nature,  like  the  sun  and  moon  and  earth,  while  the  Gauls 
had  a  list  of  deities  which  could  be  identified  with  those  of 
the  Romans.  The  explanation  of  human  sacrifice  is  instruc- 
tive :  the  Gauls  thought  that  the  best  way  to  propitiate  the 
deity  was  by  the  execution  of  criminals,  and  so  criminals  were 
reserved  for  sacrifice  ;  but,  if  there  were  no  criminals,  then  the 
innocent  had  to  suffer.  It  is  curious,  too,  to  find  that  Caesar 
could  hear  nothing  of  any  priesthood  in  Germany,  considering 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 
216 

S';'c2^;';  Si,';;;:;.;  .-...o.. » -«„  -.■  ,;j~--,£ 

1      \v   .-  ^,.  thr>  lonrrth  of  ihcir  education.      Ini^  sug^esib  ma 
Srev  ::^e    1     li^e     i.-s  of  the  schoolmen  ;  for  scholnst,- 
c  sm  "s  <    cledly  a  French,  not  to  say  a  Celtic,  product. 

■he ''CI  Wars"  arc  less  complete  Nvithnr  then-   range; 
.e  ll^ar  nothing  of  the  course  of  events  at  J^on.e,  except  so 
■  much  of  his  diplomacy  as  it  suits  Ca=sar  to  tell.     He  pioxes 
Te  se  t  int  h    was  more  conciliatory  than  Ins  encnnes,  «1  o 
"U  led  l-ompeius:M,e  hints  the  worst,  and —^ 
to  nothin.^  as  to  what  they  really  meant.     Did  they  wi.h  to 
cm  h  L:ar,  or  simply  to  prove  that  the  co-t.tut.on  wa    ,00 
stron-  for  him,  as  they  had  proved  already  that   1  °»M^'J 
5one°was  not  loo  strong  for  the  constuut.on?     Was  thcr 
'Ir    n  ent    hat  Caesar  should  have  a  second  consulate,  pro- 
,U       r left  his  army  behind  and  Tompeius  kept  '-•  -^  -  «' 
bv  Ox^sar's  advance  t,.  .\riminum?     Ca>sar  does  not  tell  us 
?    it  had  been  as  frank  in  his  narrative  of  the  nur^ues  a^ 
Rome  as  he  was  in  his  narrative  of  nUngues   n.   Gaul   he 
o    c  have  offended  many  people  xvhom   --  -I-'-  ^^ 
gain-  he  would  have  had  to  acknowledge  that  he  w.  s  a  re  o 
fu  ionist  and  would  have  lost  the  advantage  which  h.s  ad  m- 
able  temper  had  given  him,  of  putting  his  opponents  >n    he 
vton.  oAu  matters  of  precedent.     As  it  was,  he  gives    he 
n  pr^ssion  that  the  senate  would  have  been  in  his  favoi,  if  it 
ha    been  free,  and  was  coerced  by  the  ill-regulated  ambition 
of  Lei  tl    and  the  jealous  vanity  of  Tompeius,  who  was  sup- 
ine    bv  his  second  father-in-law.     There  is  an   ingenious 
E  ntion  (endorsed,  to  some  extent,  by  Cicero  in  his  bitter 
tcTto  Lucceius)  that  Ixntulus  thought  he  was  going  to  be 
a  second  Sulla,  and  was  heavily  in  debt,  and  was  read     to 
make      s  own  bargain  with  Cxsar,  after  all.     P.eyond  th.  , 
and  one  or  two  gibes  at  Cato,  the  narrative  spares  the  aristoc- 
4     The  conduct  of  Uomitius,  who  thrcwh  mself  into  U^-^ 
segues  after  being  pardoned  at  Corfniium,  and  •'-   ^«  /  - 
Marseilles  to  fall  at  I'harsalia— rejoicing,  as  I.ucan  sa\s,   o 
hJ^xtca'ped  a  second  pardon-only  moves  Cxsar  to  note 


CESAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 


217 


how  apt  that  ''ferocious  scoundrel,"  as  Dean  Merivale  calls 
him,  was  to  leave  his  troops  in  the  lurch. 

Caesar  does  not  decide  whether  Ponipeius  evacuated  Italy 
because  he  had  no  choice  or  because  it  was  his  plan  from  the 
first.  He  lays  some  stress  on  the  alacrity  with  which  Northern 
and  Central  Italy  pronounced  in  his  favor,  but  he  does  not 
discuss  or  extenuate  the  curious  attachment  of  the  Marsi  and 
their  neighbors  to  the  cause  of  the  senate,  or  the  more  intelli- 
gible devotion  of  Campania,  where  all  the  grandees  had  estates, 
to  the  cause  of  the  nobility.  While  passing  over  points  like 
these,  Caesar  misses  no  opportunity  of  setting  forth  that  he 
was  the  champion  of  law  and  order  against  the  revolutionary 
proceedings  of  factious  aristocrats.  He  dilates  on  the  harsh 
measures  of  Varro  in  Andalusia,  and  of  Scipio  and  Milo  in 
Rome.  Cailius  had  been  made  pnxtor  by  Caisar,  IMilo  had 
been  banished  by  Pompeius  in  the  third  consulate,  which 
Cicero  thought  divine,  while  Caesar  thought  the  virtue  of 
Pompeius  had  brought  public  affiiirs  into  a  tolerable  state; 
but  both  united  to  raise  the  party  of  debtors  in  the  name  of 

Pompeius.  * 

Cx^sar  is  not  a  purist.     He  never  hints  that  Curio  wa's  a 
compromising  adherent ;  he  handles  his  fatal  and  unsuccessful 
raid  upon   Africa  very  tenderly  :    he   dwells   more   upon   his 
enterprise  and  gallantry,  and  upon  his  reasons  to  be  sanguine, 
than  upon  his  failure  to  utilize  half  the  resources  at  his  dis- 
posal.    Of  course  due  stress  is  laid  upon  Juba's  cruelty  to 
the  captives,  whom  Attius  Varus,  one  of  the  least  incapable 
of  the  lieutenants  of  Pompeius,  failed  to  protect,  after  they 
had    surrendered    to   him    upon    the    ordinary   terms.     The 
murder  of  Pompeius  is  narrated  much  more  coolly.     Cassar 
speaks  with  more  feeling  of  the  treasure  of  Ephesus,  which 
fortune  gave  him  the  opportunity  of  saving  twice.     The  only 
trace  of  emotion  is  that  Achillas,  the  Egyptian  commander- 
in-chief,  who  received  and  slaughtered  Pompeius,  is  called  a 
man  of  singular  daring.     Perhaps,  too,  if  the  war  had  not  been 
prefaced  by  an  assassination,  the  account  of  the  forces  under 
Achillas  might   have  been  less  caustic.     "They   were  such 
that  their  number,  their  character,  their  military  experiences 

I. — 10 


o  LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 

f  TTr^  ivifl  twentv  thousand  of 
,„ight  appear  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^  soUUers,  who 
them  under  arms.      lhc>  consisiLu  u  license  of 

had  come  already  into  the  custom  of  the  'f^/"  "^  \°; 
A,e.andria,  had  .m.earned  -^^^^Xt^"^^ 
r:-S!:'  '  ■llt::r:  -n^rced  ^^  .,  .sonm^^^ 

f  ,i.,t.nnd  exiles-  all  our  runaways  had  a  sure  refuge 
rXl  ::;  S  '  a  -;  livelihood ;  they  had  only  to  give 
in    hdr  name    and  be  put  on  the  soldier  roll:  then,  .any  o 

em  were  challenged  ly  his  master,  the  -1    -  raH.ed  and 
brou-ht  him  off;  for  they  bore  the.r  men  out  n   violence  be 
cCe  \l    "ere  in  the  like  fault,  and  each  thought  to  fend  off 
h     own  p  ri  .     These  were  the  men  who  had  used  themselves 
to  ckma    lin^  the  execution  of  courtiers,  to  plundermg  the 
ITo    tle^■ich,  to  beset  the  kings  house  to  get  the.r 
fnv  raised   to  driv;  one  iVom  the  kingdo.n  and  br,..g  ui  an- 
'o  4  ,  all  after  the  old  use  and  wont  of  the  army  of  Alexa.v 
d  ia      Besides,  there  were  two  thousand  cavalry      All  the  e 
vvere  veterans  of  mo.e  than  one  of  the  wars  oAlexandr.a: 
r;  liri^brought  back  Ptolema^us  the  elder  to  ius     .ngc  om 
,\.L  hid  shin  the  two   sons  of  Bibulus.      1  hc>    had   oucn 
Se ';  war  ui^u  Egyptians.     Such  was  their  milita,y  expe- 

''Srl  is  little  or  nothing  of  the  archaisms  of  tl.  more 

1         f  t.nc^no-Ps  of  the  "  Commentaries  on  the  Oallic  \\  ar, 
"^^^^^  elaborate  structure  of  the  level  nar- 
rat  ve      The  stvle  is  at  onee  less  careful  and  easier  more  ani- 
rn^d  and  more  monotonous  :  there  is  not  so  much  endeavor 
To  make  a  complicated  statement  clearly  in  a  single  sentence  , 
fL  r  pa m'raphs  open  with  an  ablative  absolute  followed  by 
? TepS  lirticiple  ;  perhaps,  too,  there  are  fewer  of    he 
rather  nave  sentences  in  which  each  clause  ends  in  a  verb 
nf  he  sar^eten  e  and  termination.     There  is  also  less  piety ; 
:^a?n  ore  of  fortune,  and  decidedly  less  of  the  imn.ortal 
::d^ : ^el ps  Ccesar  felt  it  incongruous  -  boast  ot.r^^ 
?ng  in  a  civil  war,  and  throughout  the  tone  of  the  narrative 


CMSAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 


219 


less  cheerful;  sometimes  it  is  almost  querulous.     One  may 
instance  the  description  of  the  opposition  of  the  Yimous  trib- 
une Mctellus  :  Caisar  does  not  say  a  word  of  his  own  designs 
upon  the  treasurv,  and  gives  us  to  understand  that  he  was  baf- 
fled in  everything.     Still  more  noticeable  is  the  way  in  which 
he  treats  the  two  unsuccessful  engagements  before  Dyrra- 
chium  •  he  will  not  allow  that  the  fust  was  a  defeat,  the  second 
was  only  a  slight  one;  such  as  it  was,  it  was  due  to  a  mere 
accident,  like  the  defeat  before  Gergovia,  and  the  elation  of 
Pompeius  and  his  army  was  quite  unfounded  and  unreason- 
able     A  whole  chapter  is  devoted  to  this  topic.     There  is 
not  k  line  to  show  how  precarious,  not  to  say  desperate,  was 
the  position  from  which  the  impatience  of  the  aristocracy  and 
the  vain  confidence  of  Pompeius  delivered  Caesar  by  the  bat- 
tle of  Pharsalia.     In  fact,  it  seems  to  have  been  part  of  Caesar  s 
system  to  underrate  risks  both  in  action  and  description.     He 
represents  the  Alexandrine  war  (where  he  was  in  urgent  peril 
till  he  had  occupied  Pharos  and  burned  great  part  of  the  Egyp- 
tian fleet)  as  an  enterprise  undertaken  out  of  a  disinterested 
sense  of  consular  decorum,  too  keen  to  allow  him  to  stand  by 
and  see  the  heritage  of  a  king  whom  the  Roman  people  had 
restored  to  his  throne  fought  for  in  his  presence.     Of  course 
the  brief  and  guarded  statement  was  intended  to  parry  plen- 
tiful gossip  about  the  fascinations  of  Cleopatra ;  by  itself  it 

hardly  sufficed.  . 

Hirtius,  who  narrates  the  sequel  of  the  Alexandrine  War, 
finds  it  necessary  to  explain,  with  an  air  of  sympathetic  frank- 
ness, how  natural  it  was  for  the  Egyptians  to  make  a  last 
effort  to  keep  the  Romans  out  of  their  country.  *'  It  was  but 
a  few  years  since  Gabinius  had  been  in  Egypt  with  an  army : 
Pompeius  had  fallen  back  on  Egypt  in  his  flight;  Caesar  had 
come  with  ships  and  troops  :  the  death  of  Pompeius  had  done 
no  good,  it  had  not  prevented  the  stay  of  Caesar.  Unless  he 
were  driven  out,  Egypt  would  be  a  province,  not  a  kingdom; 
and  that  must  be  done  betimes,  while  the  tempest  and  the 
season  of  the  year  shut  him  in,  so  that  he  could  receive  no 

help  from  over  sea." 

Hirtius  is  less  enthusiastic  than  Caesar  as  to  the  valor  of 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURF 


CESAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 


220 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


his  comrades.     Cnssar  never,  after  the  first  German  campaign, 
records  such  depression  as  seems  to  have  taken  possession^of 
the  forces  that  held  part  of  Alexandria,  when  Ganymedes  had 
brought  sea-water  into   their  cisterns;   and   the  distress  at 
Ilerda  had  been  at  least  as  severe,  and  lasted  longer.     He 
obviously  admires  the  versatility  of  the  Alexandrines,  who,  in 
all  that  belongs  to  street-fighting,  seem  to  have   been   able, 
with  the  advantage  of  their  superior  numbers,  to  hold  their 
own,  and  something  more,  against  Caesar,  who  was  superior 
both  in  the  field  and  in  regular  sea-fights,  even  when  he  had 
none  of  his  soldiers  aboard,  as  the  Rhodians  manceuvred  and 
fought  better  than  the  Egyptians.     Not  that  Hirtius  cares  to 
depreciate  the  Egyptians,  though  he  cannot  help  exclaiming 
at  the   truly  kingly  dissimulation   of  young  Ptolema^us,  who 
cried  at  parting  with   Ca-sar,  and  had   to^be  consoled' with 
the  prospect  of  an  early  meeting,  as  soon  as  the  pacification 
had  been  arranged   which   his   subjects  professed   to  desire 
Apparently  they  were  tears  of  joy,  for  as  soon  as  he  was  free 
he  threw  himself  into  the  war  with  as  much  energy  as  his  sub- 
jects, who  only  pretended  a  wish  for  peace  in  order  to  get  him 
out  of  CcX\sar's  quarters. 

The  Alexandrine  War  is  not  the  only  subject  of  the  book 
which  carries  the  history  of  the  Civil  War  from  the  point  at 
which  Caesar's  ''Commentaries"  leave  off  to  his  return  to  Rome 
after  the  victory  over  Pharnaces.     This  gives  the  book  a  very 
episodical  character,  for  the  operations  in  the  south  of  Spain 
had  no  connection  of  any  kind  with  those  in  Egypt;  and  the 
check  of  Domitius,  who  was  compelled  to  fall  back  into  the 
province   of  Asia,   after    an    unsuccessful   engagement  with 
Pharnaces,  did  nothing  to  add  to  the  dangers  of  C\xsar,  or  to 
hinder  the  advance  of  the  army  under  Mithridates  of  Pergamos 
which  ultimately  relieved  him.     The  result  is   that    Hirtius 
has  to  tell  each  story  separately,  without  attempting  to  link 
them  together.     First  we  have  the  history  of  Caesar's  combats, 
till  the  final  settlement  of  affairs  in  Egypt;  then  the  affairs  of 
Pharnaces,  until    Ccesar  was    ready  to  deal  with  him  ;    then 
Caesar  and  Pharnaces  are  left  to  wait  till  the  end  of  the  book, 
while  we  hear  of  the  performances  of  Gabinius  and  Vatinius 


v-mm^^^-c! 


222 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CESAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 


221 


and  Octavius,  on  the  coast  of  Illyricum ;  and,  at  much  greater 
lencrth,how  Cassius  made  money  in  his  province  out  of  every- 
thing even  a  conspiracy  to  assassinate  him,  and  how  at  length 
he  hi\  to  leave  the  province  to  a  successor,  who  might  very 
well  have  dispossessed  him  by  force,  as  half  the  province  was 
alreadv  in  revolt  against  his  authority.     As  Cassius  and  his 
treasure  were  swamped  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ebro,  because  his 
pride  would  not  allow  him  to  retreat  by  land,  the  affair  ended 
without  immediate  consequences,  and  might  have  been  passed 
over  although  it  contributed,  not  very  remotely,  to  the  second 
Spanish  war,  which  Hirtius  intended  to  relate  in  due  course. 
Still,  the  episode  might  have  been  curtailed  if  Hirtius  had  not 
owed  a  brother  officer  an  ill  turn.     He  writes  candidly  and 
cleverly:  one  phrase  is  worthy  of  Tacitus,  where  he  says  that 
the  news  of  Pharsalia  forced  a  little  gladness  out  of  Cassms, 
"  Lxtitiam  exprimebat ;"  though  he  takes  more  words  than  Tac- 
itus would  have  taken  to  explain  why  the  gladness  of  Cassius 
was  not  spontaneous.    Tacitus,  too,  would  have  carried  the  art 
of  damaging  candor  to  a  person  he  dislikes  much  further  ; 
he  would  have  been  undeniably  fair,  without  taking  so  much 
visible  pains  to  be  fair  as  Hirtius.     In  his  own  way,  Hirtius  is 
not  without  literary  ambition  ;  he  tries  to  be  ingenious  about 
the  perfidy  of  the  Alexandrines,  and  eloquent  about  the  tyranny 
of  Pharnaces,  who  seized  the  most  beautiful  of  both  sexes  for 
his  harem,  inflicting  a  punishment,  says  Hirtius,  worse  than 
death.     He  is  a  good  conservative,  and  disapproves,  like  his 
chief,  of  the   recurring  efforts   of  the  mob  of  Rome  and  its 
would-be  leaders  to  use  Caesar's  victory  as  an  occasion  of  dis- 
order.    His  style  is  more  elaborate  than  that  of  the  "Civil 
War ;  "  it  is  modelled  upon  the  full,  serried  order  of  the  "  Gallic 
War.'"    It  comes  a  little  short  of  their  sublime  air  of  imparti- 
ality.    Caesar's  own  explanations  of  his  conduct  never  seem 
the  least  like  apologies ;  he  never  seems  to  boast  of  his  achieve- 
ments.    Hirtius  visibly  admires  his  commander  always,  and 
sometimes  defends  him.     He  deserves  credit  for  his  freedom 
from  Caesar's  few  mannerisms,  such  as  the  frequent  use  of 
nactus  in  the  "  Civil  War,"  of  ^^  res  and  guce  res  in  the  ''Gallic 
W\ar;"  but  there  are  a  few  traces  of  imperfect  education— 


^-2CQj  />'  c   rOMArKA'TARJES. 


lit 


222 


I.  A  TliX  LITER  A  TUKE. 


phrases  are  used  without  a  clear  perception  of  their  natural 
meaning.  Infcne  momm  and  hifcrrc  cwufationcm  are  good  and 
natural  by  themselves,  or  even  together,  but  they  do  not  justify 
such  a  sentence  as  iXc'que  rcro  ALxamlrmis  in  gc-rendis  ;!,^o/iis 
amclalio  ulla  aut  mom  wfcrcbatur.  It  rested  with  the  Alex 
andrmes  to  delay  or  not,  and  Jiirtius  probably  means  that 
they  chose  not  to  delay;  but  what  he  says  would  almost  im- 
ply that  there  was  nothing  to  hinder  their  bein-  cnercretic 

The  narrative  of  Hirtius  is  continued,  by  au  infertor  I,and 
or  hands  to  the  end  of  the  second  Spanish  war,  which  is  prob- 
ably as  far  as  Hirtius  meant  to  go  ;  for  there  were  no  seri- 
ous military  operations  between  tlie  battle  of  Munda  and  the 
death  of  Caesar,  which  he  fixed  as  the  period  of  his  history 
rhe  conlnuiator's  work  is  in  a  very  fragmentary  state,  and 
leaves  off  abruptly  ui  the  middle  of  an  harangue  in  which 
Caesar  rebukes  the  people  of  Gades  for  their  persistent  disaf- 
fection ;  mforming  them  that,  even  if  ihev  had  been  able  to 
compass  his  death,  they  would  still  have  had  to  deal  with  the 
valor  of  the    Roman   legions  -  legions   which   were   stron-^ 
enough  to  pull  down  the  heavens.     It  is  noteworthy  that  the 
speech  ^^xnoratio  recta:  throughout  the  Commentaries  of 
Caesar  and  Hirtius  almost  everything  is  put  in  oratio  oMiyua, 
as   f  set  speeches  were  too  much  of  a  literary  ornament  fo^ 
such  simple  memoirs.     Altogether  the  books  on  the  African 
and  Spanish  wars  show  a  strong  though  ill-regulated  ambition 

thevT'    ;"^-        '"  .'""'°^  °^  """'°^^  -*^  uneducated,  and 
hey  do  not  care  for  simplicity ;  they  are  not  exactly  pr^en- 

tious,  but  they  wish  to  write  like  a  book 

The  author  of  the  "African   War"  still   imitates   C.Tsar 

pretty  closely  m  everything  but  ease  and  elegance      He  is 

rough   and   cumbrous,  and   a   little   over-emphatic ;   for  one 
hingj,e  IS  very  fond  of  the  historical  infinitive;  he  indulges, 

work,  which  Cfesar  does  not  employ.  The  book  has  an  in- 
terest, because  the  author  was  not  of  the  rank  of  Hirtius,  and 

some  'o?ti::  ""^  'r""  ""^  ^'"^"^-  ^-  '-'--e,  wh  „ 
tirLlL  f  T'n  °^'"''  ''"■"  '^'^"'■^■'^^  ^°°"  •-'f'^r  landing, 
the  w liter  feels  that  it  served  them  right,  yet  seems  to  think 


22d 


LA  77 A'  I  ri'fi'i.>jrr^i?ir 


CESAR'S  COMMENTARIES. 


223 


that  Caesar  almost  descended  to  sharp  practice  in  availing 
himself  of  such  a  little  petty  bit  of  a  cause  as  the  conduct  of 
Avienus,  who  filled  a  whole  ship  with  his  stores,  his  house- 
hold, and  his  riding-horse  and  sumpter  animals,  without  bring- 
ing over  a  single  soldier  from  Sicily.     He  admires  Caesar's 
clemcncv,  but  the  admiration  is  rather  Platonic  ;  he  does  not 
seem  shocked  when  he  tells  us  how  the  soldiers  after  Thapsus 
cut  down  the  troops  of  Scipio,  under  the  eyes  of  Caesar,  who 
vainly  begged  his  men  to  be  merciful,  though  he  thinks  the 
veterans  went  rather  too  far  in    attacking   the   nobles  and 
knights  who  served  in  Cassar's  army,  and  were  called  auctores 
by  a  curious  piece  of  slang.     It  was  natural  enough  that  an 
army  in  a  civil  war  should  wish  for  some  personages  of  posi- 
tion at  its  head,  who   should  not   merely  act  as  generals,  but 
<Tive  their  official  and  personal  authority  to  the  cause.     And 
Hirtius  uses  the  word  quite  commonly  in  the  singular ;  but  it 
was  an  easy  extension  of  the  term  to  call  every  one  whose 
presence  in  the  camp  was  a  credit  to  the  cause  an  aucfor. 
The  writer  does  full  justice  to  the  difference  between  Cato 
and  the  majority  of  the  Pompeians,  though  he  has  great  satis- 
fiiction  in  showing  that  Cato  had  no  hold  upon  the  mass  of 
the  population,  whom  he  had  to  protect  from  the  leaders  on 
his  own  side.     Scipio,  on  the  other  hand,  is  treated  rather  un- 
generously ;  we  are  not  spared  a  single  instance  of  his  arro- 
gance, or  of  his  subservience  to  Juba,  but  we  hear  nothing  of 
the  remarkable  gallantry  of  his  end.    The  writer  shows  gener- 
ally more  animosity  to  the  Pompeians  than  enthusiasm  for 
Cccsar;  he  is  still  loyal,  but  the  fitigue  of  the  war,  that  is  con- 
stantly renewed  throughout  the  Roman  world,  is  too  much  for 
him  ;  he  contrasts  Caesar's  energy  in  Gaul,  and  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  Civil  War,  with  his  dilatory  strategy  in  Africa. 

The  Spanish  war  is  even  less  satisfactory  3  the  text^  is 
shamefully  mutilated,  and,  even  apart  from  this,  the  narrative 
is  obscure  :  more  than  once  we  come  upon  repetitions,  or 
what  look  so  like  repetitions  as  to  suggest  that  we  have  a 
compilation  in  which  more  note-books  than  one  have  been 
used.  There  are  almost  as  many  anacolutha  as  in  Thucydi- 
des,  and  there  is  little  attraction  of  any  kind  to  compensate 


224 


LA  TIX  LITER  A  TURK. 


for  the  faults  of  style,  except  that  the  situation  is  still 

freely  discussed  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  rank  and  file 


more 


than  in  the  African  W 


dh 


lean 
of  the  desertions,  and  the  treachery  of  the  deserters  to  the 
side  they  joined.      Another  striking  point  is  the  absence  of 
all  political  motive  on  either  side.     Pompeius  professed  no 
programme  except  filial  duty,  and  Ccesar  hardly  troubled  him- 
self to  assume  a  public  character  ;  the  war  itself  became  pos- 
sible because  two  of  Caesar's   commanders   had  a  quarrel, 
which  Hirtius  narrated  at  the  close  of  the  *'  Alexandrian  War." 
It  was  carried  on  with  the  utmost  ferocity  on  both  sides,  and 
now  and  then  even  the  writer  is  shocked,  although  he  relates 
without  comment  the  mutilation  of  two  bearers  of  Pompeius's 
despatches,  and  the  slaughter  of  30,000,  and  perhaps  some- 
thing more,  of  his  troops,  at  the  bloody  battle  of  Munda     He 
reminds  us  at  intervals  of  Caesar's  clemency,  rather  as  if  he 
vvere  proud  of  it  than  as  if  he  admired  it ;  otherwise  we  might 
alniost  forget  liiat  we  had  to  do  with  the  conqueror  of  Gaul 
and   Pharsaha.      We  hear  more  of  the  diplomacy  of  even 
Pompeius  than  of  C.xsar's,  whose  only  political  acts  are  to  be 
detained  m  Rome  for  the  shows,  and  to  harangue  the  sena- 
tors of  Gades.     It  is  further  noticeable  that  the  writer  is  fond 
of  quoting  Ennuis,  and  that  he  uses  the  adverb  bene  with  ad- 
jectives simply  for  emphasis,  just  as  the  French  use  bien. 

SALLUST. 

Sallust  attached  himself,  like  Cicero  and  Qx^sar,  to  the  Ma- 
rian party,  and  appears  to  have  been  pretty  constant  to  his 
choice.     He  was  born  in  86  n.c,  the  year  that  Sulla  captured 
Athens;  he  died  four  years  before  Actium,  in  the  fortv-ninth 
year  of  h.s  age.     When  he  was  thirtv-five  or  thirtv-six,  he  was 
expelled  from  the  senate,  nominally  on  the  ground  of  his  im- 
morality'm  private  life,  reall)-,  as  he  chose  to  believe,  because 
he  had  been  zealous  as  tribune  of  the  commons  against  Milo, 
the  pet  bravo  of  the  aristocracy,  in  the  year  that  that  energetic 
citizen  put  an  end  to  the  career  of  Clodius.     He  resolved  to 
retire  into  private  life,  and,  being  still  young  and  ardent,  wms 
too  proud  to  subside  into  the  life  of  slothful  ease  or  the  me- 


SALLUSr. 


2^-S 


chanical  round  of  farming  and  hunting  which  were  the  natu- 
ral alternative  for  a  man  of  family  shut  out  from  public  busi- 
ness; consequently,  he  devoted  himself  to  history,  until  the 
victory  of  Cajsar  enabled  him  to  resume  his  official  career. 
He  was,  after  some  subordinate  employments,  made  governor 
of  Numidia,  a  province  that  Cresar  had  no  reason  to  spare, 
and  there  he  acquired  a  fortune  at  the  expense  of  the  provin- 
cials, who  complained  in  vain  of  a  partisan  of  Ccesar.  On  his 
return  he  was  able  to  buy  magnificent  gardens  in  Rome,  that 
long  retained  his  name.  There  he  lived  a  life  of  strictly  legal 
luxury,  which  did  not  disgrace  the  tone  of  injured  virtue  which 
he  affected  in  his  writings.  An  unfortunate  man  of  spirit  and 
ability  is  naturally  censorious,  and  Sallust  had  some  rijrht  to 
think  himself  too  good  for  his  contemporaries.  But  when  the 
moral  standard  rose,  it  became  the  fashion  to  contrast  Sallust's 
writings  and  his  life  as  if  it  were  a  mockery  for  him  to  talk  of 
virtue.  ]]y  virtue  he  meant  very  much  the  same  as  the  Ital- 
ians of  the  Renaissance,  the  habit  of  keeping  worthy  objects 
in  sight,  and  being  strenuous  in  pursuit  of  them.  His  quarrel 
with  the  time  was,  not  that  men  indulged  their  animal  nat- 
ure, but  that  they  were  subject  to  it ;  not  that  they  enriched 
themselves  without  being  scrupulous  as  to  the  means,  but 
that  they  shamelessly  sacrificed  the  state  to  their  own  gain, 
and,  still  more,  that  they  thought  money  made  the  man.  His 
philosophy  really  extends  no  further  than  the  easy  proposi- 
tions—that the  mind  is  more  important  than  the  body,  that 
wealth  and  rank  derive  their  value  from  the  personal'worth 
of  their  possessors,  and  that  extreme  party  passions  are  per- 
nicious to  the  state. 

He  wrote  a  continuous  history  of  Rome  from  the  consulate 
of  Lepidus  and  Catulus,  which  has  only  reached  us  in  insig- 
nificant fragments,  with  the  exception  of  two  speeches  and 
two  letters ;  and  two  separate  works  upon  the  conspiracy  of 
Catilina  and  the  war  of  Jugurtha.  His  name  has  also  pre- 
served two  themes  on  the  theory  of  a  democratic  monarchy, 
purporting  to  be  letters  addressed  by  him  to  Ccesar,  and  a 
school  exercise  on  a  fictitious  brawl  in  the  senate,  where 
Cicero  and  Sallust  (who  were  really  on  bad  terms)  were  sup- 

I.— 10* 


226 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


SALLUST. 


227 


posed  to  have  assailed  each  other  with  hard  words.  This  last 
work  is  old  enough  to  make  it  probable  that  the  imputations 
on  both  sides  were  supported  by  the  current  scandal  of  the 
day.  Otherwise  the  speeches  have  very  little  interest,  and 
what  Sallust  says  has  no  resemblance  whatever  to  his  real 
Style,  which  is  imitated  stiffly,  but  not  so  unhappily,  in  the 
hortatory  letters  to  Caesar.  It  is  known  that  he  left  genuine 
orations,  which  the  elder  Seneca  thought  might  be  read  in 
honor  of  his  histories,  which  proves  they  were  not  worth  read- 
ing for  themselves. 

His  histories,  on  the  contrary,  had  the  highest  reputation. 
There  was  a  considerable  party,  at  any  rate  as  early  as  Mar- 
tial, who  recognized  him  as  the  prince  of  Roman  historians. 
His  natural  rival  was  Livy,  whose  enormous  bulk  must  al- 
ways have  deterred  readers  ;  nor  is  it  likely,  to  judge  by  the 
remains  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  decade,  that  the  whole  four- 
teen approached  the  excellence  of  the  first  and  third,  while 
Sallust  always  appears  master  of  his  materials,  and  his  quaint- 
ness  and  archaism  were  increasingly  attractive  in  the  post- 
Augustan  age. 

It  is  uncertain  whether  the  episode  of  Catilina  did  not  prop- 
erly belong  to  the  histories,  for  they  may  well  have  covered  the 
period  of  his  conspiracy  ;  and  it  would  be  quite  in  accordance 
with  the  practice  of  the  time,  as  appears  from  a  letter  of 
Cicero  to  Lucceius,  for  a  writer  who  meant  to  treat  the  events 
of  so  many  years  to  pick  out  one  episode  for  immediate  pub- 
lication. The  preface  shows  clearly  that  it  was  sent  out  by 
itself  by  the  author  ;  the  close  looks  as  if  it  were  to  fit  into  a 
continuous  work  ;  the  narrative  leaves  off  quietly,  without 
any  attempts  to  recapitulate  its  lessons.  Instead,  we  have  a 
few  lines  on  the  temper  of  the  victorious  army,  which  are 
finely  conceived  and  expressed,  but  contain  nothing  unsuita- 
ble to  any  bloody  and  obstinate  battle  in  any  civil  war.  After 
a  liberal  tribute  to  the  personal  gallantry  of  Catilina  and  the 
desperate  courage  of  his  followers,  he  concluded  with  these 
words : 

"Nor  yet  had  the  army  of  the  Roman  people  won  a  joyful 
or  a  bloodless  victory.     For  all  the  best  at  need  had  either 


fallen  in  battle  or  gone  away  with  heavy  w^ounds.  Many, 
moreover,  who  had  come  forth  out  of  the  camp  to  see  or  spoil, 
as  thev  turned  over  carcasses  of  enemies,  found  some  a  friend, 
and  part  a  guest  or  kinsman.  There  were  some,  too,  to  recog- 
nize a  private  enemy.  So  through  all  the  army  there  was  a 
varied  stir  of  gladness  and  grief,  of  mourning  and  joy."' 

The  close  of  the  "  Jugurtha"  is  yet  more  remarkably  abrupt. 
The  author  describes  Sulla's  character  at  length  because  he 
will  have  no  occasion  to  speak  of  him  again,  and  therefore  it 
seems  that  the  narrative  went  no  further  than  the  end  of  the 
war  with  Jugurtha,  although  the  war  with  the  Cimbri  and 
Teutones  succeeded  immediately,  as  he  is  careful  to  remind 
us.  Sallust  says  not  a  word  of  the  first  triumph  of  Marius, 
nor  of  the  dramatic  incidents  of  the  execution  of  Jugurtha : 
he  only  spends  a  dozen  lines  on  all  that  followed  the  inter- 
view where  Sulla  seized  Jugurtha  by  the  connivance  of  Boc- 
chus.  "The  rest  were  cut  down;  Jugurtha  was  delivered 
bound  to  Sulla,  and  brought  by  him  to  Marius.  Meanwhile 
our  generals  Q.  Ca3pio  and  Cn.  Manlius  fought  the  Gauls 
with  ill-success ;  at  which  fear  all  Italy  had  trembled.  Ro- 
mans then,  and  even  to  our  memory,  held  thus,  that  all  else 
was  no  uphill  work  for  their  valor ;  but  with  Gauls  they  had 
to  fight  for  safety,  not  for  glory.  But  after  tidings  came  the 
war  in  Numidia  was  done,  and  Jugurtha  on  his  WMy  to  Rome 
in  bonds,  Marius  was  made  consul  in  his  absence,  and  the 
province  of  Gaul  decreed  to  him  :  so  he,  on  the  first  of  Janu- 
ary, had  the  glory'  to  triumph  and  be  consul  at  once.  From 
that  season  the  hopes  and  the  prosperity  of  the  state  lay  all 
on  him.'* 

Probably  the  abruptness  is  calculated  in  both  cases.  Sen* 
eca  the  younger  observes  :  "When  Sallust  flourished,  clipped 
sentences,  and  words  that  dropped  before  the  reader  was 
ready,  and  short  obscurity,  all  passed  for  finish."     It  agrees 

'  "  Gladness"  for  the  victory,  "grief"  for  friends  or  comrades,  "mourn- 
ing" for  the  dead  who  were  miited  to  them  by  ties  of  hospitality  or  kin- 
dred, "joy"  for  the  death  of  personal  enemies. 

^Most  of  the  later  triumphs  of  the  Republic  were  won  by  commanders 
whose  consulate  had  expired,  and  who  had  been  left  to  finish  the  war  as 
proconsuls. 


228 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


with  this  that  in  the  construction  of  his  works  he  should  aim 
at  raising  rather  than  satisfying  expectation.  The  brevity  of 
Salkist,  as  Scah'ger  points  out,  is  easy  to  exaggerate.  Quinc- 
tilian  boasts  that  his  countryman  has  outdone  Thucydides ; 
that  in  Thucydides  it  is  possible  to  remove  a  word  here  and 
there  without  obscuring  the  meaning,  and  in  Sallust  it  is 
impossible.  But  Thucydides  never  writes  for  the  sake  of 
writing;  his  digressions  are  always  subordinate  to  the  main 
subject,  whereas  in  Sallust  the  main  subject  is  a  peg  to 
hang  disquisitions  and  portraits  upon. 

The  "Jugurtha"  and  "Catilina"  have  been  called  party 
pamphlets  in  the  disguise  of  history.  But  Sallust  is  too  se- 
rious for  a  pamphleteer,  too  disinterested  for  a  partisan.  He 
dislikes  the  nobility,  without  caring  for  the  commons  ;  he  has 
no  enthusiasm  for  IMarius  or  even  for  Cx'sar.  He  is  an  his- 
torian, we  might  say,  for  want  of  conviction  enough  to  be  a 
politician  ;  he  is  able  to  air  his  spleen  without  committing 
himself  to  any  measure,  to  any  cause,  for  or  against  any  per- 
son. He  writes  almost  as  sympathetically  of  Cato  as  of 
Caesar ;  and  one  cannot  be  sure  that,  in  pitting  them  against 
each  other  as  the  two  great  statesmen  of  the  day,  his  only  ob- 
ject is  to  depreciate  Pompeius  and  Cicero.  Of  course  he  de- 
spised both  ;  his  homage  to  Cicero  as  an  excellent  consul  is 
hypocritical,  his  homage  to  Cato  is  intended  to  be  insulting 
to  all  other  conservative  politicians.  But  there  was  much  in 
Cato  that  he  admired  and  liked.  Caesar  was  too  modern  for 
Sallust,  who  is  always  regretting  the  good  old  days  of  poverty 
and  concord,  and  bewailing  the  civilization  and  luxury  which 
had  followed  upon  the  conquests  of  Rome.  Not  that  he  be- 
h'eves  very  heartily  in  the  old  Roman  discipline  :  his  theory 
of  national  greatness  is,  that  the  superiority  of  Rome  over 
Greece  was  built  up,  like  all  superiority,  by  the  virtue  cf  a 
few  ;  and  his  quarrel  with  the  nobility  is,  not  that  they  op- 
pressed the  commons,  or  that  they  were  burdensome  to  the 
world,  but  that  they  made  it  impossible  for  young  men  to  rise 
by  "good  behavior."  His  ideal  was  a  state  of  things  in 
which  good  conduct,  steady  imitation  of  the  best  qualities  of 
the  best  men,  should  at  once  and  infallibly  secure  the  recog- 


SALLUST. 


229 


r 


t 


nition  of  superiors  and  the  admiration  of  equals.  Ihat  envy 
should  wait  upon  success  was  less  distressmg,  but  success 
ouoht  to  be  surely  and  honorably  won  by  those  who  were 
capable  of  it.  According  to  Sallust,  he  himself  had  contract- 
ed one  stain  from  the  evils  of  the  time  :  when  he  was  young 
and  foolish  he  had  given  way  to  ambition.  He  had  tried  to 
push  his  own  way,  and  pull  down  others  because  he  had  not 
been  promoted  in  due  course.  He  has  no  admiration  for  the 
campaign  of  prosecutions  with  which  ambitious  young  nobles 
opened^their  political  career  as  soon  as  the  tribunate  had 
been  restored  by  Crassus  and  Pompeius  to  its  original  power. 
What  he  does  admire  is  the  model  conqueror  at  the  head  of 
his  army  in  an  enemy's  country,  keeping  up  discipline  and 
protecting  the  weak,  proving  the  superiority  of  a  poor  repub- 
lic to  a  rich  monarchy,  and  of  training  to  numbers.  He  ad- 
mires the  conqueror  because  he  practises  all  the  virtues 
which  are  too  commonly  lacking  in  the  statesman  :  political 
stability  would  be  possible  if  only  what  is  learned  in  war 
were  not  habitually  unlearned  in  peace.  There  is  an  evi- 
dent eftbrt  throughout  to  extol  pure  intellect:  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  Athenians  were  nothing  to  those  of  the  Romans, 
but  the  Athenians  had  great  historians.  The  historian's  own 
career,  he  feels,  ought  to  be  as  glorious  as  the  career  of  those 
who  make  history,  for  it  has  difficulties  of  its  own,  and  the 
historian  may  claim  some  share  in  the  deeds  which  he  in- 
spires as  well  as  in  those  which  he  narrates. 

With  all  this  high  sense  of  his  vocation,  he  cannot  be  called 
a  satisfactory  historian.  Thucydides  makes  the  revolution 
of  the  Four  Hundred  perfectly  intelligible,  though  he  had  to 
collect  his  information  in  exile  :  even  a  superficial  and  prej- 
udiced writer  like  Xenophon  explains  the  different  stages 
through  which  the  revolution  of  the  Thirty  passed  to  its  col- 
lapse. It  is  impossible  to  explain  the  conspiracy  of  Catilina 
by  the  help  of  Sallust.  He  never  quite  decides  the  funda- 
mental question  whether  Catilina  ever  intended,  if  left  to  him- 
self, to  rebel  at  all.  He  assumes  a  conspiracy  on  the  faith 
of  Cicero's  informants,  and  yet  narrates  facts  like  Catilina's 
last  words  in  the  senate,  his  letter  to  Catulus,  and  his  refusal 


; 


230 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


to  appeal  to  the  slaves  even  after  he  had  taken  the  command 
at  FaisulcE — which  seem  to  point  plainly  to  some  policy  which 
could  be  supported  by  avowable  means.    What  this  policy  was 
we  are  not  told,  thougli  it  would  have  been  easy  to  inquire. 
Sallust  speaks  as  if  he  had  been  intimate  with  Sempronia,  a 
daring  woman  of  quality  who  interested  herself  in  Catilina  as 
Caesar,  if  all  tales  were  true,  interested  himself  in  her.     But,  if 
Cx^sar  knew  what  Sempronia  could  tell,  he  had  reasons  (which 
Sallust  respected)  for  reserve  :  he  Iiad  found  it  worth  while 
to  attract  followers  whom  he  had  to  disappoint  when  his  suc- 
cess came.     Perhaps  Catilina  would  have  disappointed  some 
of  his  followers  ;  perhaps   a   full   account  of  his  enterprise 
might  have  exhibited  him  as  rather  an  unsuccessful  antici- 
pator of  Cx'sar  than  as  a  degenerate  pupil  of  Sulla.     We  get 
hints  every  now  and  then  that  the  atrocity  of  Catilina  and  his 
confederates  was  very  much  exaggerated  in  the  interest  of 
Cicero:  the  narrative  is  carefully  arranged  to  minimize  any 
services  that  Cicero  might  be  thought  to  have  rendered.     We 
hear  little  or  nothing  of  the  enthusiasm  of  respectability  which 
he  claimed  to  have  evoked,  something,  and  not  too  much,  of 
the  sympathy  which  Catilina  left  behind  him,  until  the  adroit 
disclosures  of  Cicero  about  the  plans  for  firing  the  city  were 
rewarded  with  a  revulsion  of  feeling,  which  lasted,  at  any  rate, 
till  after  the  execution  of  Lentulus  and  the  other  conspirators,' 
who  had  compromised  themselves  with  the  Allobroges.     One 
omission  is  very  noticeable.      Sallust  says  nothing  one  way 
or  other  of  the  remarkably  small  number  of  the  victims  of  a 
plot  which  he  assumes  to  have  had  many  ramifications.     He 
hardly  cared  to  ascertain  facts,  he  was  so  occupied  with  re- 
flections ;  and  perhaps  he  could   not  have  gone   into  detail 
without  compromising  many  who  had  attained  a  respectable 
rank  among  the  opponents  of  the  nobility.     The  complicity 
of  Crassus  is  hinted  more  than  once  ;  it  was  believed  at  the 
time,  and  Sallust  gives  no  opinion  of  his  own.     He  gives  Cic- 
ero credit  for  not  allowing  any  of  the  informers  (whose  con- 
fessions we  are  to  understand  he  dictated)  to  bring  any  false 
accusation  against  Caesar  which  Catulus  and  Piso^'wished  to 
have  brousfht. 


■ 


SALLUST, 


231 


Sallust  throws  his  strength  much  more  into  the  analysis  of 
the  conditions  which  made  Catilina's  enterprise  possible  than 
into  an  exact  estimate  of  its  extent,  or  its  aims,  or  its  method. 
So  far  as  he  has  a  thesis,  it  is  that  Sulla  was  the  worst  of  rev- 
olutionists, that  Catilina  is  to  be  judged  as  an  abortive  Sulla 
rather  than  as  a  degenerate  Gracchus.  He  comes  back  again 
and  again  to  the  thorough  egotism  of  the  politicians  of  his  day, 
whose  professions,  whether  they  called  themselves  aristocrats 
or  democrats,  were  only  the  instruments  of  their  personal 
ambition.  The  aristocrats  were  just  as  selfish  and  corrupt 
as  the  democrats ;  their  only  claim  to  superior  respecta- 
bility was  that  they  were  in  favor  of  keeping  things  as  they 
were.  The  majority  of  the  young,  we  are  told,  were  in  favor 
of  Catilina  even  when  they  were  not  implicated  in  the  con- 
spiracy, out  of  impatience  at  the  narrow  timid  cliques  who 
had  almost  all  the  power  of  the  state  in  their  hands.  Besides, 
the  supremacy  of  Sulla  had  stimulated  all  kinds  of  disorderly 
hopes.  The  cruelties  of  Marius  and  Cinna  had  been  prompt- 
ed by  vengeance ;  the  cruelties  of  Sulla  had  been  prompted  by 
greed,  and  therefore  were  more  easily  imitated.  Common  sol- 
diers had  become  senators,  with  wealth  to  keep  up  their  rank. 
Many,  it  is  true,  had  spent  quickly  what  they  had  gained  easi- 
ly, but  were  only  the  more  ready  to  begin  again  ;  while  many 
who  had  been  ruined  partly  by  confiscations,  partly  by  the 
harsh  working  of  the  law  of  debt,'  were  naturally  disposed 
to  think  any  change  must  be  for  the  better,  especially  if  it 
were  violent. 

Another  and  more  permanent  cause  of  disorder,  upon  which 
Sallust  lays  more  stress  than  Cicero,  was  the  character  of  the 
Roman  proletariate,  which  was  largely  recruited  from  the  fail- 
ures of  the  rest  of  Italy — sometimes  because  the  doles  of  the 
capital,  public  and  private,  seemed  attractive  j  sometimes  be- 
cause, having  nowhere  else  to  go,  they  drifted  thither.    Cicero 

'  This  appears  from  the  manifesto  of  the  Etrurian  insurgents,  who  tell 
Marcius  that  the  harshness  of  the  money-lenders  and  the  praetor  had  pre- 
vented them  from  taking  the  benefit  of  the  law  and  saving  their  personal 
liberty  by  giving  up  their  property,  and  appeal  to  the  admirable  precedent 
set  within  recent  memory,  with  the  good-will  of  all  good  men,  of  issuing 
brass  coins  at  the  value  of  silver,  in  order  to  facilitate  the  payment  of  debts. 


232 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


SALLUST. 


^2,?> 


is  always  especially  bland  and  conciliatory  in  his  language  to 
"citizens  of  tlie  more  slender  sort,"'  and  gives  us  to  under- 
stand that  it  was  only  Clodius  who  taught  them  to  make  a 
trade  of  disorder  ;  according  to  Sallust,  even  Catilina  found 
the  lesson  ready  taught.  The  reason  that  the  mine  which 
Sulla  laid  was  tired  when  it  was  did  not  lie  deep,  if  we  may 
trust  Sallust;  Catilina  was  driven  to  his  destruction  by  a 
guilty  conscience — he  had  poisoned  his  son  to  make  room  for 
his  mistress.  The  absence  of  Pompeius  had  given  the  nobil- 
ity a  temporary  preponderance,  which  they  used  unsparingly; 
and  the  commons,  and  all  who  traded  on  their  discontent, 
were  ready  to  rally  round  any  chief  who  would  break  the 
yoke  which  it  seemed  had  been  shaken  oft'  He  supplies  also 
a  more  prosaic  explanation.  When  Catilina  had  been  pre- 
vented from  standing  for  the  consulate  by  an  unfair  manoeu- 
vre two  years  before,  he  had  contemplated  killing  the  consuls 
and  sending  a  partisan  to  seize  Spain.  The  consuls  were 
not  killed,  according  to  the  story,  because  Catilina  gave  the 
signal  before  his  friends  were  ready ;  the  partisan  was  sent 
to  Spain  with  a  regular  though  lower  commission,  procured 
by  the  influence  of  Crassus  and  of  "  many  excellent  citizens 
who  thought  he  was  to  be  trusted,"  as  a  counterpoise  to  Pom- 
peius, whose  Spanish  friends  put  Catilina's  friend  out  of  the 
way.  There  was  an  end  of  the  first  conspiracy.  As  to  the 
second,  Cicero,  who  had  been  inclined  to  coalesce  with  Cati- 
lina, had  secured  his  own  election  by  retailing  the  wild  talk 
of  the  silliest  of  Catilina's  intimates,  and  was  hard  at  work 
improving  them  into  a  foundation  for  a  formal  charge  of  high- 
treason.  Still  Catilina  kept  the  peace  till  he  knew  that  the 
election  had  gone  against  him  once  more  ;  he  only  left  Rome 
when  he  saw  that  the  senate  was  willing  to  accept  denuncia- 
tion as  an  equivalent  to  proof.  Sallust  speaks  of  the  "craft 
and  cunning"'  of  the  consul  as  quite  on  a  par  v.ith  the  de- 
vices of  the  conspirators. 

On  one  point  Sallust's  judgment  is  decisive  against  some 
modern  theories.  Catilina's  enterprise,  whatever  it  was,  had 
no  serious  chances.    He  would  have  raised  a  formidable  civil 

'  " Tenuiores  civiuni."  "•'  "Dolus  atque  astutiae." 


war  if  he  had  not  been  crushed  in  the  first  engagement;  and, 
vv'hether  he  or  the  government  had  been  victorious,  neither 
would  have  been  strong  enough  to  profit  by  the  victory:  some 
third  party  of  real  consequence  would  have  struck  in  to  estab- 
lish a  dictatorship  on  the  ruins  of  the  constitution.     Brilliant 
and  attractive  as  Catilina  was,  he  was  only  a  storm-bird  and 
a  firebrand.     It  is  curious  how  exactly  the  greater  part  of  the 
character  Sallust  gives  him  fits  a  more  brilliant  adventurer,  at 
once  less  unfortunate,  less  criminal,  and  more  mischievous— 
the  famous  Cardmal  de  Retz.      "A  body  to  bear  firsting,  chill, 
and  w\atching  in  a  manner  beyond  belief;  a  spirit  bofd,  sub- 
tle, changeable,  fit  for  any  semblance  or  dissemblance  soever, 
greedy  of  other  men's  goods,  lavish  of  his  own,  burning  in  de- 
sires; eloquence  enough,  wisdom  scant;  a  great  unfurnished 
spirit,  full  of  immoderate,  incredible,  high -reaching  wishes." 
Catilina  suffered,  like  Byron,  for  the  wilful  neglect  of  his  body 
in  the  perversion  of  his  instincts  ;  De  Retz,  who  treated  his 
more  kindly,  lived  to  prosper  and  reform. 

But  Sallust,  who  is  always  eager  to  assert  the  supremacy  of 
the  spirit  over  the  flesh,  mentions  Catilina's  austerities  to  his 
praise,  just  as  he  admires  Jugurtha  for  keeping  to  the  good 
hardy  habits  of  his  nation  instead  of  wasting  himself  in  sloth 
and  pomp.  From  most  points  of  view  the  "Jugurtha"  is  an 
hiiprovement  on  the  "  Catilina."  The  same  pohits  are  made 
in  the  exordium,  but  they  are  made  better;  we  have  a  mov- 
ing piece  of  eloquence  instead  of  a  frigid  heap  of  aphorisms, 
some  of  which  are  impressive  and  some  are  bald.  The  open- 
ing is  translated,  as  showing  the  best  side  of  a  character  which 
did  not  bear  late  prosperity  faultlessly.  "The  race  of  man 
complains  of  its  nature,  not  aright,  that,  being  feeble  and  of 
short  continuance,  hap,  rather  than  virtue,  beareth  rule.  For 
think  of  it  the  other  way,  you  find  there  is  nothing  greater 
nor  more  excellent,  and  our  nature  lacks  the  energy  of  man 
far  more  than  strength  or  time.  But  the  leader  and  com- 
mander of  the  life  of  mortals  is  the  spirit,  which,  if  it  advances 
to  glory  in  the  way  of  virtue,  with  strength  and  stoutness 
enough,  it  gets  renown,  and  needs  not  fortune,  inasmuch  as 
she  has  no  power  to  give  or  take  away  any  man's  honesty,  in- 


234 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


SALLUST. 


235 


dustry,  or  anght  of  good  behavior.     But  if,  being  taken  of  evil 
desires,  it  falls  into  perdition  of  sloth  and  bodily  pleasures, 
after  brief  use  of  deadly  delights,  when  strength  and  time  and 
wit  have  ebbed  away  by  reason  of  dulness  of  heart,  then  men 
cry  out  against  the  weakness  of  nature,  and  each  in  his  plea 
lays  his  fault  upon  dumb  things.     Lut  if  men  had  so  much 
care  for  good  things  as  zeal  to  seek  what  touches  nor  shall 
profit  them— ay,  and  brings  much  peril  too — then  they  should 
be  not  ruled  by  chance,  but  rulers  over  chance,  and  go  so  far 
in  greatness  as,  being  mortal,  to  attain  eternal  glory  ;  for  as 
the  race  of  man  is  made  up  of  body  and  soul,  so  all  things 
and  all  our  pursuits  follow,  some  the  nature  of  the  body,  some 
the  nature  of  the  spirit.     Therefore,  a  beautiful  countenance 
and  great  riches  and  strength  of  body,  with  all  and  whatever 
else  is  of  this  f\ishion,  come  to  nothing  in  short  space ;  but  the 
excellent  feats  of  the  spirit  are  immortal  like  the  soul.     \x\  a 
word,  as  to  the  goods  of  the  body  and  of  fortune,  as  their  be- 
ginning so  is  their  end — they  all  have  their  rising  and  their 
setting,  and  only  increase  to  wax  old  ;  but  the  spirit  eternal, 
incorruptible,  the  ruler  of  the  race  of  men,  sways  all  things, 
possesses  all  things,  and  is  not  possessed.'     Wherefore  their 
depravity  is  more  wonderful  who,  given  up  to  bodily  joys, 
spend  their  time   in   sloth  and  luxury:  while  their  wit,  than 
which  is  nothing  either  better  or  greater  in  the  nature  of  mor- 
tals, they  leave  to  rust  and  wither  without  culture  or  diligence; 
and  that,  when  the  devices  of  the  spirit  are  so  manifold,  and 
high  renown  is  won  by  all."     Then  comes  an  apology,  less 
querulous  and  more  dignified   than   that  in  the  "  Catilina," 
for  being  an  historian,  not  a  statesman. 

Here  he  breaks  off  his  rhetoric  and  begins  his  history,  with 
an  imitation  of  Thucydides ;  he  writes  the  war  of  Jugurtha  for 
somethiniz  the  same  reason  as  Thucydides  writes  the  war  of 
Peloponnese.  Even  the  escalade  of  the  castle  by  the  Mulucha 
is  described  with  an  eye  to  the  Platxans'  escalade  of  the  lines 
of  circumvallation;  the  garrison  of  Zama  watch  the  fight  be- 
tween IMctellus  and  Jugurtha  as  the  Athenians  in  the  camp 

^  This  allusion  to  Aristippus  proves  that  Sallust  felt  no  vocation  to  re- 
nounce pleasure,  only  to  subdue  it. 


watched  the  last  battle  in  the  harbor  of  Syracuse;  the  Punic 
books,  said  to  belong  to  King  Hiempsal,  remind  us  of  the  most 
learned  of  the  Peloponnesians,  who  are  introduced  in  just  the 
same  way  as  vouchers  for  a  piece  of  antiquarian  information 
not  very  accurate  or  relevant.  At  the  same  time,  as  contem- 
porary Egyptian  inscriptions  of  the  thirteenth  century  b.c.  are 
held  to  prove  that  Armenians  at  any  rate  joined  Libyans  then 
in  an  invasion  of  Egypt,  there  may  have  been  some  real  foun- 
dation for  the  tradition  which  reached  Sallust  in  its  latest 
form.  If  we  could  trust  Sallust,  who  did  not  know  Punic,  and 
was  therefore  dependent  upon  interpreters  whom  he  did  not 
cross-examine,  the  Africans  reported  that  Hercules  died  in 
Spain;  and  then  his  army  broke  up,  and  the  Persians,  Medes, 
and  Armenians  crossed  into  Africa  and  settled  along  the  rano-e 
of  Atlas  from  west  to  east. 

But,  in  general,  the  digressions  do  not  overpower  the  narra- 
tive as  in  the  "Catilina;"  the  question  whether  we  are  read- 
ing a  history  or  an  essay  does  not  arise.     For  one  thing,  the 
thesis  that  the  venality  of  the  nobles  was  to  blame  for  atl'  the 
trouble  which  arose  about  Jugurtha  is  easier  to  prove  than  the 
thesis  that  the  Sullan  restoration  was  to  blame  for  Catilina: 
for  another,  the  events  to  be  narrated  were  more  varied,  and 
spread  over  a  longer  time.     The  conspiracy  of  Catilina  did 
not  furnish  matter  for  a  book,  when  authors  were  unwilling  or 
unable  to  go  thoroughly  into  its  secret  history.     The  hisU^ry 
of  Jugurtha  is  incomplete,  at  least  for   modern    readers;   it 
never  appears  why  the  commons   or  their   leaders  were  so 
eager  to  expose  his  misdemeanors  and  those  of  his  senatorial 
supporters.     His  quarrels  with  his  relations  were  of  no  prac- 
tical concern  to  the  Roman  people,  and  a  war  with  him  pro- 
duced a  good  deal  of  inconvenience  to  business  men,  as  Sal- 
lust lets  us  see  more  than  once.     Adherbal  was  compelled  to 
surrender  by  the  Italian  traders  of  Cirta,  whose  assistance  had 
enabled  him  for  a  time  to  hold  out.     When  the  scandal  of 
Jugurtha's  treaty  with  Albinus  was  beginning  to  be  formidable. 
It  was  the  representatives  of  the  business  community,  espe- 
cially Latin  citizens,  who  were  put  forward  by  the  aristocracy 
to  hinder  measures  which    they  would   have   compromised 


?A 


O  1t\ 


LA  TIX  LITER  A  Tl  7v'A\ 


T    T    T  r  r^  'r% 


236 


LA  TIN  LI  TEA' A  TCRE. 


SALLUST. 


237 


themselves  too  much  by  opposing  cHrectly.     In  fact,  the  pop- 
ular enthusiasm,  which  overbore  all  obstacles,  was  ckie,  as  Sal- 
lust  says,  less  to  care  for  the  republic  than  to  hatred  of  the 
nobilitv.     Iw   the  same   wav,  it  seems  that  it  was  onlv  the 
energy  of  Memmius  which  secured,  first  that  the  death  of 
Adherbal  should  be  avenged  by  war,  and  then  that  the  con- 
vention with  Ijestia  which  Scaurus  had  sanctioned  should  be 
set  aside.     On  the  latter  occasion  Sallust  professes  to  give 
one  of  tiie  many  harangues  of  Memmius,  which  is  full  of  elab- 
orate imitations  of  the  self  devotion  of  the  younger  Gracchus; 
for  the  rest,  he  appeals  throughout  to  passion,  not  to  interest, 
and  hardly  even  to  dignity.     "Slaves  bought  with  money  re- 
fuse unjust  orders  from  their  masters:  will  you,  Quirites,  born 
to  empire,  be  patient  under  slavery?     Ay,  but  who  are  these 
who  have  seized  upon  the  commonwealth.^     The  wickedest 
of  men;  men  of  bloody  hands  and  monstrous  avarice;  men 
most  guilty  and  withal  most  proud;  who  count  faith,  dignity, 
duty,  ay,  all  honor  and  all  dishonor,  but  as  merchandise.     Some 
have  slain  tribunes  of  the  commons,  some  have  brouirht  vou 
to  unrighteous  judgment,  many  to  slaughter;  that  is  their  con- 
fidence, so  the  greatest  villain   is  the  safest  for  his  villany: 
your  cowardice  bears  the  burden  of  dismay,  due  to  tiieir  guilt; 
the  same  desires,  the  same  hatreds,  the  same  fears,  unite  them 
all  in  one.     Among  good  citizens  that  is  friendship,  among 
bad  citizens  faction.     If  you  so  took  care  for  liberty  as  they 
are  on  fire  for  tyranny,  certainly  the  commonwealth  would 
not  be  laid  waste  as  it  is  now,  and  your  favor  would  rest  upon 
the  best,  not  upon  the  boldest.    Your  ancestors  twice  over  with- 
drew themselves  and  sat  down  in  arms  on  Mount  Aventine  to 
obtain  justice  and  establish  their  majesty;  and  you,  do  you  not 
think  the  liberty  you  inherited  from  them  worth  an  earnest 
struggle,  and  that  the  more  hearty,  the  more  shame  there  is  in 
losing  what  is  won  than  in  never  getting  at  all?     Some  one 
will  say.  What,  then,  do  you  advise?     Vengeance  on    those 
who  have  betrayed  the  commonwealth  to  the  enemy;   ven- 
geance, not  by  blows  or  by  violence,  both  more  unseemly  for 
you  to  inflict  than  for  them  to  endure,  but  by  the  courts  and 
the  evidence  Jugurtha  will  give  against  his  accomplices.    If  he 


has  surrendered,  he  will  obey  your  orders.  If  he  despises 
them,  then  no  doubt  you  will  put  the  right  value  on  that 
strange  kind  of  a  thing,  be  it  peace  or  surrender,  which  brings 
to  Jugurtha  impunity  for  his  crimes,  to  a  few  powerful  men 
enormous  riches,  and  to  the  commonwealth  calamity  and  dis- 
honor." 

The  political  part  of  the  history  is  decidedly  the  most 
interesting;  the  military  part  is  vague,  like  most  military  writ- 
ing in  Latin  except  Caesar's.  It  is  not  clear  what  the  boun- 
dary between  Jugurtha's  kingdom  and  that  of  Adherbal  u'as, 
though  we  can  see  that  Jugurtha's  corresponded  roughly  to  the 
province  ofOran,  and  Adherbal's  roughly  to  that  of  Constan- 
tine.  We  are  not  told  either  how  much  of  the  kingdom  of 
Jugurtha  liestia  had  occupied — for  Sallust  is  careful  to  explain 
that  he  was  a  competent  though  venal  commander — or  how 
much  had  been  conquered  by  Metellus  or  made  a  voluntary 
submission.  Still  less  do  we  know  what  was  the  situation  of 
the  different  desert  castles  and  towns  which  in  the  latter  stage 
of  the  war  the  Romans  captured  one  after  another,  though  the 
last,  we  know,  was  near  the  river  which  divided  the  dominions 
of  Locchus  and  Jugurtha.  Then,  again,  w^e  are  told  that  fight- 
ing went  on  for  forty  days  before  Thala,  but  this  is  dismissed 
in  a  line.  More  space  is  given  to  the  preparations  for  a 
march  of  fifty  miles  without  water  which  was  necessary  to 
reach  Thala,  more  space  even  to  the  final  debauch  of  the 
Roman  deserters,  who  burned  the  treasure  for  the  sake  of 
which  Metellus  had  formed  the  siege.  It  never  appears 
whether  Metellus  or  even  Marius  was  a  better  c^eneral  than 
Jugurtha,  or  whether  the  superiority  of  both  in  the  field  was 
not  due  simply  to  the  fact  that  their  troops  w'ere  disciplined 
and  his  were  not.  When  this  had  been  proved,  it  was  impos- 
sible for  Jugurtha  to  trust  any  of  his  nobles;  for  Metellus, 
whom  Sallust  admires  almost  without  reserve,  thought  it  bet- 
ter to  devote  his  attention  to  suborning  treason  than  to  organ- 
izing flying  columns.  This  does  not  shock  Sallust  in  the 
least,  and  it  shows  how  very  much  public  opinion  had  altered 
since  the  days  of  Pyrrhus.  Even  the  arrest  of  a  courtier  of 
Jugurtha  on  a  charge  of  procuring  the  assassination  of  a  pre- 


A 


238 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


tender  is  not  beyond  apology.     True,  he  was  covered  by  the 
safe-conduct  under  which  Jugurtha  and  his  attendants  came 
to  Rome,  but  he  was  dealt  with  on  the  merits  of  the  case. 
To  massacre  the  males  of  a  town  that  had  surrendered,' and 
sell  the  rest  of  the  population  as  slaves,  was  another  offence 
against  strict  law  for  which   Marius  was  not   to  blame;   it 
would  have  been  inconvenient  to  leave  a  garrison,  and  the 
inhabitants  were  not  to  be   trusted  without.     According  to 
the    Roman    fashion,  all    military    disasters    arc    minimized: 
there  is  never  an  estimate  of  the  loss  cither  of  the  Romans  or 
the  enemy;  in  fact,  the  loss  of  the  Numidians,  it  is  admitted, 
was  generally  insigniticant;  they  generally  were  beaten  when 
they  came  to  close  quarters,  then  they  dropped  their  arms  and 
ran  away.     It  is  quite  possible  that  before  they  were  broken 
they  inflicted  as  much  loss  as  they  suffered  in  the  final  charge 
which  saved  the  Roman  army.     Marius,  in  his  speech  on  sail- 
ing for  Africa,  is  made  to  say  that  the  army  ought  to  be  largely 
reinforced;  for,  in  spite  of  its  energy,  it  had  been  unfortunate. 
As  Metellus  had  taken  out  reinforcements  only  a  year  before, 
we  must  assume  that  the  soldiers  were  worn  out  by  marching 
and  the  climate,  and  perhaps,  at  the  time  when  Marius  came 
to  Italy  to  canvass,  demoralized  by  the  f^iilure  of  the  attempt 
upon  Zama,  which  may  have  been  costlier  than  Sallust  cared 
to  admit. 

Apparently  Marius  was  a  more  popular  and  more  lucky 
commander  than  Metellus,  more  liberal  of  his  booty  to  the 
soldiers,  and  more  willing  to  share  their  Huigues;  for  it  is 
hinted  more  than  once  that  Metellus,  though  he  restored 
discipline  without  punishments,  was  stricter  to  his  soldiers 
than  to  himself.  It  does  not  seem  that  Marius  was  abler  in 
other  ways;  he  relied  more  upon  force,  and  less  upon  di- 
plomacy. Sallust  does  not  say  whether  Sulla,  who  managed 
all  the  negotiations  with  Bocchus,  was  the  choice  of  Marius 
or  of  the  nobility;  it  is  clear  that  the  adroitness  with  which 

*  The  Roman  law  of  war  was  mild  in  one  respect.  When  a  town  sur- 
rendered at  discretion,  it  forfeited  all  claim  to  its  institutions  or  public 
property,  but  the  free  inhabitants  were  safe  (except,  perhaps,  the  instiga- 
tors of  the  war)  as  suljjects  of  the  arbitrary  dominion  of  Rome. 


SALLUST, 


239 


Sulla  humored  Bocchus  decided  the  war;  for  the  last  record- 
ed operation  of  Marius  was  an  unsuccessful  attempt  upon  a 
castle  held  for  Jugurtha  by  deserters.  All  this  Sallust  leaves 
to  be  implied,  which  is  strange,  as  he  does  not  admire  Marius 
particularly,  and  is  careful  to  explain  that  in  the  quarrel  with 
Metellus  there  were  fLiults  on  both  sides.  It  was  wrong  of 
Metellus  to  set  his  face  against  Marius's  candidature;  it  was 
almost  worse  of  Marius  systematically  to  disparage  his  com- 
mander and  even  relax  discipline.  AVhen  Marius  was  consul 
and  had  a  right  to  use  his  own  judgment,  Sallust  is  suspicious 
of  the  freedom  he  allowed  to  the  army,  though  he  admits  that 
no  harm  came  of  the  indulgence.  In  fact,  Sallust  treats  the 
war  throughout  as  an  episode  in  the  quarrel  of  the  nobility 
and  commons,  and,  upon  the  whole,  he  will  never  let  the  nobil- 
ity be  in  the  right.  Their  decision  not  to  entangle  the  state 
in  the  quarrel  between  Jugurtha  and  Bocchus,  and  to  mulct 
Jugurtha  rather  than  to  depose  him,  was  defensible  upon  the 
merits  of  the  case,  and  Bocchus  did  everything  to  help  the 
Romans  that  a  sworn  ally  could  have  done,  till  Jugurtha 
threw  himself  on  his  protection.  But  Snllust  will  only  see 
that  the  nobility  were  venal,  and  Jugurtha  a  better  paymaster 
than  Bocchus;  and  if  Bocchus  had  obtained  a  treaty  when  he 
first  asked  for  it,  the  war  would  have  ended  sooner. 

The  summary  of  the  speech  by  which,  according  to  Sallust, 
Tu^nntha  induced  Bocchus  to  join  him  is  rather  like  a  rough 
draft  of  the  letter  which  Mithridatcs  wrote  to  the  king  of  the  Par- 
thians  in  the  like  case.  Both  Jugurtha  and  Mithridates  dwell 
upon  the  antipathy  of  the  Roman  people  to  kings,  and  their 
unwillingness  to  tolerate  any  power  except  their  own.  Mith- 
ridates adds  the  further  consideration,  which  his  career  sug- 
gested to  Sallust,  that  mankind  at  large  are  indifferent  to  lib- 
erty and  only  desire  a  tolerable  despotism,  and  that  for  this 
reason  the  Romans  will  never  allow  a  king  to  gain  enough 
power  to  promise  relief  to  their  discontented  subjects.  This  is 
almost  the  only  trait  in  Sallust  which  shows  that  he  had  consid- 
ered the  way  in  which  the  government  of  the  senate  affected 
the  provincials.*     He  is  much  more  concerned  with  the  reac- 

'  He  is  very  little  impressed  by  the  ominous  fact  that  the  Allobroges 


240 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


SALLUST. 


241 


tion  of  so  many  new  and  rich  dependencies  upon  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  civic  community  at  Rome,  and  he  lays  much  more 
stress  upon  this  than  upon   the  economic  change  which  fol- 
lowed the  second  Punic  war.     He  never   notices   that  over 
large  districts  of  Italy  the  yeomanry  were  ruined  without  the 
fault  of  the  nobility;  what  he  does  notice  is,  that  the  nobility 
had  changed  their  habits  and  enlarged  their  desires,  so  that 
they  always  felt  the  pressure  of  a  separate  interest  from  the 
interest  of  the  state.     According  to  him,  it  was  only  the  fall 
of  Carthage  which  removed  the  last  restraint  from  the  greed 
of  the  few  and  the  envy  of  the  many.     The  Gracchi  were  too 
extreme;  Memmius  hnds  irony  the  best  way  of  meeting  the 
charge  that  they  were  aiming  at  a  monarchy.      Sallust  himself 
thinks  that  the  nobles  were  justified  in  opposing  them,  if  they 
could  have  done  so  by  fair  means,  and  yet  the  Gracchi  were 
the  only  members  of  the  aristocracy  who  preferred  "  true  glory 
to  unrighteous  power.''     This  speculative  barrenness  is  char- 
acteristic of  Sallust;  he  is  sententious  and  emphatic,  and  fails 
to   be   profound.     His    speeches,  when    he   tries   to    imitate 
Thucydides,  are  gf^nerally  empty  ;  he  only  applies  copy-book 
maxims  tr.  tl-,e  situation.     He  does  not  succeed,  as  Thucyd- 
ides does,  in  unfolding  the  possibilities  of  a  policy  or  the  in- 
terests of  a  party  by  means  of  a  speech  too  penetrating  ever 
to  have  been  delivered  ;  he  is  only  effective  in  the  region  of 
taunts  and  allusive  sarcasm.     Cato's  speech  in  fiivor  of  the 
execution  of  the  conspirators  is  exceedingly  dull  and  unre   . , 
it  turns  upon  the  thesis  that  vengeance  is  a  necessary  means 
of  self  defence,  just  like  the  great  speech  of  Cleon   on   the 
Mytilenean  revolt;  but  where  Cleon,  in  spite  of  his   passion, 
brings  out  the  true  intellectual  aspect  of  one  side  of  a  polit- 
ical problem,  Cato  only  falls  into  ludicrous  exaggeration  of 
the  peril  to  be  expected  from   mercy.      His  argument  is  that 
unless  the  criminals  are  executed  they  will  carry  out  their 

were  ready  to  join  Catilina,  and  does  not  hint  that  the  massacre  of  the 
Roman  garrison  at  Vacca  was  due  to  their  own  insolence,  thougli  Plutarch 
tells  us  the  commander  was  spared  because  he  alone  had  given  no  oftence  ; 
he  only  mentions  the  oppression  of  the  allies  in  Africa  as  a  proof  that  the 
armies  of  Rome  were  not  formidable  to  the  enemv. 


I 


crime.  Caesar's  speech  is  persuasive  and  statesmanlike,  and 
so  much  better  than  Sallust's  speeches  in  general  ^hat  it  is 
natural  to  suppose  that  in  substance  it  is  Caesar's.  The 
speech  of  Macer  in  the  Histories  is  an  elaborate  and  skilful 
cento  from  Demosthenes'  speeches  against  Philip,  who  is  re- 
placed by  Sulla.  One  point  is  successfully  heightened;  De- 
mosthenes tells  the  Athenians  that  the  state  doles,  which  they 
thought  more  valuable  than  a  spirited  foreign  policy,  were  like 
the  messes  given  to  the  sick,  just  enough  to  keep  them  alive, 
but  not  enough  to  make  a  whole  man  hearty.  Macer  tells 
the  Romans  that  the  dole  with  which  the  senate  tried,  too  suc- 
cessfully, to  keep  the  commons  quiet  was  just  the  same  in 
amount  as  a  prisoner's  rations,  who  was  dieted  to  keep  down 
his  spirit. 

The  style  of  Sallust  is  remarkable  upon  two  grounds.  He 
is  the  first  writer  of  Latin  prose  who  attaches  himself  to  a 
single  Greek  model ;  he  gets  his  points  from  the  whole  range 
of  his  reading,  which  was  tolerably  extensive,  but  his  method 
is  the  method  of  Thucydides ;  he  cultivates  irregularities, 
especially  in  comparisons,  at  a  time  when  two  greater  writers 
had  done  everything  in  their  power  to  make  Latin  the  most 
regular  language  known.  He  also  is  the  first  Latin  writer 
deliberately  to  try  to  reverse  the  natural  development  of  style. 
He  goes  back  to  Cato,  as  Spenser  went  back  to  Chaucer. 
He  was  dissatisfied  with  the  vocabulary  as  purified  by  his 
'Contemporaries,  and  thought  words  and  phrases  which  were 
J  ilf  obsolete  more  picturesque  and  telling  than  the  refined 
dialect  of  the  day,  which,  as  Cicero  saw,  was  always  verging 
upon  insipidity — and  Cicero  himself  was  criticised  as  early 
as  the  reign  of  Vespasian  for  not  having  a  sufficiently  choice 
vocabulary. 

Sallust  had  considerable  posthumous  influence.  L.  Arrun- 
tius,  a  grandee  of  the  reign  of  Augustus,  copied  and  ex- 
aggerated his  mannerisms,  and  Tacitus  certainly  owes  very 
much  to  him;  it  might  be  said  that  Tacitus  writes  as  Sallust 
ought  to  have  written.  In  Sallust  the  abruptness  and  impa- 
tience of  expression  show^  that  the  writer  is  excited;  the 
crudity  and  redundance  of  matter  shows  that  he  is  immature. 

L— II 


242 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


SALLUST. 


Of  all  that  is  in  his  mind  he  leaves  nothing  for  the  reader  to 
divine,  though  he  is  careful  to  avoid  what  he  thinks  the  te- 
dious parade  of  orderly,  elegant,  harmonious  exposition.     His 
matter  masters  him,  but  he  remains  master  of  his  diction.      In 
Tacitus  the  matter  is   more  completely  mastered   than    the 
diction.     He  is  temperate  and  self-controlled,  and  Sallust  de- 
claims with  the  naivete,  if  not  the  simplicity,  of  a  schoolboy, 
even  while  he  affects  the  pregnant  brevity  of  an  experienced 
statesman.     The  description  of  the  treason  of  Bomilcar  is  a 
fair  specimen  of  this  crude   subtlety.     "At  the   same  time 
Bomilcar,  who  had  pressed  Jugurtha  to  begin  the  capitulation, 
which  he  gave  up  through  fear,  both  being  suspected  of  the 
king  and  suspecting  him  also,  was  fain  of  a  new  world,  sought 
a  device  to  destroy  him,  wearied  his  spirit  night  and  day,  till 
at  last,  with  trying  everything,  he  took  to  his  help  Nabdalsa, 
a  nobleman  famous  for  his  great  means,  acceptable  to  his  own 
people  withal,  who  had  been  wont  often  to  lead  armies  apart 
from    the  king,  and   to   perform    all  business  which   was   left 
over  when  Jugurtha  was  weary  or  taken  up  with  greater  things, 
whence  he  got  both  glory  and  great  means.     So,  by  counsel 
of  both,  a  day  was  set  for  this  plot,  and  they  agreed  the  rest 
should  be  made  ready  at  the  time  as  things  might  require. 
Nabdalsa  set  out  for  the  army,  which  he  kept,  as  ordered,  well 
within  the  Roman  winter-quarters,  that  the  enemy  might  not 
waste  the  land  at  will.     When  he,  struck  down  at  a  deed  so 
great,  came  not  at  time  appointed,  and  fear  began  to  hinder 
the  matter,  then  Bomilcar,  being  troubled  both  by  his  desire 
to  achieve  his  undertaking,  and  out  of  fear  of  his  partner  lest 
he  should  leave  his  old  counsel  and  look  out  for  new,  sent 
letters  to  him  by  faithful  men  ;  wherein  he  chode  the  man  for 
sloth  and  cowardice,  adjured  him  by  the  gods  he  sware  by, 
warned  him  not  to  turn  the  rewards  of  Metellus  to  his  own 
destruction.     Jugurtha's  ruin  was   at   hand;    all   that  lay  in 
doubt  was  only  whether  he  should  perish  by  their  valor  or 
Metellus's,  so  he  had  better  ponder  in  his  mind  whether  to 
choose  reward  or  torment.     But  the  letter  came  just  when 
Nabdalsa,  weary  with  his  bodily  exercise,  was  resting  on  his 
bed,  where,  when  he  had  taken  knowledge  of  Bomilcar's  words, 


243 


1 


first  care  fell  upon  him,  and  then  sleep,  as  is  the  way  with  a 
troubled  spirit.     Now  he  had  a  Numidian  to  manage  his  bus- 
iness, who    was   faithful   to    him    and    a,cceptable,  and    took 
part  in  all  his  counsels  but  the  last.     He,  hearing    a   letter 
had  come,  judged  by  old  custom  there  would  be  need  of  his 
work  or  wit,  so  went  into   Nabdalsa's  chamber:   as    he   lay 
asleep,  the  letter  lay  at  random  on  a  pillow  above  his  head. 
'):\\(t  other  took  and  read  it  through;  then,  when  he  knew  the 
plot,  set  off  at  speed    to   the  king.     Nabdalsa,  waking   soon 
after,  when  he  found  no  letter,  and  was  informed  by  deserters 
of  all  that  had  passed,  first  essayed  to  overtake  the  informer. 
After  that  proved  vain,  he  went  to  Jugurtha  to  appease  him, 
said  the  perfidy  of  his  client  had  forestalled  him  in  executing 
his  own  intention,  besought  him  with  tears,  by  his  friendship 
and  all  his  faithful  service  aforetime,  not  to  hold  him  suspect 
concerning  such  wickedness;    whereto  the  king  gave  gentle 
answer,  contrary  to  that  he  bare  in  his  mind.     As  soon  as 
Bomilcar  and  many  more  whom  he  knew  to  be  partners  in 
his  plots  were  slain,  he  had  bridled  his  anger,  lest  some  sedi- 
tion should  arise  from  the  business." 


PART  III. 

AUGUSTAN   AGE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

GENERAL  CONSIDER  A  TIONS. 

The  literature  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  has  two  distinct 
characters— it  represents  the  highest  elaboration  of  form  ever 
attained  in  Latin,  and  the  highest  elevation  of  thought ;  after- 
wards there  were  efforts  to   surpass  it   in  both  directions, 
which  had  a  short-lived  success  in  the  judgment  of  contem- 
poraries too  excitable  to  distinguish  between  inspiration  and 
an   ambition   reckless  of  good  sense   and  good  taste.     As 
Plato  said  \ox\^  ago,  it  is  not  the  musical  man,  but  the  un- 
musical, who  tVies  to  do  more  than  the   musical  has  done. 
To  imagine  that  Lucan  is  sublimer  than  Vergil  is  like  im- 
agining that  Young  is  sublimer   than   Dryden,  or  Chateau- 
briand'' than  Bossuet.     In  many  ways  there  is  a  closer  re- 
semblance between  the  literature  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV. 
and  that  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  than  between  the  literature 
of  the  age  of  Augustus  and  that  of  any  other  so-called  Au- 
gustan age.     For  one  thing,  both  periods  are  an  interval  of 
rest,  of  splendor,  of  order  between  a  time  of  misery  and  an- 
archy and  a  time  of  petulant  license  in  private,  combined 
with'much  capricious  repression  in  public.     Again,  both  Au- 
gustus and  Louis  survived  the  best  of  their  prosperity  and  of 
die  men  of  genius  whom  it  had  inspired  ;  both,  it  may  even 
be   said,  were  not  unlike   in  what  was  one  of  the  deepest 
things  in  both,  their  sense  of  public  duty;  both  felt  called 
upon  to  be  reformers  and  restorers,  and  were  perfectly  seri- 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS. 


245 


ous  in  the  endeavor  to  subject  others  to  obligations  which 
till  late  in  life,  they  evaded  for  themselves,  though  this  fun- 
damental similarity  is  disguised  by  the  contrast  between  the 
frank  pomposity  of  Louis  and  the  ironical  simplicity  of  Au- 
gustus, who  suspected  the  splendor  of  his  own  reign,  and  re- 
gretted the  austerity  of  days  of  innocence  and  poverty  which 
were  irrecoverably  gone.     Both,  during  the  central  period  of 
their  reign,  were  honestly  idolized  or  idealized,  as  we  like  to 
put  it,  by  the  men  of  letters,  who  saw  them  at  work  and  did 
not  know  how  little  of  their  w^ork  would  last.     It  is  true  that 
Bossuet,  who   admired   the  Grand  Monarch   as  sincerely   as 
any  one,  and  believed  in  his  system  heartily,  was  penetrated 
as  profoundly  by  a  sense  of  void  and   nothingness  at  the 
bottom   of  all  things;    but   neither   he  nor   Pascal   imagines 
that  his  pessimism  is  due  to  anything  in  the  circumstances 
of  the  time.     The  Augustan  writers  are  clearer-sighted  :  they 
generally  write  more  or  less  in  a  tone  of  hopeful  penitence; 
but  their  sense  of  guilt  depends  upon  definite  national  sins, 
the   wasteful   horror  of  the   civil   wars,  and  the   final  disap- 
pearance of  the  old  thrifty  household  discipline.     Again,  the 
ground  of  their  confidence  is   more   definite.     Augustus  to 
them  is  not  simply  a  great,  prosperous,  and  religious  ruler: 
he  is  the  representative  of  the  historic  spirit  and  mission  of 
Rome.     And  the  sense  of  the  grandeur  of  Rome   survives 
even  in  Livy  and  Ovid,  when  the  faith  in  moral  restoration 
has  died  away.     It  would  be  possible  to  pursue  the  parallel 
into  detail.     Racine  has  often  been  compared  with  Vergil : 
there  is  the  same  blending  of  pathetic  grace  and  dignity, 
but  perhaps  less  independence  of  feeling,  certainly  less  man- 
liness of  tone  ;  the  courage  of  Racine's  heroes  depends  too 
entirely  upon  their  faith  in  their  ideals. 

There  are  sides  of  Horace  that  La  Fontaine  does  not 
touch,  and  they  are  precisely  the  best  of  Horace  :  his  brood- 
ing aspirations  after  inward  peace  and  purity,  his  short  jubi- 
lant flights  into  an  upper  realm  of  triumphal  calm  ;  but  his 
disinterested  insight,  his  kindly  shrewdness  and  gayety,  his 
unworldliness,  are  all  more  or  less  reflected  in  La  Fontaine, 
who  has  something  of  the  spleen  of  Horace,  of  which  Boileau 


246 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS. 


received  a  double  portion.  Boileau  certainly  owes  more  to 
Horace  than  to  Juvenal,  and  in  France  the  ode  on  tiie  capt- 
ure of  Namur  may  be  held  to  rank  with  the  odes  on  the 
conquest  of  the  Orisons  and  the  Tyrol.  Ovid  finds  his  rep- 
resentative as  a  story-teller  in  La  Fontaine,  as  a  wit  in  Mo- 
liere,  whose  range  is  wider,  and  who  makes  some  approach  to 
a  serious  purpose,  but  who,  after  all,  takes  almost  as  much 
interest  as  Ovid  in  the  dissection  of  the  foolish  husband. 
Another  parallel  which  at  first  sight  is  less  obvious  is  really 
closer;  both  the  position  and  the  spirit  of  the  author  of 
"Telemachus"  are  like  Livy.  There  is  the  same  grave  and 
gentle  intelligence  of  some  of  the  most  important  among  the 
permanent  conditions  of  well-doing  and  well-being,  the  same 
dreamy  blindness  to  the  shifting  conditions  under  which  well- 
doing and  well  being  can  be  actually  realized  at  a  given  time, 
the  same  pity  for  the  poor,  the  same  distrust  of  wealth,  the 
same  respect  for  authority,  the  same  romantic  regrets  for  an 
imaginary  past,  when  life  was  simpler  and  virtue  easier. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.  like  the  effrontery 
which  in  Ovid  alternates  with  sentimental  and  insincere  re- 
grets for  the  good  old  times.  One  must  go  back  something 
like  a  hundred  years,  to  Montaigne,  to  find  an  approach  to 
the  way  in  which  Ovid  glories  with  undisguised  amusement 
in  his  shame  ;  and  even  Montaigne  has  nothing  so  impu- 
dent as  "  I,  the  great  Naso,  the  poet  of  my  own  naughtiness."  * 
There  is  nothing  like  it  in  the  literature  of  the  Augustan  age, 
which,  upon  the  whole,  is  decidedly  more  virtuous  in  tone 
than  the  societv  to  which  it  was  addressed.  There  was  a 
general  feeling  against  the  self-styled  republicans,  who  made 
it  their  business  to  expose  all  the  hollowness  and  hypocrisy 
of  respectable  imperialism.  This  license  was  probably  itself 
a  survival  from  the  period  of  anarchy  and  disturbance  which 
lasted  for  thirteen  years  from  the  death  of  Coisar  to  the  battle 
of  Actium,  and  was  most  acute  for  the  eight  years  which 
passed  before  the  complete  defeat  of  Sextus  Pompeius. 

For  eleven  years  out  of  the  thirteen,  Octavian  and  Antony 
had  exercised  a  practically  secure  supremacy  throughout  the 
^  "  Ille  ego  nequitiae  Naso  poeta  niese." 


247 


\ 


Roman  world,  but  they  possessed  only  power  without  au- 
thority. They  could  decide  military  or  financial  questions 
without  consulting  any  will  but  their  own.  Their  immense 
patronage  gave  many  sufficient  motives  to  propitiate  them  by 
honorable  or  dishonorable  means ;  but  no  one  felt  that  they 
were  the  legitimate  rulers  of  the  state,  and  they  themselves 
had  no  adequate  reason  to  attempt  to  regulate  civil  relations 
or  to  interfere  with  private  life. 

The  comparative  barrenness  of  this  period  is  a  sufficient 
answer  to  the  theory  that  the  Augustan  age,  like  the  age  of 
Louis  XIV.,  only  expended  the  energy  which  it  had  inherited 
from  the  Republic.     In  fact,  the  suppression  of  independent 
political  life  contributed  in  another  way  to  the  literary  move- 
ment ;  for  men  of  letters  were  no  longer  depressed  by  the 
feeling  that  the  work-a-day  world  and  its  numerous  natural 
leaders  were  practically  of  much  more  importance  than  they 
were:  the  poets  of  the   Augustan   age  saw  nothing  above 
them  but  the  narrow  circle   of  the  ruler  and  his  intimates, 
whom  It  was  easy  to  invest  with  superhuman  attributes.     At 
the  same  time,  there  was  the  full  stimulus  of  a  stream  of  im- 
portant events.     As  the  events  were  more  important  and  more 
certam  than  the  processes  by  which  they  came  about,  it  was 
easier  to  idealize  them  ;  and  when  idealism  had  once  set  in, 
It  was  easy  to  confound  projects  and  achievements.      Words- 
worth was  a  scrupulous  realist,  but  the  account  of  the  French 
Revolutionary  War  that  we  should  gather  from  his  poems 
would  be  quite  as  untrustworthy  as  that  which  we   should 
gather  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  from  the  Odes  of  Horace. 
'Ihat   the   ascendency  of  Augustus  was   disadvantageous  to 
eloquence  in  the  law-courts  is  probably  true  :  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  the  pompous  struggles  of  the  law-courts  were 
an    unmitigated   nuisance  to   everybody  but  the  advocates. 
Ihe  forum,  which  was  not  much  too  large  for  an  exchange, 
was,  besides,  the  natural  resort  for  loungers ;  and  it  was  \o 
convenience  to  anybody  to  have  it  blocked  up  by  noisv  and 
often  quarrelsome  knots  of  disputants,  whom  it  was  a'point 
of  honor  to  detain  as  long  and  excite  as  highly  as  possible. 
Even  before  the  war  of  Pharsalia,  when  the  Republic  was  still 


11 


248 


LA  T/X  LITER  A  TURE. 


in  a  state  to  recover  from  the  rivalry  of  Cresar  and  Pompeius, 
as  it  had  recovered  from  the  rivahy  of  Marius  and  Sulla, 
measures  had  been  taken  to  keep  the  forum   quiet  by  lim- 
iting the  number  of  hours  a  speech  could   take,  by  exclud- 
ing the  attendance  of  grandees  who  appeared  to  give  their 
hangers-on  a  good  character — in  fact,  generally  to  take  means 
that  the  pleadings  should  be  addressed  to  the  court,  not  to 
the  public.     Now  the  court  was  unpaid,  and  naturally  eager 
for    despatch,  and    the    greater   part   of  the    public   who   at- 
tended  to   back   their   friends   found    the    duty    wearisome, 
unless  the  orator  whose  celebrity  and   influence   they  were 
helping  to  make  was  already  a  master  of  his  business.     Be- 
sides, the  judges  were  either  busy  men  or  young  idle  men, 
who  very  much  preferred  to  spend  a  good  part  of  the  morn- 
ing in  drinking  when  they  could,  and,  when  at  last  they  came 
into  court,  were  in  a  hurry  to  get  the  case  over,  that  they 
might  be  off  to  bathe  for  dinner.     Still,  so  long  as  the  major- 
ity of  the  magistrates  were  freely  chosen,  the  self-importance 
of  the  advocates  who  wished  to  make  themselves  of  conse- 
quence enough  in  the  courts  to  be  of  consequence  in   the 
state  was  practically  irrepressible  ;  but  when  office  came  to 
be  conferred  by  the  emperor  exclusively  as  the  reward  of 
administrative  work,  oratory  had  to  adapt  itself  to  narrow 
conditions,  to  be  an  ornament   rather   than    a  power  in  the 
state,  the  basis  of  a  career  for  two  or  three   in   a  genera- 
tion rather  than  an  indispensable  instrument  for  every  one 
who  wished  to  have  a  career.     The  change  was,  from  the  first, 
favorable  to  poetry ;  for  the  people  who  had,  upon  the  whole, 
liked  to  listen  to  orators  in  the  forum  were  glad  to  listen  to 
poets  reciting  in  the  baths,  which  from  the  reign  of  Augustus 
began  to  increase  in  number  and  splendor;  and  the  great 
majority  of  those  who  had  a  gift  for  oratory  deserted  politics 
and  real  cases  and  the  forum,  and  declaimed  upon  imaginary 
themes — also  in  the  baths  if  they  made  a  profession  of  elo- 
quence.    If  their  position  enabled  them  to  be  amateurs,  they 
declaimed   in   their  own    houses,  where   they  received  their 
friends  only,  if  they  were  modest  or  fastidious ;  while  if  they 
were  vain  or  liberal  they  admitted  the  public.     But  the  prac- 


GENERAL  CONSIDERA  TIONS. 


249 


tice  of  declamation  came  in  later  than  the  practice  of  reciting- 
poetry,  which  is  alluded  to  in  the  earliest  writings  of  Horace! 
who  half  boasts  that  he  is  too  shy  to  f^dl  in  with  it  •  and  so 
might  almost  as  well  not  be  a  poet,  since  he  neglects  to  adver- 
tise his  poetry  in  the  way  that  other  poets  advertise  theirs. 

Poets  were  no  longer  independent :  they  did  not  maintain 
themselves,  as  they  had  done  from  Ennius  to  Valerius  Cato, 
by  teaching  or  play-writing  :  in  the  new  world  which  was  be- 
ginning few  were  rich  enough  to  live  on  their  own  means,  as 
Catullus  and  Lucretius  had  done.     They  expected  to  receive 
splendid   presents  from   the  emperor   and   other   grandees: 
they  expected  also  to  make  a  certain  profit  by  the  sale  of 
their  books.     This  last  change  never  went  far,  but  Horace 
towards  the  end  of  his  life  says  that  mediocrity  in  poets  is 
intolerable,  not  only  to  gods  and  men,  but  to  booksellers,  as 
if  poets  had  more  reason  to  fear  booksellers  than  other  men 
or  gods.     In  the  days  of  Martial  a  poet  might  refuse  a  pres- 
entation copy  to  an  acquaintance  because  he  did  not  choose 
to  interfere  with  his  bookseller's  profit  ;  and  it  is  clear  that  a 
considerable  number  of  copies  must  have  been  issued  (slave 
labor  being  tolerably  cheap),  for  the  common  fate  of  unsuc- 
cessful poetry  was  to  wrap  up  fish  and  spice  :  now  a  single 
copy  would  naturally  be  used  to  light  a  fire,  while  a  book- 
seller would  send  his  surplus  stock  either  to  the  public  baths 
or  to  the  grocers,  just  as  unsuccessful  books  used  to  be  sent 
in  England  to  the  trunkmakers.     An  author  who  was  volumi- 
nous and  could  not  find  a  publisher  might  be  burned  upon  a 
pile  of  his  own  MSS.,  or  at  least  his  enemies  spread  the  re- 
port.    When  books  sold,  they  generally  sold  to  the  few  who 
kept  libraries  for  their  own  enjoyment,  and  to  the  compara- 
tively  numerous   class  of  schoolmasters  and  grammarians 
who  could  not  content  themselves  with  consulting  new  books 
at  the  library  attached  to  the  Temple  of  Apollo  at  the  Pala- 
tine, an  humble  imitation  of  the  Museum  of  Alexandria. 

There  were  a  few  years  when  it  seemed  possible  that  pa- 
tronage might  make  literature  remunerative— while  Octavian 
NNvas  under  the  influence  of  Maecenas,  which  lasted  unimpair- 
ed till  Agrippa's  marriage  with  the  emperor's  daughter     M^e- 

I.  — II* 


250 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


cenas  saw  that  poets  would  be  able  to  work  upon  the  public 
mind  by  giving  a  permanent  artistic  expression  to  the  enthu- 
siasm  of  the  \iioment.     He  made  several  poets  free  of  his 
house  ;  he  made  or  procured  them  large  pecuniary  presents. 
Messalla  followed  the  f^ishion  to  a  small  extent  upon  his  own 
account,  and  it  cannot  be  said  to  have  entirely  died  out  be- 
fore the  death  of  Seneca.     The  expectations  which  Maecenas 
had  fostered,  and  led  Augustus  to  foster,  lasted  longer  still ; 
as  late  as  the  days  of  Domitian,  perhaps  as  late  as  the  days 
of  Hadrian,  poets  expected  to  be  semi-sacred  pensioners,  as 
they  have  been  at  the  courts  of  the  princes  of  the  heroic  age 
of  Greece  and  Scandinavia— as  they  are  still  at  the  courts  of 
the  princes  who  trace  their  descent  up  to  the  heroic  age  of 
India.     In  the  age   of  Anne,  for  similar  reasons,  poets  had 
something  of  the  same  experience  ;  and  during  the  reigns  of 
the  first  two  Georges  they  were  haunted  by  the  same  expec- 
tations.    In  England  the  bookseller  took  the  place  of  the 
patron  ;  at  Rome,  when  the  hopes  of  patronage  were  finally 
given  up,  the  profession  of  poetry  was  given  up  too  :  educated 
men  of  position  still  wrote  verses  for  their  own  amusement, 
and  obtained  thereby  a  kind  of  reputation  :  teachers  of  liter- 
ature competed  solemnly  for  the  prizes  established  by  Nero 
and  Domitian,  and  there  was  no  feeling  that  it  was  incongru- 
ous or  undignified  for  grown  men  to  write  prize  poems.      1  he 
truth  is,  that  the  Romans  were   too   matter-of-fact  to   spend 
much  labor  without  prospect  of  return.     The  second  and 
third  centuries,  which  witnessed  the  practical  extinction  of 
poetry,  were  the  classical  age  of  jurisprudence.     The  reign  of 
Au-ustus  is,  in  the  history  of  Roman  literature  no  less  than 
in  tlie  history  of  Roman  life,  a  splendid  exception. 

It  falls  naturally  into  three  periods— the  period  of  confu- 
sion •  the  period  of  splendor,  which  lasted  more  than  thirty 
years  i  and  the  period  of  decline,  which  lasted  only  seven. 
The  first,  which  has  already  been  described,  ended  with  the 
battle  of  Actium,  and  the  literature  of  the  period  was  still  a 
continuation  of  the  literature  of  the  republic.  Cassius  of 
Parma,  one  of  the  leading  poets  of  the  period,  attached  him- 
self to  the  cause  of  his  namesake.     Cinna,  another  poet,  who 


GENERAL  CONSIDERATIONS.  251 

was  killed  at  Cassar's  funeral  by  mistake  for  his  namesake 
who  had  joined   in   killing  CiEsar,  left  a   reputation   which 
daunted  Vergil.     Calvus  the  orator,  a  friend  and  imitator  of 
Catullus,  was  the  only  poet  but  Catullus  that  the  fashionable 
singer  of  the  day  or  his  copyists  cared  to  know.     Besides 
these,  there  was  a  certain   C.  Licinius   Anser,  whom   Vergil 
chose  to  gibbet  at  the  same  time  that  he  paid  his  respects I0 
Varius  and  Cinna  :  he  was  nothing  but  one  goose  more  be- 
side  such  swans   as  these.     When  we  come  to  Furius,  who 
anticipated  Dubartas  with  such  choice  figures  as  "O'er  the 
cold  Alps  Jove  spits  his  hoary  snow,"  and  Bavius  and  Mas- 
vius,  who  had   a  private  quarrel  with  Horace,  perhaps  we 
come  to  -city  poets,"  such  as  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  and 
Uiarles  II.  earned  the  appreciation  of  old-fashioned  men  of 
business,  whom  they  entertained  and,  in  a  sense,  instructed 
at  the  same  time  that  their  self-consequence  provoked  the 
rising  lights,  who  looked  to  the  approval  of  a  more  limited  a 
more  critical,  a  more  influential  public.  ' 

Of  the  new  poets  who  made  their  mark  in  this  period  Va- 
rius was  the   most  distinguished.     His  "Thyestes,"  written 
we  do  not  know  when,  of  which  only  one  insignificant  line 
has  reached  us,  was  thought  to  be  one  of  the  two  or  three 
-Koman  plays  which  stood  on  the  level  of  the  best  Greek  work 
Contemporaries  thought  more  of  his  fliculty  of  writin-  pan- 
egyrical pamphlets  on  the  events  of  the  day  in  heroic'verse 
which  sympathetic  readers  found  as  spirit-stirring  as  Homer! 
One  distich  has  been  preserved  by  Horace,  and  identified  by 
his  scholiast,  which  is  hearty  and  vigorous  but  not  remark- 
able — 

Tene  magis  salvum  populus  velit,  an  populuni  tu, 
Servet  in  ambiguo,  qui  consulit  et  tibi  et  uibi, 
Juppiter ! 

Varro  Atacinus,  who  was  born  in  Gaul,  and  took  his  last 
name  from  the  Gaulish  river  Atax,  was  perhaps  a  more 
important  though  less  successful  writer.  He  was  versatile 
hanng  written  satires,  elegies,  and  epigrams,  as  well  as  an 
elaborate  translation  of  the  "  Argonautica "  of  Apollonius 
Khodius,  which  was  the  most  important  of  his  works      This 


t 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE. 

contained  more  than  one  beautiful  night-piece,  in  connection 
with    he  sorrows  of  Medea,  which  Vergil  appropriated  and 
mproved ;  and  the  versification  is  freer  and  better  than  any- 
hing  before  the  days  of  Vergil.     The  satuxs  --  Practically 
only  known  by  the  modest  boast  of  Horace  that  he  was  gen- 
erally thought  to  have  done  well  in  what  was,  no  doubt,  the 
owest  line^of  poetry,  though  such  a  clever  man  as  Van-o  had 
filled  in  it      His  epigrams  were  better,  to  judge  by  the  tuo 
or  three  doubtfully  attributed  to  him  :  the  best  is  on  Licnms, 
a  Gallic  freedman,  procurator  of  Gaul  under  Augustus,  who 
provoked  a  revolt  by  the  diligence  with  which  he  amassed  an 
Lmense   fortune.     The  epigram  must  be   the  -ork  of    he 
author's  old-age,  for  Horace,  who  succeeded  in  satiie  a  e 
Varro  failed,  did  not  live  to  see  the  death  of  Licmus ;  and  it 
is  surprisingly  pithy  for  an  old  man— 

Marmoreo  tumulo  Licinus  jacet ;  at  Cato  parvo 

Pompeius  nullo:  quis  putet  esse  deos  ? 
Saxa  pvemunt  Licinum  ;  levat  altum  fama  Catoneni, 

Pompeium  tituli :  credimus  esse  deos. 

The  only  other  poet  of  this  generation  who  need  detain  us 
is  Cornelius  Gallus,  the  first  Roman  prefect  of  Egypt,  whose 
love-affairs  were  over  before  Actium.     He  wrote  elegies  on 
his  love  of  Lycoris,  otherwise  known  as  Cytheris,  which  Quinc- 
tilian    characterizes    as    "austere:"    there    was    no   artificial 
adornment  of  phrases  or  metre,  and  the  writer  trusted  simply 
to  his  passion  and  tenderness  for  his  effect.     His  self-absorp- 
tion  made   him   exacting:  he    subjugated  Lycoris,  who  was 
Mad  to  escape  him.     He  made  a  more  permanent  conquest 
of  the  tender  sympathies  of  Vergil.     In  practical  life  his  aims 
proved  less  fortunate ;  he  was  overbearing  as  a  governor,  and 
was  recalled  for  excesses  of  authority ;  and  at  the  first  signs 
of  Au-ustus's  displeasure  on  his  return  he  committed  suicide. 


VERGIL, 


253 


CHAPTER  n. 

VERGIL. 

To  all  posterity  A^ergil  has  always  been  the  great  Latin 
poet,  and  it  is  better  to  understand,  if  possible,  on  what  his 
reputation  rests,  than  either  to  explain,  repeat,  or  refute  the 
expressions  of  the  impatience  with  which,  for  the  last  hundred 
years,  English  and  German  critics  have  regarded  his  greatest 
work.  For  it  is  not  unlikely  that  a  hundred  years  hence  that 
impatience  may  seem  as  inexplicable  as  the  contempt  with 
which  the  virtuosi  of  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
regarded  the  remains  of  mediaeval  architecture. 

Even  this  inquiry  is  difficult,  for  the  Romans  were  much 
better  skilled  in  the  criticism  of  oratory  than  in  the  criticism 
of  poetry ;  and  the  best  possible  statement  of  what  they  found 
to  admire  is  not  too  much  to  guide  us  in  appreciating  what 
they  spontaneously  admired  more  than  we.     The  "^:neid" 
has  a  charm  and  a  power  which  later  Latin  epic  poetry  has 
not,  which  Alexandrine  epic  poetry  has  not  either:  the  ex- 
tent of  this  charm    and  this  power  has  to  be  learned  from 
the  mere  force  of  the  impression  which  Vergil  made,  first 
upon   the  Romans  and  then  upon   the  whole  world  of  the 
Renaissance,  as  the  greatest  classical  poet,  who  lay  at  the 
foundation  of  all  liberal  culture.     Its   character  we  have  to 
ascertain  as  we  can  for  ourselves.     Some  of  its  elements  are 
obvious  enough  :  the  sustained  splendor  and  harmony  of  ver- 
sification, the  nobility  of  tone  which  is  never^verstrained,  and 
hardly  ever  collapses,  the  rare  union  of  elevation  and  pathos 
have  always  been  recognized.     Then,  too,  the  immense  tact 
and  felicity  with  which  the  antiquarian  learning  of  the  poet 
has  been  employed  makes  an  impression  of  its  own,  not  less 
effective  for  not  being  displayed.     The  national  interest  was, 
we  may  think,  stronger  for  the  Romans  than  for  us,  but  the 


m 


254 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


national  interests  of  the  Roman  of  the  Augustan  age  were  co- 
extensive with  the  interests  of  civiHzation.     And  something 
is  due  to  Vergil's  unique  position  :  he  is  the  first  writer  who 
really  mastered  the  Latin   hexameter,  and  his  work  retains 
much  more  of  the  freshness  and  simplicity  of  the  pre-Augus- 
tan  period  than  that  of  any  other  Augustan  poet ;  and  when 
we  compare  him  with  his  successors,  his  simplicity  is  as  re- 
markable as  Pope's,  and  is  due  to  the  same  cause.     I'he  form 
is  elaborated  for  its  own  sake,  but  the  matter  is  still  sunple  : 
it  has  not  undergone  the  unmeaning  elaboration  which  we 
find  in  later  poets,  who  are  always  haunted  by  the  ghosts  of 
vanished  effects,  and  so  are  never  simple,  and  almost  always 
tame.     It  is  the  more  important  to  attend  to  this,  because 
the  rich  harmony  of  Vergil  and  Pope  undoubtedly  made  sim- 
plicity more  difficult  to  their  successors,  and  because  Vergil 
had  a  very  extensive  and  not  very  favorable  influence  on  the 
future  of  Latin  ;  which  lost  more  in  clearness,  solidity,  and 
regularity  than  it  gained  in  picturesqueness  and  variety  by 
the  obtrusion  of  fragmentary  phrases  and  constructions  which 
every  writer  who  had  been  educated  upon  Vergil  imported 
into  the  language  of  Caesar  and  Cicero. 

Perhaps  to  all  these  elements  of  Vergil's  greatness  we  should 
add  another— his  unworldliness.     He  seems  always  a  specta- 
tor and  never  an  actor  in  the  drama  of  his  time  ;  he  is  like  a 
visitor  fiom  another  world,  profoundly  touched  by  what  he 
sees  of  the  sorrow  and  labors  and  achievements  of  this,  but 
not  otherwise  concerned  with  them.     His  poetry  is  full  of 
emotion,  but  the  emotion  is  always  contemplative  and  imper- 
sonal:  it  is  not  merely  that  he  feels  his  own  life  separated, 
like  Lucretius's  or  Horace's,  from   the  coarse  passions  and 
desires  of  the  crowd— he  despises  these  much  less  than  they 
do— but  that  he  hardly  seems  to  have  a  life  of  his  own  apart 
from  his  intelligent  and  respectful  sympathy  with  the  life  of 
others.     His  impersonality  is  not  the  impersonality  of  Homer 
or  of  Shakespeare,  who  simply  show  us  the  world  as  it  stands; 
Vergil  yearns  over  the  spectacle  which  he  spreads  before  us. 
It^may  almost  be  doubted  whether  the  sober  pensive  spirit 
of  Vergil,  which  is  too  refined  and  elevated  for  discontent,  is 


VERGIL. 


255 


not  Northern  rather  than  Italian.  It  would  not  be  a  violent 
conjecture  that  he  belonged  to  a  Tyrolese  family'  settled  in 
Italy;  for  he  certainly  clung  to  the  belief  that  Mantua  was 
before  all  tlnngs  an  Etruscan  city,  and  the  Etruscans  of  Man- 
tua  are  more  likely  to  have  crossed  the  Alps  than  the  Apen- 
nmes.  ^ 

Mantua  itself  stands  on  a  plain,  but  there  seems  reason  to 
li.nk  that  Andes,  the  village  where  Vergil's  parents'  farm 
lay,  was  upon  the  hills  that  run  up  from  the  Mincio  to  the 
mounta.ns.     They  appear  to  have   been  simple,  flourishing 
people;  for  they  were  able  to  send  their  son  to  Rome  and 
Naples  to  learn  rhetoric  and  philosophy.     The  latter  alone 
interested  hnn,  for  almost  alone  of  his  contemporaries  he  was 
.nd.tferent  to  glory.     And  what  attracted  him  in  the  teaching 
o    Syron  was  not  the   special  aspects  of  Epicureanism,  but 
te  prospect  wh.ch  ,t  held  out,  in  common  with  all  philoso- 
phies, of  enunc.patmg  neophytes  from  sordid  cares  and  pas- 
sions.    So  too,  on  its  speculative  side,  what  attracted  him  was 
tl^e  reahst  explanation  of  nature,  combined  with  a  very  Z 
pressive  proclamation  of  the  "  reign  of  law  " 

There  is  always  a  stage  in  the  progress  of  knowled<^e  when 
scence  seems  to  offer  the  imagination  a  wider  an  die  re" 
pasture  than  ,t  has  found  in  the  world  of  sense,  which  .ssH 
bounded  by  .gnorance  and  harassed  by  alarms.    And  a  thou' 
the  nnagmation   cannot  live   for  long  upon   results      i^^ou 
processes,  some  very  interesting  poetica!  effects  lave  been 
attamed  before  the  attempt  is  abandoned.     In  Vergil's  case 
the  mterest  .s  heightened  because  the  poet  is  divided  between 

9t;rjr:^S-^l^;-'''.edi^ 

Planat.on  of  the  fact  that  crows  chatter beforl  .ain   If  ,f " 
change  of  pressure  n,  the  atmosphere  mus.t  some' wi;  m:!;: 

Celts  on  their  extreme  frontier  had  blende!;': "f 'a  ^rl  A^a.^^™!'"  "' 


256 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


them  restless;  it  is  no  explanation  at  all  that  fate  and  provi- 
dence bestow  foresight  upon  dumb  creatures  for  the  benefit 
of  men.  Then,  too,  the  Stoic  doctrine  of  providence  was 
really  only  tenable  upon  the  artificial  hypothesis  that  the 
chief  purpose  of  the  world  was  to  produce  and  maintain  a 
few  chosen  spirits,  capable  of  finding  the  chief  and  adequate 
end  of  life  in  endurance  or  activity,  irrespective  of  results  ; 
for  Italy  in  Vergil's  day  had  long  left  behind  the  stage  (which 
every  society  leaves  behind  sooner  or  later)  when  the  visible 
distribution  of  good  and  evil  among  mortal  men  commends 
itself  spontaneously  to  the  judgment  of  intelligent  and  kindly 

lookers-on.  . 

It  does  not  seem  that  Vergil  ever  took  more  from  Epicure- 
anism than  a  faith  in  the  uniformity  of  nature,  and  a  prefer- 
ence of  concrete  explanations  of  fact  to  a  parade  of  verbal 
optimistic  dialectics.     Nor  was  there  any  real  inconsistency 
between  the  meteorology  which  he  took  from  Epicurus,  the 
psycholocrv  which  he  took  from  Plato,  and  the  views  of  nation- 
al history^and  destiny  which  he  inherited  from  his  ancestors, 
who  believed  them  to  be  guided  bj^  national  deities.     Eclecti- 
cism is  only  oftensive  when  it  is  systematic :  that  a  learner 
should  be  influenced  by  many  teachers,  and  take  from  each 
what  each  knows  best,  is  natural  and  right,  if  he  has  not  the 
.pretension  to  prove  to  each  in  turn  that  what  he  has  taken  is 
all  that  is  worth  taking,  and  that  the  only  way  to  give  a  com- 
plete and  coherent  account  of  the  universe  is  to  piece  togeth- 
er fragments  of  discordant  traditions  and  theories. 

It  is  curious  that  we  know  next  to  nothing  of  \ergils 
purely  literary  education:  we  are  sure  that  he  must  have 
been  powerfuUv  influenced  by  Lucretius,  and  when  the  "Geor- 
crics"  were  written  it  is  likely  that  the  influence  may  have 
been  passing  away,  and  the  "Bucolics"  are  written  under  the 
fresh  influence  of  Theocritus.  But  Vergil  was  born  in  70  b  c., 
and  the  earliest  of  his  ascertained  poems  cannot  be  earlier 
than  43  B.C.,  and  may  very  well  be  a  year  later,  and  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  believe  that  he  had  been  idle  till  then.  His  fastid- 
iousness has  left  it  uncertain  what,  if  anything,  among  the 
pieces  which  have  come  down   to   us  as  the  work  of  his 


VERGIL, 


257 


early  years  is  genuine,  for  the  appendix  to  his  poems  has  not 
his  authority  nor  that  of  his  representatives.     They  are  quite 
unlike  his  certain  writings,  and  it  is  seldom  possible  to  trace 
any  points  of  connection  and  transition;  and  the  general  ver- 
dict of  criticism   has  been   against   all,  or  almost   all,  upon 
grounds  that  would  be  as  effective  against  most  that  Shelley 
wrote  before  "Queen  Mab,"  or  Scott  before  the  "Lay  of  the 
Last  Minstrel."     What  complicates  the  problem  is  that  Ver- 
gil certainly  did  write  a  poem  on  a  gnat,  which  Martial  had 
read,  and  complimented  the  memory  of  Lucan  by  observing 
that  before  he  was  at  the  age  when  Vergil  wrote  it  "he  had 
written  the  "Pharsalia."     Consequently,  we  have  to  suppose 
that,  if  the  poem  on  a  gnat  which  we  have  is  not  Vergil's,  it 
was  composed  in  rivalry  with  him  ;  and  this  at  a  late  period  of 
literature,  when  another  Octavius  than  the  heir  of  Julius  could 
be  invoked  to  prosper  the  labors  of  the  poet.     And  one  of 
the  poems  of  the  "Catalecta"'  is  addressed  to  a  promising 
young  Octavius,  who  died  leaving  a  work  on  Roman  history 
which  the  writer  admires.     It  is  tempting  to  identify  the  two, 
for  the  singer  of  the  gnat  addresses  his  patron  as  "sancte 
puer,"  which  would  have  been  a  gaucherie  as  applied  to  Au- 
gustus  after   he   had   entered    upon   his  inheritance.     And, 
though  Vergil  was  not  incapable  of  this,'^  it  is  more  likely 
that,  if  we  have  his  poem  on  the  gnat,  he  addressed  it  to  some  • 
townsman  who  fancied  that  he  was  going  to  rise  by  the  side 
of  his  illustrious  kinsman.     The  poem   itself  is  pretty,  but 
tedious.     An  old  man  kills  a  gnat  which  came  to  wake' him 
and  save  him  from  a  serpent,  and  the  gnat's  ghost  comes  back 
with  news  of  the  world  of  spirits  beyond  the  Po,  which  moves 
the  old  man  to  perform  a  solemn  funeral  in  its  honor.     There 
IS  little  or  no  connection  between  its  parts,  and  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  summer  morning  and  the  reflections  on  the  happi- 
ness of  country  life  are  developed  at  quite  disproportionate 
length.     The  writer  has  no  idea  of  subordinating  his  fluency 
to  his  subject  (which  is  exactly  what  we  should  expect  in  an 

'  This  means  poems  reckoned  to  Vergil,  and  is  equivalent  to  our  use 
of  appendix. 

'  He  laid  himself  open  to  ridicule  before  by  coining  a  plural  to  "barley." 


2S8 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUKE. 


VERGIL. 


259 


early  work  of  Vergil);  and  the  ^vhimsicality  of  the  whole 
thin"  just  falls  short  of  being  amusing,  though  it  might  per- 
hap^have  been  amusing  to  a  certain  circle  when  hrst  pro- 
duced.    Of  all  Vergil's  doubtful  works  it  remmds  us  most  of 
his  certain  works  ;  and  this,  of  course,  it  would  do  if  U  was 
composed  in  rivalry  with  him,  or  was  intended  to  be  m.s  aken 
for  a  lost  poem  of  his.    On  some  metrical  grounds  we  shoukl 
be  inclined  to  think  the  poem  later  than  Vergil's  age  ;  but  the 
early  works  of  a  great  metrist  are  not  always  the  least  finished, 
so  far  as  smoothness  of  surface  goes.    The  "  Ciris"  .s  a  poem 
which  certainly  dates  from  a  time  when  Vergil  had  not  de- 
termined the  definite  form  of  the  Latin  hexameter.     It  is  an 
interesting  idvl  of  the  same  type  as  the  "  Epithalamium  of 
Peleus  and  fhelis,"  addressed  to  Messalla  by  a  poet  who 
wishes  to  devote  himself  to  the  study  of  philosophy.     1  here 
are  numerous  imitations  of  Catullus,  both  in  metre  and  mat- 
ter- and  in  the  philosophical  introduction  there  are  reminis- 
cences of  Lucretius.     It  seems  to  have  been  a  sort  of  rule  in 
poems  of  this  kind  to  frame  two  legends  together,  and  accord- 
inoly  the  introduction  contains  a  sketch  of  the  story  of  the 
Homeric  Scvlla,  with  a  lamentation,  quite  Veigilian  in  spirit 
over  the  hardship  of  children  suffering,  like  her,  for  the  sins  of 
their  parents,  before  relating  the  legend  of  the  Scvlla  of  Meg- 
ara      The  only  difficulty  in   ascribing  the  poem  to  \ergil 
when  under  the  infiuence  of  Catullus  is  that  we  do  not  know 
how  he  can  have  been  brought  into  relation  with  Messalla 
before  the  latter  was  reconciled  to  Octavian  ;  and  the  "  Ciris 
is  certainly  not  an  advance  upon  the  "  Bucolics."    Two  other 
poems  of  less  pretensions  are  thought  less  unlikely  to  be  genu- 
ine: one  is  a  copy  of  elegiacs  to  a  Syrian  barmaid  ;  the  other 
is  a  little  didactic  poem  on  salad,  said  to  be  imitated  from  the 

Greek  of  Parthenius. 

Almost  all  the  "  Catalecta,"  including  the  elegy  on  the 
voun''  Octavius,  are  more  or  less  of  the  school  of  Catullus. 
There  is  one  direct  parody  on  the  dedication  of  die  "  pinnace, 
perhaps  with  a  shade  of  sarcasm  in  it,  as  if  a  muleteer  past 
work  were  no  more  uninteresting  than  a  waterlogged  yacht. 
One  elegv,  addressed  to  Messalla  at  the  height  of  his  reputa- 


tion, after  his  .Aquitanian  triumph,  is  rather  in  the  manner  of 
Propertii.s,  who,  we  know,  looked  forward  with  enthusiasm  to 
the  appearance  of  the  "^:neid."    It  is  a  fine  and  spirited 
poem;  but,  if  Vergil  wrote  it,  he  did  wisely  in  excluding  it 
from  the  collected  edition  of  his  works.     The  same  ma/ be 
saul  of  .111  elegiac  vow  to  Venus  to  secure  her  blessing  on  the 
Aneid.  •     In  fact,  the  only  poem  among  the  "Catalecta" 
which  readers  of  his  acknowledged  works  would  be  sorry  to 
lose  IS  a  poem  of  fourteen  scazons  on  beginning  the  study  of 
philosophy,  full  of  delicate  fervor  tersely  e.x-pressed.    The  best 
authenticated  is  a  dull  jest  on  a  dull  orator,  vouched  for  by 
C^umctilian.  ' 

Whatever  we  believe  of  the  tentative  or  imitative  works 
which  posterity  rightly  or  wrongly  ascribed  to  Vergil,  the 
Bucolics  have  all  the  character  of  a  fresh  beginning:  they 
have  all  the  naivete  and  indecision  of  a  timid  and  inexperi- 
enced writer.  There  is  abundant  charm  and  very  little  mas- 
ter_v.  Mhcn  one  compares  them  with  Theocritus,  one  feels 
how  immeasurably  below  his  model  Vergil  is  in  command  of 
his  materials:  one  does  not  feel  the  same,  to  anything  like 

the  same  extent,  when  one  compares  the  author  of  the  "Ciris  " 
wilh  .Moschus.    Part  of  this  may  be  duo  to  the  fact  that  Ver-jl 
was  coming  for  the  first  time  before  a  real  public :  the  "  Ciris*" 
upon  the  face  of  it,  is  the  exercise  of  an  amateur,  which  the 
writer  only  finishes  under  the  friendly  pressure  of  Messalla 
I  art  must  be  due  to  the  disturbing  influence  of  the  writer's 
personal  situation  in  the  years  when  the  triumvirs  had  to  pro- 
vide for  their  soldiers.    All  the  agrarian  laws  of  the  Republic 
had  dealt  in  the  main  with  the  public  domain  of  the  Roman 
city,  and  had  left  the  domains  of  other  Italian  cities  untouched. 
It  IS  probable  that  in  these  much  property  was  held  upon  ten- 
ures much  short  of  absolute  ownership,  which  gave  the  occu- 
pier a  practically  perfect  title  against  his  fellow-citizens,  but 
not  against  the  authorities  of  his  city,  nor  against  the  authority 
of  the  paramount  city  Rome.     The  triumvirs  were  less  scni- 
pulous  than  the  Gracchi:  they  confiscated  the  domains  of  as 
many  cuies  as  they  found  it  convenient  to  pronounce  guilty 
ot  rebellion  against  their  authority,  and  they  disregarded  all 


[ 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 
260 

subordinate  titles;  but  .e  have  ^^^.^:^:^;^X^:^T.:X 
they  technically  confiscated  ^"';  P"^^  ^J^^Pfp^.oscript'on  : 
dividuals,  except  those  whose  "^  "'=%Y;;°"  "-P  i.^  right  to 
they  si.^ply  reaped  to  acUnowc^ge^^^^^  ^^ 

privileges  which,  in  theor> ,  ih«  ^''^  "  e     This  aftected  Vergil, 

had  always  been  -Jl-  2\°,  "of  clcn^ona,  which  was    ' 
because  the  boundary  of  he  t  y  ^^^^^^  ^^^^^^^ 

V^eSl-rtri^'arfortte  first  and  last  ti.e  in  h.s  . .e 

r--;nrrrirhisS^L^:^urLta^ani:^ 

;;rdl;  wS:;instated  tl.  poet    ^But^e  soldier  w^^^^^^^^^ 

in  possession  declined  to  be  ous^^      '^^Z£^o,  I'ollio 
Perusia,  "^en  Oc---;  -     A  U^^^^^^  ^^,^^„  ,„  „,,,. 

was  superseded,  and  te  new  ^^  ^^^^  ^^^^_^^  ^^^ 

ing  for  a  fnend  f  1° ''°,„  . 'Vfrom  whom  he  had  learned 
son.e  ,.o.uhs  -  ^-•'     ^  ^    rhe  was  indemnified  with  an 

.  sr.£r  Napt:,  Ld  left  a  ^^ ^^^ ^x::^:::^ 

favors  of  Augustus  and  Maecenas  ;       j^i,  ;„ 

,  ^'?  ^;f?JU':f.  ItsTirn    Itfu-S^st  m  his  patema, 
ltstr::X^ed  by  U^e  prospect  of  losir^U.^ 

.vhen  he  had  once  struck  ''-^f^;,^';;;:  dissatisfied  with 

to  abandon  it  too  soon,  especial  >  as  he  was 

his  first  experiments  in  ep.c  poetry     He  can  hardl 

been  an  energetic  farmer  n,  '-  °;  "  P^  ^".'^^^rok  forward  t^ 

when  they  gave  him  a  cty  «>"""?'  ;^''^^^\°',  ,,e  may  quite       ^ 

,-,  settli,v.  clown  on  the    arm      <;0 -q  <=-^>    ^^^J^^  ,,,     / 

beheve  ''>'■>'"  "^•,f';°^=;,„  ,  share  of  the  produce  to 

joint  owner  of  the  f^"^"  '.P^    "-    ,    ,     ^^.j  ^f  the  household 
Vergil,  and  maintaming  hnnselfand  the  «^t  °'  ^ 

,,,h^  t'he  remainder.     This  l^P^'!""- ^.^ttirsome    afher 
and  ninth  Eclogues  cons.sten,  -">  ^      ^     ;  J    ^,,,  ,,  had 

;SiS;2r.r'vit^r  :;:  p::.^   But,  aaer  .,  there 


VERGIL. 


261 


is  enough  unreality.     A  pastoral  poet  always  lends  his  peas- 
ants the   sentiments  with  which  their  life   inspires  him,  and 
envies  them  the  country  as  in  all  probability  they  envy  him 
the  town.     But  Vergil's  sentiment  is  even  further  from  reality 
than  this:  he  never  asks  himself,  and  we  had  better  not  ask 
ourselves,  whether  he  is  writing  of  Sicily  or  of  Lombardy : 
pines  and  poplars,  mountain  caves  and  water  meadows,  blend 
in  his  imagination  ;  and  one  might  almost  say  that  the  chief 
value  of  the  country  life  of  Lombardy  to  him  is  that  it  enables 
liim  to  feel  Theocritus,  who  reproduced  real  country  life  more 
perfectly  than  any  other  literary  poet ;  for  Wordsworth,  by  his 
very  fidelity,  often  lays  himself  open  to  mere  literary  criticism. 
In  one  sense,  the  greater  part  of  the  "Bucolics"  is  a  mere 
rifaciamento  of  Theocritus ;  and  it  is  easy  to  point  out  how 
much  more  definite  and  coherent  the  original  is  than  the  copy, 
even  apart  from  the  question  which  is  most  like  nature.     Yet, 
after  all,  the  "  Bucolics  "  of  Vergil  have  a  charm  of  their  own 
— a  soft  playfulness,  so  tender  as  to  be  almost  grave,  which 
makes  them,  upon  the  whole,  the  more  enjoyable  reading  of 
the  two.     They  have  taken  a  place  in  Latin  literature  which 
the  clever  and  more  stimulating  work  of  Theocritus  failed  to 
take  in  Greek;  and  in  modern  times  all  pastoral  poetry  derives 
from  Vergil,  not  from  Theocritus.    The  truth  is,  that  the  tem- 
per in  which  we  find  pastoral  poetry  enjoyable  is  not  a  tem- 
per in  which  we  care  for  true  or  keen  perceptions.    Theocritus 
always  remains  at  the  point  where  perception  is  passing  into 
enjoyment,  but  Vergil  begins  when  the  transition  is  completed. 
There  is  one  other  element  in  the  "  Bucolics  "  besides  this 
naive  enjoyment   of  the  holiday  side   of  country  life,  which 
probably  did  as  much  at  the  time  for  the  author's  reputation, 
though  it  only  serves  to  puzzle  and  annoy  posterity.     Vergil, 
like  Theocritus,  carries  on  a  war  of  allusions  through  the 
"  Bucolics  "  against  his  literary  rivals;  though,  with  question- 
able tact,  he  tries  to  mask  his  own  personality,  and  sometimes 
theirs,  under  the  names  of  shepherds.     Bavius  and  Msevius 
are  notorious,  for  Vergil  named  them,  and  his  commentators 
have  preserved  anecdotes  enough  to  damn  them  to  an  im- 
mortality of  fame.    *'  Codrus,"  a  rival  whom  he  half  esteemed, 


262 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


VERGIL. 


263 


is  generally  supposed  to  be  an  anagram  of  Cordiis,  who  is 
identified  again  with  a  certain  "  Maurus  larbita,"  who  may 
even  be  the  same  as  "lollas,"  who  appears  as  the  rival  of 
the  poet  in  the  favor  of  Pollio's  cupbearer,  better  known  as 
"Alexis."  But  though  there  is  a  certain  dexterity  in  putting 
the  polemic  into  the  mouth  of  shepherds,  the  polemic  itself  is 
tame,  and  the  best  that  can  be  said  of  Vergil  is  that  he  did 
not  allow  himself  to  be  entangled  like  Pope  in  an  endless 
series  of  ignoble  quarrels,  though  the  temptation  for  both  lay 
in  a  fastidiousness  which  had  a  noble  side. 

When  we  turn  from  Vergil's  relations  to  his  rivals,  to  his 
relations  to  his  patrons,  we  are  struck,  not  exactly  by  his  in- 
dependence, but  by  the  liberality  with  which  he  distributes 
his  homage.     We  should  hardly  find  out  that  Octavian  was 
a  greater^man  than  Pollio,  or  even  that  Pollio  was  a  greater 
man  than  Varius.    Even  when  the  monarchy  was  established, 
it  never  had  the  effect  which  an  hereditary  monarchy  has  of 
limiting  individual  ambitions:   and  when  the  monarchy  was 
still  a  Thing  of  the  future,  it  stimulated  every  individual  ambi- 
tion, as  a  prize  within  the  reach  of  all.      It  seems  quite  natu- 
ral to  us  that  a  pastoral  in  honor  of  the  dead  Caesar  should 
represent  Nature   mourning  for  him,  as  it  mourned  for  the 
dead  Daphnis,"  and  to  find  Uiat  he  too  is  thenceforward  to  be 
a  blessed  presence  in  Nature.     The  apocalyptic  anticipations 
of  the  'a^ollio"  seem   natural  too:  all  that  was  worst  in  the 
world  had  been  uppermost  for  a  generation,  and  enough  good 
was  left  to  expect  that  the  turn  of  the  righteous  would  come, 
thou-h  men  could  find  no  hope  within  the  sphere  of  sober 
politTcs,  and  turned  for  comfort  to  signs  in  the  stars  of  heaven, 
and  to  such  echoes  of  Eastern  prophecy  as  had  reached  their 
ears.     But  what  is  strange  is,  that  all  this  miraculous  hope 
should  have  settled  on  a  new-born  child  of  a  second-rate  par- 
tisan  who  happened   to  be  consul  at  the  time,  and  conse- 
quently much  ingenuity  has  been  wasted  on  the  search  for  a 
child  of  higher  destinies  than  Pollio's  own.'     At  the  time,  it 

'  A  personification  not  so  much  of  the  perishing  summer  sun  as  of  the 
Sicilian  herdsman's  joy  therein. 
» The  best  perhaps  among  many  bad  guesses  is  that  the  poem  was  corn- 


was  not  stran^fe,  as  all  the  familv  of  the  Asinii  were  celebrated 
for  generations  for  their  spirit.'  When  Augustus  was  dis- 
cussing his  possible  successors,  he  mentioned  Asinius  Gallus 
as  coveting  a  station  which  was  too  great  for  him.  Of  course 
Vergil  had  special  reasons  for  idealizing  Pollio's  position  and 
his  prospects  ;  so,  too,  he  idealizes  Cornelius  Gallus,  who  suc- 
ceeded him  as  land  commissioner  in  Lombardy,  in  the  last 
and  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  of  the  Eclogues.  All  the  gods 
of  Arcadia  come  to  console  the  love-lorn  poet  when  his  fiiith- 
less  lady  has  ibrsaken  him  to  follow  a  rival  to  the  wars.  The 
passage  suggested  the  august  procession  of  the  superhuman 
mourners  of  Lycidas,  which  in  its  turn  suggested  to  Shelley  the 
splendid  pageant  of  Adonais.  The  poetry  is  so  rich  and  ten- 
der that  it  would  be  churlish  to  remember  either  that  Milton 
and  King  were  not  shepherds,  or  that  the  deserted  Gallus 
certainly  did  not  spend  his  time  in  roaming  about  Arcadia. 
Vergil's  pomp  of  woe  is  so  far  beyond  the  occasion  which  the 
author  of  "Alexis"  knew  how  to  treat  as  it  deserved  as  to  in- 
vite a  guess  that  the  poem  is  really  a  dirge,  written  after 
Callus's  death,  to  make  amends  for  the  enforced  suppression 
of  the  panegyric  on  him  which  it  is  said  once  closed  the  fourth 
Georgic.  Tiie  assumed  date  of  the  poem  is  36  B.C.,  when 
Vergil  must  have  already  been  meditating  the  "  Georgics ;" 
but  the  alternative  title  of  the  "Bucolics"  is  Eclogae  or  Selec- 
tions, and  a  selection  may  be  made  at  any  time.  Do  we  know 
when  the  selection  was  closed?  Is  not  the  solemn  opening' 
more  appropriate  if  Vergil  was  returning  after  an  interval  of 
many  years  to  a  kind  of  poetry  which  he  had  abandoned }  If 
so,  there  would  be  a  fitness  in  his  prayer  that  the  little  which 
he  says  may  be  fit  to  move  even  Lycoris — and  a  sterner 
reader — and  in  the  way  that  he  dwells  on  the  danger  of  the 
cold  shade  of  evening  and  misfortune  to  the  singer;  and  there 
would  be  admirable  boldness  in  the  lines  where  he  speaks  of 

posed  upon  the  chance  that  the  first-born  of  Octavian  might  turn  out  a 
boy.     Julia  was  born  while  Pollio  was  in  office. 

*  Perhaps  this  is  the  best  word  to  translate  "  ferocia  "  in  the  context. 
Whose  solemnity  young  Milton  reasonably  exaggerated  in  the  opening 
of  "  Lycidas." 


n 


264 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


his  c.,ovvin<v  love  to  his  friend,  who  was  lost  to  h,m  already 
t  len  he  note  of  his  real  sufferings.  But  the  poem  rs,  after 
al  on  '  n  i  °  and  needs  to  bo  interpreted  by  a  much  fuller  l.fe 
o  Ve  "u  i  «e  possess ;  for,  Irouevcr  we  are  to  .nterpret  .t, 
the  w^ter  s  imagiLion  has  been  inspired  rather  by  feehngs 

''"it  less  to  explain  in  the  appearance  of  Gallus  with 
his  translation  of  "Euphorion"  among  the   ^--"-^  ;">-^^'; 
cism  of  the  sixth  Eclogue,  where  two  shepherds  find  S.  et^us 
S  ep  and  bind  him  with  flowers,  while  a  nymph  pa.nts  Is 
e  as  he  wakes,  with  the  juice  of  berries  and  he  buys  h 
hoTtv  of  the  shepherds  with  songs,  and  of  the  nymph  wuh 
is  Se     The  groundwork  of  the  poem  is  really  the  same  as 
;ra;°:f%chille;s,  where  the  god  of  ^vi-e  brings  te  god  o 
song  and  ^'^  ^od  of  love  nt    -s  t..        L  t  X  .^^^    do^^  ^^^^ 

r;e  tha;  it  performs.     When  we  come  to  ^xam-ne  t^e 

.e  wish  for  some   letters  o    Vergd  -  s  wh     .        ^^^ 

"-^S^J^Z^:^  mad:Vomrprogress  with  H. 

S;LS\vas  probably  deep  in  <^^^:^-;'^Zr^ 
the  subject  of  metamorphosis.     The  legtncl  wnic 
rated  most  is  the  unpleasant  legend  of  Pas.phae .  we  are    e 
nnnded  for  the  first   and   last  time   n.   Vergd  of  Atfs   and 
Smyrna,  the  masterpiece  of  C.nna.  ^^ 

Th^  "Geor'ncs      contain   2258  nexamcici    ""^  »  ^ 

.epr  sent^he  wo  k  of  seven  of  the  best  years  of  \  erg.l  s  hie, 
from  .Tto  44  :  the  year  in  which  they  were  completed  was 
he  veu  when  Oetalian  was  settling  the  affairs  of  the  East 
ater  the  victory  of  Actium,  which  put  the  seal  on  the  most 
htr  ous  a  cl  ist  fruitful  part  of  his  work  in  the  restorat.on 
of  ItTv     The  temper  of  chastened  hope  and  serene  endeavor 
:   ■;? breathes  thr'ough  them  is  as  f--cterisuc  of  ^^^^^^^ 
as  the  lofty  note  of  thanksgivmg  wh.ch  runs  through  the  se 
riou    oc  es  of  Horace,  written  in  the  seven  years  after  Actm, 
when  Rome  was  gathering  with  joy  the  harvest  wh.ch  had 


I 


I 


VERGIL, 


265 


been  sown  in  tears.  Horace  waited  for  Actium  to  be  quite 
converted  to  the  empire  ;  but  Vergil,  who  had  never  fought 
at  Phihppi,  was  ready  to  worship  the  new  deity  as  soon  as 
Sextus  Tompeius  had  been  subdued.'  The  worship  was 
probably  quite  sincere,  and  as  rational  as  any  worship  can 
be  expected  to  be  when  the  worshipper  is  not  directly  or 
indirectly  under  superhuman  guidance.  The  feeling  of  rev- 
erence and  loyalty  was  reviving  under  great  difficulties,  and  in 
the  early  days  of  its  revival  it  was  neither  easy  nor  helpful  to 
separate  its  elements  :  loyalty  had  been  the  more  deeply  in- 
jured of  the  two,  and  much  that  had  injured  loyalty  had  in  a 
wav  strenirthened  reverence.  For  the  disturbance  of  all  stable 
relations,  which  had  gone  on  increasing  in  violence  from  the 
Social  War  to  the  war  of  Perusia,  had  forced  upon  men  the 
feeling  that  their  lives  were  governed  by  incalculable,  uncon- 
trollable powers,  and  this  conviction  always  makes  many  turn 
for  comfort  to  propitiatory  ceremonies;  and  these  were  pre- 
cisely the  most  vigorous  part  of  the  religion  of  Rome.  When 
things  mended,  reverence  and  loyalty  revived  and  coalesced, 
and  sought  a  visible  object,  which  the  imagination  could  lay 
hold  of:  men  needed  an  earthly  providence,  and  for  a  time  it 
seemed  that  they  had  found  one.  Besides,  the  belief  in  im- 
mortality  had  reached  a  stage  in  its  development  when  it  in- 
evitably conducted  to  a  belief  in  apotheosis.  In  the  days  of 
Hesiod  there  was  the  choice  of  imagining  a  man  living  on  as 
a  ghost  in  middle  air  or  underground  in  a  world  of  shadows, 
accessible  through  caves  and  river  gorges,  or  simply  in  his 
tomb.  In  the  days  of  Pindar  it  was  possible  to  think  that 
glorious  spirits  passed  under  earth  with  the  sun,  to  rise  again 
with  him,  sooner  or  later,  in  some  bright  region  of  the  west. 
But  when  science  had  reached  a  positive  conception  of  the 
terraqueous  globe  and  the  sublunary  atmosphere,  it  was  plain 
that  there  was  no  rest  for  the  souls  of  the  righteous  till  they 
reached  the  sphere  of  the  fixed  constellations,  or  at  least  the 
orb  of  the  planet  of  their  nativity.  And  astrology,  which  was 
then  the  only  form  in  which  men  could  give  "scientific"  shape 

^  The  close  of  the  first  Georgic,  with  its  sense  of  trouble  throughout  the 
world,  must  be  early  :  the  opening  invocation  is  probably  later. 

I.-  12 


266 


LA  TLV  LITER  A  TURE, 


VERGIL. 


267 


to  their  belief  that  terrestrial  life  is  governed  by  cosmical  con- 
ditions, led  straight  to  a  conviction  that  spirits  which  reached 
the  starry  sphere  were  made  equal  to  the  highest  gods.  Of 
course,  an  artificial  belief  of  this  kind  is  always  in  a  sense  un- 
real: it  has  not  the  strength  of  either  a  true  belief  or  a  tradi- 
tional belief;  but  when  it  corresponds  to  a  real  need  it  is 
held  all  the  more  vehemently  and  eagerly  because  it  cannot 
be  held  steadily.  A  reader  now  can  hardly  do  anything  but 
smile  at  the  suggestion  that  the  deified  Augustus  should  ap- 
pear as  a  new  star,  and  fill  the  gap  between  the  Virgin  and  the 
Scales,  or  the  Claws,  as  they  were  called  then  :  at  the  time,  a 
fanciful  difficulty  in  arranging  a  star  map  represented  a  grave 
hiatus  in  spiritual  science. 

The  religious  temper  of  the  "Georgics"  reaches  its  highest 
fervor  in  anticipating  the  worship  of  Augustus;  but  it  is 
founded  on  more  permanent  elements.  The  feeling  is  that 
all  thiniis  are  iiiven  to  men  abundantlv,  but  that  the  terms 
upon  v.'hich  they  are  given  are  hard  and  not  equal ;  the  gods 
are  bountiful  in  a  sense  and  faithful  in  a  sense,  the  earth  is 
sure  to  yield  her  increase  to  those  who  till  her  fields  with 
diligence;  even  the  hardships  of  life  are  a  discipline  which 
trains  men  to  higher  perfection  ;  but  the  poet  never  reaches 
the  elevation  at  which  it  is  possible  to  repose  upon  the  thought 
of  the  goodness  and  justice  of  the  IMost  High.  He  worships 
almost  without  praise,  yet  his  worship  is  not  a  service  of  fear: 
his  highest  conception  of  gladness  is  a  solemn  sacrifice,  where 
men  pay  their  vows  which  they  made  in  trouble.  One  may 
find  many  passages  like  those  which  tell  of  husbandmen  per- 
forming festal  rites  upon  rich  grass,  or  of  sailors  paying  their 
vows  when  they  are  safe  ashore  to  Glaucus  (the  god  of  the 
evil-boding  sea)  and  Panopea  and  Melicerta  (child  of  Ino),  and 
many  complaints  that  all  things  go  back  of  themselves,  and 
only  go  forward  by  our  care,  and  that  life  gives  its  best  at 
first  and  then  has  nothing  to  offer  but  the  lees,  and  that  in- 
nocent cattle  suffer  like  luxurious  men.  The  famous  passage 
where  the  Father  is  praised  for  the  cares  that  edge  the  hearts 
of  mortal  men  stands  alone. 

Agriculture  seems  to  attract  him  as  much  by  its  certainty 


% 


and  innocence  as  by  anything  else :  it  is  the  one  pursuit  in 
which  endeavor  never  quite  fails,  in  which  success  is  attained 
without  crime.  His  love  of  nature  doubtless  has  its  part  in 
the  matter,  but  his  love  of  nature  is  of  a  kind  which  might 
easily  become  jealous  of  the  encroachments  of  tillage  :  what 
pleases  him  in  rustic  life  is  its  contrast  with  the  life  of  the 
town,  not  with  the  life  of  the  wilderness.  He  wooes  Alexis  to 
the  lo7v  cots  and  unadorned  fields.'  When  he  fears  that  his 
want  of  fiiith  and  courage '  (as  we  should  say)  may  disappoint 
his  hope  of  writing  a  great  scientific  poem,"  he  cries  for  the 
woods  and  rivers,  for  the  cool  valleys  of  Ha^mus,  and  for  the 
mighty  shadow  of  the  branches  to  cover  him  ;  he  longs  for 
the  steep  slopes  of  Taygetus,  where  Spartan  maids  hold  revel. 
When  he  comes  to  treat  of  breeding  sporting  dogs,  his  first 
thought  is  how  exciting  a  night  on  Cithasron  must  be;  and 
when  the  cry  of  hounds  and  the  noise  of  cattle  and  of  horses 
is  in  his  ears,  it  is  echoed  back  by  the  wood.  The  country 
deities  whose  knowledge  is  bliss  are  all  deities  of  the  wilds — 
Pan  and  Silvanus,*  and  the  nymphs— all  dear  to  the  imagi- 
nation of  poets  who  lived  when  mythology  had  come  to  be 
cherished  by  sentiment,  all  shapes  of  terror  to  real  husband- 
men, who  lived  when  mythology  was  still  growing  out  of 
men's  dim  sense  of  the  hidden  powers  of  the  world. 

All  this  is  far  short  of  the  passion  for  wild  nature  which 
we  know  from  modern  writers.  Bare  crags  to  Vergil  are  not 
picturesque  or  sublime  unless  crowned  with  towers  by  human 
toil,  but  simply  bleak  and  cruel.  He  hardly  realizes  what  a 
great  mountain  is  like,  or  rather,  having  never  thought  of 
climbing  one,  he  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  commonest  illusions 
of  perspective ;  the  nearest  pine-clad  peak  that  towers  above 

*  "  Soidida  rura  "  as  opposed  to  "  nitidae  urbes." 

^  He  speaks  himself  of  the  "  cold  blood  about  his  heart." 

'  He  knew  enough  of  Alexandrian  literature  to  be  sure  that  the  grand 

scienlific  spirit  of  Lucretius  had  not  made  up  for  his  total  ignorance  of 

science. 

♦  Silvanus  is  the  creature  of  the  fears  of  the  hour,  when  every  fantastic 
stump  takes  the  shape  of  a  deformed  old  man,  and  the  wind,  as  it  goes 
crashing  through  the  woods,  is  felt  and  heard  so  vividly  that  it  creates 
illusions  of  sight. 


\ 


268 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


the  horizon  is  the  cloud-capped  head  of  the  giant,  the  snow- 
clad  masses  nearer  the  horizon  are  his  shoulders  in  their 
white  mantle,  and  the  glaciers  which  run  down  from  them  arc 
his  beard  which  reaches  his  knees.'  The  picture  has  a  kind 
of  fragmentary  momentary  truth  in  its  way,  but  it  is  very  puz- 
zling to  readers  trained  at  first  or  second  hand  to  exact  rec- 
ognition of  the  permanent  features  of  the  landscape.  Indeed, 
Vergil,  who  in  many  ways  is  so  modern,  is  very  unlike  mod- 
ern writers,  at  least  English  writers,  in  this,  that  he  is  quite  a 
stranger  to  their  habit  of  seeking  natural  beauty  first  by  the 
isolated  sense  of  sight.  With  \'ergil  the  bees  float  through 
the  clear  summer,  which  is  felt  as  well  as  seen  ;  the  chariots 
in  the  race  "put  it  on  down  the  course"  or  are  deaf  to  the 
rein,  the  charger  "  twines  bv  turns  the  arches  of  his  lejrs/'  hc'* 
"lays  back  his  pliant  limbs  "  as  at  each  stride  the  upper  parts 
of  the  fore-legs  are  drawn  back  to  the  body  ;  instead  of  watch- 
ing the  action  of  the  horse,  he  feels  it  going  on.  In  fact,  it 
might  be  said  that  Vergil  apprehends  nature  intimately  where 
a  modern  poet  would  aim  at  representing  nature  accurately, 
and  a  primitive  Greek  poet  would  present  the  broader  aspects 
of  nature  vividly.  Vergil  is  quite  as  refined  in  his  observa- 
tion as  the  subtlest  modern,  but  he  does  not  deal  with  such 
large  masses  of  caretuUy  discriminated  detail,  and,  like  Shake- 
speare, he  makes  flowers  blow  together  which  cannot  be  found 
at  once  in  any  visible  garden.  Still,  his  method  has  its  ad- 
vantages ;  modern  word-painting  would  have  been  quite  out 
of  place  in  a  didactic  poem,  while  Vergil,  when  he  is  most 
poetical,  continues  to  be  instructive.  The  famous  passage  on 
the  praise  of  Italy  contains  a  sufficient  cataloirue  of  Italian 
trees;  and  the  description  of  the  signs  of  the  sky  at  the  end 
of  the  first  book  is  as  highlv  ornamented,  though  not  as  im- 
passioned,  as  the  description  of  the  signs  of  the  times  in  which 
it  culminates.  Again,  the  plainest  and  most  level  passages 
have  always  some  imaginative  phrase  to  relieve  them :  it  is 
the  frisky  unyoked  heifer  that  will  trample  down  the  flowers 
that  should  be  reserved  for  the  bees  (the  milch  kine  and  the 

'  ".^n."iv.  298sqq. 

'  Or,  as  Conington  takes  it,  "sets  down  his  springy  feet." 


VERGIL. 


269 


laboring  oxen  are  sober  and  safe,  the  wild  bullocks  ought  to  be 
stalled  up  or  in  distant  pastures).  The  vine-dresser  follows 
his  vine  up  as  he  crops  it,  he  fashions  it  as  he  prunes. 

It  is  this  intimate  union  of  the  poetry  with  the  construction 
which  makes  the  "Georgics"  the  most  masterly  didactic  poem 
in  the  world.  Where  Lucretius  is  a  poet,  it  may  be  thought 
that  he  is  a  greater,  at  least  a  more  powerful,  poet  than  Ver- 
gil ;  but  Vergil  is  a  poet  always,  and  through  the  greater  part 
of  his  work  Lucretius  has  no  characteristic  of  a  poet  but  im- 
passioned earnestness.  It  may  seem  curious  that  a  writer 
with  Vergil's  exquisite  skill  and  judgment  should  have  written 
a  didactic  poem  at  all.  Hesiod  would  have  certainly  written 
in  prose,  if  prose  had  existed  then  :  the  philosophers  of  the 
fifth  century  B.C.  were  not  very  encouraging  precedents,  and 
the  Alexandrine  guides  whom  Vergil  followed  still  less  so. 
Something  must  be  allowed  for  external  influence :  Vergil 
was  a  diffident  writer,  he  needed  the  encouragement  of  recog- 
nition to  spur  him  on.  Pollio  had  to  press  him  for  more 
"Bucolics;"  Maecenas  had  to  press  him,  at  any  rate  for  the 
second  part  of  the  "Georgics,"  consisting  of  the  last  two 
books.  Then,  too,  Vergil  had  always  a  predilection  for  the 
poetry  of  real  life  :  he  was  surfeited  with  the  adaptations  of 
Alexandrine  legends  which  had  been  common  ever  since 
Catullus.  His  ambition  as  an  epic  poet  had  been  to  write  of 
Caesar's  wars,  like  all  his  contemporaries  ;  he  thought  that  what 
fired  beyond  all  else  the  imagination  of  practical  men  ought 
to  fire  the  imagination  of  literary  men  too,  and  that  if  it  did 
not  it  was  the  literary  men's  fault.  He  frankly  said  that  the 
task  was,  for  the  time  at  any  rate,  beyond  his  strength  ;  and  so 
he  accepted  another  task  which  lay  within  it.  And  the  task 
was  not  exactly  superfluous.  The  Romans  had  excellent 
practical  manuals  of  agriculture  by  Cato  and  Varro  ;  but  the 
former,  at  any  rate,  was  too  purely  national  to  be  on  the  level 
of  an  age  when  many  new  plants  of  all  kinds  had  been  natu- 
ralized in  Italy,  and  neither  had  addressed  the  literary  class. 
There  really  seems  to  have  been  a  stage  at  which  the  natural 
course  for  a  literary  man  who  had  mastered  a  practical  or 
scientific  subject  sufficiently  to  wish  to  introduce  it  to  his 


270 


LA  TIN-  LITER  A  TURE. 


peers  was  to  write  a  poem  upon  it.  A  literary  introduction 
to  any  art  or  science,  addressed  to  the  general  public  and 
written  in  prose,  implies  a  far  greater  continuity  between  the 
public  and  the  literary  class  and  specialists  than  existed  then. 

No  doubt,  to  a  modern  reader  the  "  Georgics  "  have  one 
of  the  worst  f^iults  that  any  introduction  to  a  subject  can 
have  —  they  are  not  clear ;  but  they  were  probably  clear 
enough  at  the  time.  The  description  of  the  plough  has  puz- 
zled many  tyros;  but  any  one  who  had  seen  an  Italian  plough 
could  learn  from  the  description  how  to  make  one.  And  this 
applies  to  the  whole  poem  ;  readers  who  had  the  whole  rural 
economy  of  Italy  under  their  eyes  found  it  interpreted  suffi- 
ciently to  carry  them  some  way  in  practice.  Indeed,  we  a 
little  exaggerate  the  obscurity  of  the  "Georgics"  because 
we  have  lately  recognized  it :  an  attentive  reader  is  never 
sure  of  understanding  Vergil,  a  cursory  reader  is  hardly  ever 
arrested.  He  feels  even  less  need  than  Vergil  felt  to  decide 
between  the  alternative  suggestions  which  were  often  present 
to  his  imagination  ;  he  is  satisfied  with  a  vague  apprehen- 
sion of  what  is  presented  with  a  mixture  of  subtlety  and  in- 
decision, which  is  sometimes  carried  so  far  as  to  imperil  the 
supremacy  of  grammar :  as  where  we  are  told  that  things 
neglected  go  back  '  "  not  otherwise  than  he  who  forces  a  skiff 
against  the  stream  by  oars,  if  perchance  he  lets  his  arms 
slacken  and  the  channel  bears  him  down  headlong  to  the 
rapids."  Here  the  incompleteness  is  partly  due  to  the  artis- 
tic tact  with  which  Vergil  shrinks  from  polishing  too  far.  He 
values  the  remains  of  primitive  simplicity  which  he  has  been 
able  to  gather  from  Hesiod  and  Lucretius,  and  from  old  rustic 
saws,  even  when  he  has  not  been  able  to  keep  them  intact. 
There  are  four  things  that  the  wise  vine-dresser  does  early; 
he  ought  to  be  the  last  to  gather  his  crop.  The  precepts  are 
given  with  a  show  of  archaic  simplicity,  but  the  requirements 
of  metre  have  sophisticated  all  but  the  first  and  the  last. 
Still,  they  have  the  effect  of  rocks  cropping  up  in  a  park. 

It  is  probably  for  the  sake  of  archaism  that  Vergil  gave  the 
wonderful  receipt  for  obtaining  a  swarm  of  bees  by  stifling  a 

*  "Georg."  i.  200  sqq. 


VERGIL. 


271 


bullock  and  shutting  it  up  in  a  shed  with  four  apertures,  filled 
with  scented  herbs.    For  a  panegyric  on  Egypt  and  the  admni- 
istration  of  Gallus  could  easily  have  been  provided  with  a  bet- 
ter introduction  ;  and  from  a  mere  literary  point  of  view  Ver- 
cril's  reputation  has  probably  gained  by  the  substitution  of  the 
exquisite  idyl  on  Aristoeus  and  Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  which 
he  is  said  to  have  substituted  after  the  disgrace  and  death  of 
Gallus.    It  might,  no  doubt,  be  guessed  that  one  half  the  idyl, 
which  deals  \Wth  Aristx'us  and  Cyrene,  was  part  of  the  origi- 
nal design,  as  yellow-haired  Lycorias,  who  has  just  become  a 
mother,  might  very  well  be  an  allusion  to  "  Lycoris  "  or  Cyth- 
eris  or  Volumnin,  of  whom  Gallus  was  not  yet  wholly  weary. 
As  it  stands  it  is  more  in  accordance  with  the  regular  double 
structure  of  an  Alexandrian  idyl,  which   in  the  present  in- 
stance may  be  thought  to  have  the  disadvantage  that  the  story 
of  Orpheus  is  told  at  greater  length  and  with  more  sympathy 
than  Cvrene  would  have  told  it  with,  although  she  would  have 
wished  to  melt  her  son  with  pity  that  he  might  humble  him- 
self more  easily. 

The  "Georgics"  are,  beyond  contradiction, Vergil's  most 
perfect  work :  '\\\  England  and  Germany  there  has  lately  been 
a  feeling  that  they  are  also  his  greatest— that  the  "^neid" 
is  more^or  less  of  a  splendid  failure,  and,  in  fact,  may  be  con- 
sidered an  elaborate  mistake,  into  which  court  influence  se- 
duced Vergil  against  the  promptings  of  his  better  genius.  It  is 
known  that  he  wished,  on  his  death-bed,  to  have  the  "^neid" 
destroyed,  and   that   he   wrote   to   Augustus   that   he   almost 
thought  he  must  have  been  mad  to  begin  such  a  work,  es- 
pecially as  he  was  spending  pains  upon  it  that  might  have 
been  better  employed.     But  this  means  that  he  thought  he 
ought  to  have  been  studying  philosophy.     He  was  not  alone 
in  the  feeling  that  a  person  past  middle  life  ought  \ofairc  son 
dme,  as  the  French  say,  which  has  its  natural  explanation  in 
the  fact  that,  as  soon  as  activity  begins  to  be  impaired,  there 
is  need  to  dwell  more  than  before  upon  large  beliefs  that  tran- 
scend personal  cravings,  if  the  character  has  to  be  saved  from 
the  fretting  of  irritable  impotent  desire.     The  "^neid"  is 
undoubtedly  unfinished :  there  are  half-lines  and  lines  which 


272 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


VERGIL. 


273 


are  filled  up  in  some  MSS.  and  not  in  others,  where  it  is  un- 
certain whether  a  copyist  supplied  a  makeshift,  or  wheiher 
Vergil's   original  editors  took   the   responsibility  of  omitting 
what  Vergil  had  marked  as   provisional.     There   are   otheT 
makeshifts  which  we  can  scarcely  believe  would  have  survived 
a  final  revision,  as  where  Latinus  swears  by  his  sceptre,  "for 
he  had  it  in  his  hand  at  the  time,"  and  assonances  and  am- 
biguities  which   a  final    revision    might   have    removed   too, 
though  the  latter  are  an  exaggeration  of  the  indecision  which 
we  trace  in  Vergil  from  the  first.     For  instance,  when  Lausus 
IS  dead  he  is  praised  as  worthy  to  have  been  happier  in  pa- 
ternal rule  and  to  have  had  another  father  than  Mezentius: 
the  praise  is  almost  a  tautology,  because  Vergil  did  not  de- 
cide in  the  first  half  of  the  phrase  whether  he   thought  of 
Lausus  as  under  his  father's  rule,  or  ruling  in  the  right^'of  his 
father. 

But  it  is  certainly  possible  that  Vergil  was  dissatisfied  with 
the  "  ^:neid  "  because  he  had  tired  of  his  task,  not  because  he 
left  it  incomplete  ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  did  not 
lie  so  completely  within  his  powers  as  the  ''Georgics."     To 
adorn  and  to  versify  the  precepts  of  an  art  whose  spiritual 
aspects  interested  him   was  what  he  could  do  perfectly;  to 
make  the  heroic  past  live  again  is  really  a  hopeless  undertak- 
ing, which  will  always  tempt  poets  who  are  born  too  late.    The 
Italian  poets  who  make  a  kind  of  gracious  burlesque  of  chiv- 
alry have  come  nearest,  perhaps,  to  success.     Ariosto  has  not 
yet  become  a  butt  for  the  criticism  which  has  overtaken  Ver- 
gil, and  will  most  likely  overtake  Scott  before  long.    But  for  the 
Civil  War  we  should  have  had  more  poems  like  "  Comus  "  and 
the  "Ode  for  the  Nativity,"  and  critics  to  tell  us  that  Milton's 
real  greatness  lay  there,  and  that  "Paradise  Lost"  was  to  be 
pardoned  as  the  aberration  of  a  noble  ambition.     No  poet 
can  be  sure  of  surroundings  that  suit  him  entirely  :  he  needs 
to  see  something  like  what  he  desires  to  sing,  and  yet  his  per- 
sonal fitness  to  sing  one  thing  rather  than  another  is  not  de- 
termined by  what  he  sees.      The  inspiration  of  Vergil  and 
Milton  was  strong  enough  to  carry  them  through  immortal 
works ;  but  these  have  less  freshness  and  soliditv  than  works 


I 


m 


\m 


\ . 


n 


taken  direct  from  life,  like  those  of  Shakespeare  or  Homer  or 
Goethe,  or  even  Burns  or  Jonson.  Of  course,  even  Vergil  and 
Milton  bear  the  impress  of  their  time;  the  debates  of  Hell 
and  the  idvls  of  Eden  reflect  the  grave  pleasure  of  refined 
Puritanism'and  the  passions  of  the  Long  Parliament :  the  con- 
test between  Drances  and  Turnus  reflects  what  Vergil  half  in- 
clined to  think  of  the  contest  between  Cicero  and  Antonius  ; 
the  seductions  of  Dido  are  painted  more  harshly  because  the 
poet  cannot  forget  the  seductions  of  Cleopatra,  who  had  been 
the  hostess  and  the  paramour  of  Julius  before  she  became  the 
successful  temptress  of  Antonius,  and  the  adversary  and  the 
unsuccessful  temptress  of  Octavian  ;  even  the  rising  buildings 
of  Carthage  are  watched  by  yEneas  with  the  eyes  with  which 
Vergil  had  watched  the  rising  buildings  of  the  new  Rome  of 
Augustus  ;  and  the  voyages  of  ^neas,  especially  the  voyage 
which  he  relates  to  Dido,  remind  us  of  the  sentimental  tours 
of  educated  Romans  in  famous  seas. 

Both  the  "  yKneid  "  and  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  however,  owe 
more  to  the  reading  of  their  authors  than  to  their  experience. 
Milton  uses  his  reading  in  a  way  which  we  spontaneously  ad- 
mire :  he  recalls  much  without  exactly  imitating  anything. 
Vergil  insists  upon  repeating  as  many  of  the  effects  of  Greek 
poetry  as  possible,  and  is  anxious  to  have  them  recognized; 
and  our  first  thought  is  that  he  reproduces  because  he  cannot 
produce.  A  reference  to  other  arts  might  abate  this  preju- 
dice :  a  grand  opera  must  have  a  ballet  in  a  set  place,  and 
the  hero  or  heroine  must  cHtTin  a  duet;  and  the  hero  must  be 
a  tenor  and  the  villain  must  be  a  bass.  Raphael  took  figures 
with  little  change  from  Masaccio,  and  Poussin  was  never  tired 
of  adapting  figures  from  the  antique  for  use  in  his  own  com- 
positions. Vergil  himself  judiciously  observed  to  critics  who 
thought  him  a  plagiary  that  it  was  easier  to  steal  his  club  from 
Hercules  than  to  convey  a  verse  from  Homer. 

A  more  penetrating  criticism  is,  that  the  episodes  may  be 
said  to  overpower  the  poem.  When  one  thinks  of  the  "^neid," 
one  thinks  of  the  capture  of  Troy  or  the  loves  of  Dido  and 
^neas,  or  the  descent  of  ^neas  to  the  underworld,  or,  per- 
haps, of  Nisus  and  Euryalus  or  the  fate  of  Pallas;  when  one 

L— 12* 


TTi 


274 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


^ 


VERGIL. 


275 


thinks  of  the  "  Iliad,"  one  thinks  of  the  persons  and  the  sub- 
ject; when  one  thinks  of  the  "Odyssey,"  one  thinks  of  the  story. 
It  is  impossible  to  infer  anything  from  the  Hict  that  the  most  brill- 
iant episodes  are  to  be  found  in  the  earlier  half  of  the  poem  ; 
for  we  are  fortunate  in  knowing  something  of  Vergil's  method 
of  work  :  he  drew  up  a  framework  of  the  whole  poem,  and  then 
wrote  at  any  part  of  it  which  attracted  him  at  the  time ;  it  was 
his  habit  to  write  two  or  three  hundred  lines  in  a  morninc-, 
and  to  pass  the  remainder  of  the  day  in  reducing  them  to 
twenty  or  thirty.  It  is  not  conceivable  that  the  whole  of  the 
last  six  books  were  written  after  the  pathetic  episode  of  the 
young  Marcellus  was  recited  to  Augustus  and  Octavia  in  20 
B.C.,  only  two  years  before  Vergil's  own  death,  or  even  after 
22  B.C.,  when  Marcellus  himself  died. 

The  truth  is  that  Vergil  succeeds  whenever  the  subject  lends 
itself  to  romance  or  mysticism  :  he  fiiils,  at  least  he  fails  to  in- 
terest, when  it  is  a  question  of  throwing  himself  into  the  home- 
ly every-day  life  of  primitive  times.  His  skill  and  knowledge 
are  admirable  even  here:  the  court  and  empire  of  Priam  arc 
invested  with  all  the  splendor  of  the  East;  the  court  of  Dido 
is  equally  splendid,  but  without  the  majesty  of  age.  When  the 
poet  comes  to  Italy,  we  are  never  allowed  to  forget  that  we 
are  on  virgin  soil.  p:verything  belongs  to  a  world  that  is 
young  and  small— the  woods  that  hang  over  the  Tiber,  the 
thickets  that  surround  the  lair  of  Cacus  on  the  Aventine, 
the  arms  of  the  tribes  that  muster  to  the  war,  the  numbers  of 
the  contingents,  the  horsemen  who  fight  with  one  another,  in- 
stead of  the  heroes  who  rush  through  whole  armies  in  their 
chariots,  though  Turnus,  who  in  all  respects  is  almost  an  Ho- 
meric figure,  in  this  also  makes  some  approach  to  the  achieve- 
ments of  Achilles.  Again,  the  first  chance  medley  fighting 
over  the  slain  hart  is  curiously  lifelike :  even  the  Fury  stand- 
ing on  the  thatch  and  blowing  the  alarm-horn  is  real  com- 
pared with  the  far  more  brilliant  and  ingenious  description  of 
Fame  in  the  fourth  book.  In  dealing  with  the  direct  super- 
natural, Vergil  is  at  a  disadvantage  compared  with  the  old 
epic,  which  was  written  in  the  ages  of  iaith  :  he  is  continually 
compelled  to  force  the  note  ;  the  bleeding  myrtles,  the  harpies. 


\ 


the  convulsions  of  the  sibyl,  her  gasping  shrieks  of  prophecy, 
the  serpent  from  Alecto's  head  which  enters  into    iurnuss 
heart  the  spirit  which  baffles  him  in  his  last  battle,  are  all  too 
depeiKlent  upon  physical  horror.      The  grand  vision  of  the 
cods  arraved  against  Troy  is  the  only  thing  we  have  to  set 
a-ainst  such  picHires  as  Athene  holding  her  aegis  over  Achil- 
i  "s  at  the  trench  and  swelling  his  shout  with  hers  ;  and  even 
here  the  elder  poet  has  the  advantage  of  his  effortless  simplic- 
ity     In  general,  the  gods  of  the  "  yEneid  "  expose  their  dig- 
nity much  less  and  maintain  it  much  worse  than  the  gods  of 
the  ''Iliad."     Neptune's  first  appearance  to  still  the  storm  is 
majestic,  but  before  we  have  done  with  him  he  begins  to  scold 
the  winds,  and  stops  himself  to  remember  that  he  had  better 
calm  the  waves.    The  unscrupulous  persistent  hate  of  Juno  is 
almost  nodlike  tried  by  the  standard  of  Homeric  deity;  but  the 
tedious  majesty  with  which  Jupiter  bears  with  her  reduces  her 
at  once  to  a  shrewish,  meddlesome  wife.     The  apparition  of 
Venus  in  the  first  book,  and  the  way  that  she  vanishes  when 
fully  revealed,  are  happily  devised  ;  but  she  is  much  too  skil- 
ful a  rhetorician  :  when  she  speaks,  she  looks  as  if  she  had 
landed  from  a  viachina  of  Euripides. 

Another  point  of  contact  between  the  "  ^:neid  "  and  "  Par- 
adise Lost  "  is,  that  the  poets  have  succeeded  in  one  thing  too 
well  for  their  own  reputation  :  they  have  fastened  the  main 
framework  of  their  poems  in  the  public  mind  as  securely  as 
if  it  had  been  an  original  part  of  the  tradition  ;  and  this  tells 
more  to  the  disadvantage  of  Vergil,  because  the  tradition  upon 
which  he  built  is  no  longer  regarded  with  religious  respect. 
If  it  were  realized  how  completely  the  story  of  the  "^Mieid" 
is  the  creation  of  Vergil,  his  invention  would  be  more  praised 
than  it  is  :  it  would  still  be  less  praised  than  it  deserves.    The 
wanderings  of  Ulysses  interest  more  than  the  wanderings  of 
^Eneas,  and  yet  the  latter  are  much  more  skilfully  contrived 
both  for  pathos  and  dignity.     Ulysses  goes  from  one  place  to 
another  just  as  it  happens,  or  rather  in  order  that  he  may  ex- 
haust all  the  possibilities  of  adventure  with  which  the  Greeks 
were  acquainted  when  the  poem  was  written  ;  u^Eneas  is  al- 
ways on  his  way  to  the  land  appointed  for  him.     He  lands  in 


276 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Thrace  like  Ulysses,  but  not  for  aimless  plunder;  he  thinks 
to  build  a  city— he  is  really  brought  thither  to  propitiate  the 
manes  of  rolydorus  ;  in   Crete  he  tries   once  more  to  build 
for  himself,     'thenceforward  he  is  tried,  not  by  failures  of  his 
own,  but  by  the  successes  of  others ;  he  regards  the  infant  set- 
tlement of  Helenus  with  affectionate  envy,  but  the  settlement 
of  Dido  in  Africa  is  a  temptation  to  himself,  the  settlement  of 
Acestes  in  Sicily  is  a  temptation  to  his  followers.     The  meet- 
ing of  yEneas  with  Helenus  and  Andromache  is  much  more 
moving  than  the  meeting  of  Telemachus  with  Menelaus  and 
Helen.     Dido  outshines  Circe  and  Calypso,  for  Vergil  is  the 
first  great  poet  who  lived  in  a  society  where  the  pas*^ions  of 
great  ladies  could  be  studied  from  life  :  her  fall  (for  it  must 
always  be  remembered  that  her  second  marriage,  even  if  it 
had  been  regular,  is  consistently  represented  as  a  tall)  is  the 
fall  of  a    Roman   matron  j   her   commanding  charm    is    the 
charm  of  an  Egyptian  queen,  of  a  Cleopatra  without  caprices. 
But,  shifty  and  ruthless  as  he  is,  Ulysses  is  a  hero  :  yEneas 
is  a  saint;  and  almost  all  saints  are  insipid  except  to  their 
worshippers  ;  and  it  is  a  disadvantage  that  the  hierophant  is 
only  half  a  believer.     What  attracts  Vergil  in  ^neas  is  be- 
fore all  things  his  piety,  just  as  Homer  is  attracted  before  all 
things  by  the  courage  of  Achilles.     And  each  poet  is  attract- 
ed by  what  he  feels  to  be  most  difficult :  courage  is  precious 
\vhen  men  are  in  bondage  to  the  fear  of  death  ;  piety  is  pre- 
cious when  the  gods  seem  to  overthrow  cities  in  their  inno- 
cence.    In  Vergil  courage  is  comparatively  a  cheap  virtue: 
the  brave  Gyas  and  the  brave  Cloanlhus  are  intended  as  sam- 
ples of  the  pervading  heroism  of  the  chosen  remnant  of  Trov. 
It  is  not  the  choicest  prerogative  of  their  chief  to  be  the  brav- 
est of  the  brave  or  the  wisest  of  the  wise,  though  lie  is  not 
overshadowed  by  any  of  his  followers,  as  Agamemnon  is  over- 
shadowed by  Achilles  and  Ulysses.      Bur  the  true  glory  of 
^neas  is  meant  to  be  that  he,  above  all  other  men,  knows  and 
keeps  the  will  of  Heaven.     The  condemnation  of  Dido  and 
Turnus  and  Amata  is  that  they  are  fighting  against  destiny. 
Dido  rebels  with  her  eyes  open  ;  she  \aunts  iineas  with  his 
fame  for  piety,  she  sneers  at  the  pretence  that  the  Epicurean 


VERGIL. 


277 


\ 


calm  of  heaven  can  be  broken  to  make  ^neas  break  his  faith. 
The  Italians  resist,  but  they  do  not  blaspheme  ;  their  offence 
is  the  blind  refusal,  selfish  yet  not  ungenerous,  of  prejudice  and 
passion  to  look  bevond  the  obvious  standard  of  worldly  hon- 
esty which  tells  in  their  favor;  they  are  headstrong,  and  that 
was  sufticient  to  put  them  beyond  the  pale  of  the  sympathy 
of  a  Roman  poet  and  a  Roman  public.     But  the  peculiarity 
of  the  position  is,  that  while  Vergil  condemned  them,  while  he 
exults  in  the  future  of  Rome,  to  which  they  are  sacrificed,  he 
never  says  or  feels  that  the  power  that  will  have  it  so  is  holy 
or  just  or  good  ;'  he  feels  exactly  as  we  feel  about  people  who 
disobey  what  are  called  the  laws  of  nature,  and  he  expects  us 
to  feelto  /Eneas  almost  as  we  feel  to  a  man  who  obeys  the 
law  of  God.     And,  besides  this  half-heartedness,  there  is  a 
special  difficulty  in  the  case  of  Dido ;  her  side  of  the  story  is 
treated  in  a  thoroughly  modern  way,  /Eneas's  side  is  treated  in 
an  archaic  way  ;  and  we  find  ourselves  complaining  of  his  lack 
of  chivalry  in  a  way  in  which  we  do  not  complain  of  the  reck- 
lessness of  Ulysses  in  the  "  Odyssey,"  or  the  cynicism  of  Ja- 
son in  the  "Medea;"  that  is,  we  expect  of  him  the  tone  of 
conduct   and   feeling  which    has   been    gradually   cultivated, 
principally  by  the  help  of  Provencal  poets,  to  meet  the  class 
of  situation  whose  possibilities  Vergil  was  the  first  to  begin  to 
discern. 

The  catastrophe  happily  is  not  elaborated  :  we  are  spared 
the  scene  in  which  Lavinia  had  to  reconcile  herself  to  a  hus- 
band who  had  slain  her  betrothed  and  brought  her  mother  to 
suicide;  we  hardly  learn  the  "laws  of  unequal  peace"  to 
which  /Eneas  has  to  bow  according  to  the  prophecy  of  Dido. 
The  story  ends  even  more  abruptly  with  the  death  of  Turnus 
than  the  "  Iliad  "  ends  with  the  death  of  Hector. 

To  resume,  all  the  shortcomings  of  the  ".^neid"  resolve 
themselves  into  one  :  it  is  the  work  of  a  divided  genius.  The 
interest  in  primitive  faith  and  simplicity,  and  the  interest  in 
the  serene  elevation  of  civilized  virtue  and  the  subtle  ques- 

'  The  nearest  approach  to  a  suggestion  of  this  is  in  the  character  of 
Mezentius,  who  is  a  tyrant  of  the  blackest  kind  because  he  fears  not  God 
and  therefore  regards  not  man. 


278 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


tioning  and  patient  sadness  of  civilized  intellect,  sustain  and 
balance  one  another  in  the  "  Georgics :"  in  the  "^Jneid"  the 
attempt  to  embody  both  objectively  in  the  same  series  of  pict- 
ures  confuses  the  interest   as   often   as  it  heightens  it;   the 
rather  that  in  the '' Georgics  "  Vergil  glorified  the  primitive 
life  which  he  saw  around  him,  and  whose  limits  he  so  under- 
stood, while  in  the  "/Eneid"  he  looked  back  to  a  distant  past 
through  the  distorting  media  of  antiquarianism  and  mytholo- 
gy.    Thus,  the  episodes  in  the  battles  are  excellent,  but  the 
battles  themselves  are  often  tame ;  because  special  incidents 
in  warflxre  can  be  invented  or  adapted,  but  the  general  condi- 
tions of  warfare  have  to  be  known.    Again,  in  describing  excit- 
ing things  which  are  seen  seldom,  it  is  a  help  to  refer  to  more 
familiar  experiences,  and  so  the  "Iliad"  is  full  of  similes; 
and  as  this  proves  that  similes  are  the  appropriate  ornament 
of  an  epic,  the  "yEneid"  is  full  of  similes  too  — of  similes 
conveyed   with   exquisite   taste    and  judgment,  and  wonder- 
fully little  loss  of  truth  and  power,  and  occasionally  with  some 
gain  in  suavity;  there  are  even  new  similes  from  housewives 
at  their  wheels,  and  bulls  fighting  for  the  mastery  of  the  herd 
in  the  forest  pastures,  the  one  picturesque  feature  in  rustic 
life  in  which  Italy  stood  above  Greece.    But,  after  all,  the  sim- 
iles in  the  ".^uieid"  are  there  not  to  help  out  the  description, 
but   to   ornament  it;  the   purpose   which   they  serve  in   the 
"Iliad"  is  served  in  the  ".>I^:neid  "  by  a  whole  machinery  of 
abstraction  and  emphasis  which  the  poet  finds  ready  to  his 
hand. 

But  the  framework  of  the  poem  is  of  its  essence :  it  is  ex- 
actly preposterous  to  demand  that  Vergil  should  have  written 
a  series  of  heroic  idyls  instead.  Heroic  idvls  presuppose 
that  an  heroic  legend  is  already  fixed  and  elaborated  either 
by  the  activity  of  living  popular  tradition  or  by  a  poet  or 
school  of  poets  whose  invention  is  still  spontaneous  and  half 
conscious ;  but  it  was  Vergil  himself  who  fixed  the  tradition 
of  the  journeys  and  wars  of /Eneas.  Besides,  heroic  idyls  are 
almost  a  contradiction  :  they  either  tend  to  come  together 
again  into  an  epic,  or  to  degenerate  into  mere  romantic  pret- 
tiness.     Even   a   purely   romantic   figure   like   Camilla  gains 


VERGIL. 


279 


much  in  seriousness  and  dignity  xyhen  the  whole  story  of  the 
national  strife  in  which  she  falls  is  told.  The  very  pictmesque 
combat  in  which  Mezentius  rides  round  ^neas,  and  hurls 
snear  after  spear  into  the  shield  that  is  always  turned  to  catch 
U.cm  is  admirably  fitted  for  an  idyl ;  but,  if  it  stood  alone, 
Mezentius  would  be  the  hero  conquered  by  the  coward  thrust 
that  slays  his  horse.  The  steadfast  endurance  of  ^neas  in  a 
real  peril  may  pass  for  heroism  when  we  know  what  he  has 
borne  and  achieved,  and  what  destinies  await  him. 

The  "^^:neid,"  if  finished,  would  still  have  been  freer  and 
bolder  than  the'"  Georgics  "  in  metre  and  other  ways.     When 
we  compare  it  with  other  great  epics,  we  are  struck  before  all 
Ihincrs  with  its  sustained  sweetness  and  dignity  ;  but  when  we 
compare  it  with  Vergil's  other  works   and  with  later  Latm 
epic  poetry,  we  are  struck  with  its  manliness  and  sonorous 
lou-hness,'   and,  besides,  by   its    simplicity  and   directness. 
Sopliocles  is  not  one  of  the  simplest  of  Greek  writers,  but 
Ajax's  blessing  to  his  son  is  plain  and  modest  beside  the  sug- 
crestive  grandiloquence  of  Vergil's  counterpart ;  but  that  is 
calm  and  simple  beside  a  comparatively  modest  specimen  of 
the  ferocious   ingenuity  of  Lucan.      Sophocles   says,  *'  Boy, 
mayst  thou  prove  more  fortunate  than  thy  father,  and  like  him 
in  the  rest,  and  thou  wilt  not  prove  amiss."      Vergil  says, 
"Learn,  bov,  virtue  of  me,  and  faithful  endeavor  ;  and  fortune 
of  other  men."     Lucan  says  (by  the  mouth  of  a  centurion), 
"  From  those  who  must  live  the  gods  hide  (how  else  could 
life  be  endured  ?)  that  it  is  happy  to  die."     The  phrase  is  as 
contorted  as  the  thought. 

»  Much  of  this  is  due  to  a  diligent  study  of  Ennius,  many  of  whose  lines 
arc  embahned  in  the  "/Eneid;"  something,  perhaps,  to  a  study  of  a  con- 
temporary, Varius  ;  and  much,  of  course,  to  Vergil's  own  tact,  which  does 
not  shrink  from  abruptness  and  elision  and  a  plentiful  use  of  the  rolhng 
"r."  It  was  doubtless  a  sense  of  the  value  of  the  vigorous  hemistichs 
which  led  Veri^il  to  leave  so  many  lines,  especially  in  the  second  book, 
imperfect:  hewuld  have  filled  them  up  at  a  moment's  notice,  but  he 
waited  till  he  could  do  so  without  weakening  them.  Another  effect  of  the 
resolution  to  be  broad  and  epic  is  that  epithets  like  ^>/^-^;/^  are  rather  over- 
freq^fent,  and  there  is  less  of  the  precise  felicity  of  the  kinguage  of  the 
earlier  poems. 


28o 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


It  is  necessary  to  notice  this,  because  Vergil's  influence  told 
in  spite  of  his  later  practice  almost  wholly  in  favor  of  smooth- 
ness. Wc  shall  even  fnid  that  during  the  Claudian  period  he 
was  criticised  as  he  taught  posterity  to  criticise  Ennius  ;  and 
that  Lucan  might  almost  be  considered  as  an  exaggerated  re- 
action in  favor  of  one  side  of  Vergil's  method — the  side  which 
had  been  abandoned  by  Ovid  and  all  who  came  after  him, 
and  was  never  fairly  revived  by  any  of  the  later  masters  of 
epic  poetry.  For  Silius  Italicus,  who  possessed  the  requisite 
simplicity,  lacked  the  requisite  energy  ;  and  Claudian,  who, 
after  all,  comes  nearest,  was  born  much  too  late. 

The  truth  is  that  Vergil  represents  almost  the  earliest  stage 
at  which  perfect  maturity  of  metre  can  be  artistically  attained. 
For  instance,  we  think  that  our  Elizabethan  literature  is  primi- 
tive ;  but  Vergil  is  incomparably  simpler  and  more  direct 
than  "Lear"  or  "Catiline*'  or  Shakespeare's  "Sonnets,"  to 
say  nothing  of  "  Paradise  Lost."  Words  are  used  in  their 
natural  sense  ;  or,  if  the  poet's  insight  or  caprice  charges  them 
with  a  new  weight  of  meaning,  what  he  proceeds  upon  is  still 
the  natural  ordinary  sense:  he  does  not  take  words  in  their 
conventional  sense  and  then  develop  and  exaggerate  this. 
The  order  of  the  words  is  natural ;  the  only  transpositions  we 
find  are  easily  suggested  by  the  metre  and  emphasis  :  there 
are  no  inversions  introduced  simply  for  effect,  and  out  of  im- 
patience with  what  is  ordinary.  The  reason  that  we  attend 
so  much  more  to  Vergil's  influence  than  to  his  personal  ten- 
dency is  that  Latin  literature  in  its  later  stages  never  suc- 
ceeded in  simplifying  itself  with  the  brilliant  success  with 
which  English  literature  simplified  itself  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne,^  and  again  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  for  the 
movement  in  that  direction  inaugurated  by  Hadrian  and 
Fronto  was,  upon  the  whole,  a  failure.  Such  as  it  was,  the 
movement  went  back  to  the  Latin  before  Vergil,  and  never 
distinguished  him  from  the  literature  which  sprang  from  him; 

^  Compared  with  the  literature  called  Elizabethan  we  may  say  that  the 
literature  of  our  Au2;ustan  age  is  artificial  as  opposed  to  natural;  but  it  is 
simple  compared  with  the  quaintness  and  perplexity  which  marked  the 
literature  of  the  middle  quarters  of  the  seventeenth  century. 


VERGIL. 


281 


and  it  is  not  surprising  that  it  has  become  possible  to  modern 
scholars  like  Professor  Munro  to  charge  him  with  corrupting 
the  native  purity  of  Latin,  as  Milton  might  have  been  charged 
with  corrupting  the  native  purity  of  English   if  "  Paradise 
Lost"    had    ever   gained    the    position    which    the    "^neid" 
gained  at  once,  of  the  indispensable  school-book,  governing 
all  future  writers  both  of  prose  and  verse,  with  a  supremacy 
that  can  only  be  faintly  illustrated  by  the  ascendency  which 
the  consecrated  cadences  of  King  James's  Bible  have  retained 
over  all  subsequent  writers  in  English,  for  the  reverence  which 
has  made  that  ascendency  permanent  has  kept  its  influence 
in  the  main  indirect.     Although  these  circumstances  have  led 
to  an  exaggeration  of  the  charge,  it  would  be  rash  to  say  that 
it  is  altogether  unfounded.     The  poets  of  the  Ciceronian  age 
do  write  a  language  which  is  purer  and  more  idiomatic  than 
the  greater  poets  of  the  Augustan  age  ;  and,  in  fact,  it  may  be 
observed  that  all  poets  who  are  familiar  with  more  languages 
than  one  tend  generally,  in  proportion  to  their  poetical  rank, 
to   transcend    the   special   characteristics   of  their   language. 
The  two  English  poets  whom  one  naturally  would  tun:  to  as 
specimens  of  racy  idiomatic  style  are  Butler  and  Swift,  and  no 
one  would  deny  that  Delille  is  a  model  of  French  purity  and 
lucidity  of  diction,  while  Victor  Hugo  is  a  great  poet  who  has 
to  write  in  French. 

N'ote  oil  the  Metre  of  the  Culex. 

A  single  metrical  test  is  not  very  decisive,  but,  as  the  late  date  of  the 
Culex  has  been  inferred  from  the  rarity  of  elisions,  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  call  attention  to  a  peculiarity  which  points  the  other  way.  In  the 
Culex,  out  of  413  lines,  16  (36,  38,  39,  49,  58,  62,  104,  172,  175,  213,  265,  268, 
291,  348,  35 r,  3S5)  end  with  two  dissyllables.  In  all  cases  except  268 
there  is  a  monosyllable  before  the  two  dissyllables.  In  the  820  lines  of 
the  "Eclogues"  there  are  26  examples  of  this  rhythm;  in  the  514  lines 
of  the  first  Georgic,  6;  in  902  of  the  sixth  book  of  the  "  .'Eneid,"  6.  In 
413  lines  taken  at  haphazard  from  the  "  Pharsalia  "  there  arc  none  ;  in  465 
lines  taken  from  Statius's  "  Silvae,"  III.  ii.-iv.,  there  are  two.  In  the  second 
book  of  Lucretius  there  are  26  in  1152  lines — a  small  proportion,  con- 
sidering: the  cencral  irregularity  of  Lucretius.  In  Horace's  "Satires" 
the  proportion  is  high — 38  out  of  326  lines  in  the  third  satire  of  the  second 
book ;  in  his  imitator,  Persius,  there  are  fewer— 30  out  of  549.     All  this 


282 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


points  to  the  conclusion  that  the  rhythm  belongs  to  the  beginning  of  the 
Augustan  age;  on  the  other  hand,  in  Theocritus  the  proportion  is  21  in 
434  lines  ot  the  first  four  idyls.  In  the  first  four  idyls  of  Calpurnius  the 
proportion  is  20  in  460;  in  the  next  three,  18  in  298;  in  the  last  four,  6 
in  309;  but  Calpurnius,  like  Pcrsius,  is  an  imitator. 


HORACE. 


283 


CHAPTER   III. 

HORACE. 

The  most  versatile,  enterprising,  and  frank  of  the  writers 
of  the  early  part  of  the  Augustan  age  was  Quintus  Horatius 
Flaccus,  the  son  of  a  freedman  of  Venusia,  who  made  a  mod- 
est living  by  getting  in  debts.  The  father  was  proud  of  his 
son,  a  remarkable  child,  of  what  would  now  be  called  a  ro- 
mantic temper:  he  took  him  to  Rome  for  education,  and  put 
him  under  the  care  of  Orbilius,  a  noted  grammarian  of  Bene- 
ventum,  wiio  taught  him  Homer.  He  pursued  his  studies  at 
Athens,  where  he  learned  the  Stoic  theory  of  right  and  wrong 
and  the  fashionable  Academic  mixture  of  curiosity  and  scepti- 
cism. His  talents  and  good-nature  gave  him  enough  reputa- 
tion there  to  raise  him  to  the  rank  of  tribune  in  the  army  of 
Brutus  and  Cassius.  At  Philippi  he  showed  a  lack  of  heroism 
which  it  pleased  him  to  exaggerate,  partly  to  imitate  Alca^us, 
who  also  had  lost  his  shield,  and  partly  to  prove  that  when 
he  fought  on  the  wrong  side  he  fought  half-heartedly.  When 
he  returned  to  Italy  his  father  was  dead,  and  the  house  and 
land  at  Venusia  were  gone.  Horace  may  have  been  living 
on  his  capital,  or  included  in  the  proscription.  For  three 
years,  more  or  less,  he  lived  in  Italy  without  means,  and  wrote 
verses  under  the  spur  of  want,  expecting  that  his  talent  would 
be  employed  when  known.  At  last  Vergil  and  Varius  intro- 
duced him  to  Maecenas  with  a  strong  recommendation.  If 
anything  Horace  had  then  wTitten  has  reached  us,  it  must  be 
sought  among  the  least  important  epodes  and  satires ;  but  at 
the  beginning  of  a  great  literary  period  very  scanty  and  ten- 
tative performances  may  be  the  legitimate  foundation  of  a 
considerable  celebrity,  for  a  real  advance  in  form  is  easily 
perceptible  to  good  judges,  who  say  "  there  has  been  nothing 
like  this  before."     Nine  months  after  the   first  introduction 


i|: 


284 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


Maecenas  made  Horace  free  of  his  house,  and  by-and-by  gave 
him  a  farm  in  the  Sal)ine  country  near  'I'ibur.  He  accom- 
panied Maecenas  to  Brundisium,  and  perhaps  followed  Oc- 
tavian  to  Sicily,  in  the  neighborhood  of  which  he  escaped 
shipwreck  at  some  time  in  his  life.  Maecenas  went  to  Actium 
without  him :  thenceforward  they  were  in  constant  intercourse 
up  to  the  death  of  Maecenas,  whom  Horace  only  outlived  for 
a  few  months.  Some  time  before  the  ^w(\^  Horace,  like  Au- 
gustus, had  begun  to  loosen  the  ties  which  bound  him  to  a 
man  to  wiiom  they  both  owed  much.  Horace  continued  to 
write  of  Maecenas,  and  to  him,  as  if  he  loved  him,  but  he  told 
him  he  was  querulous:  he  defended  himself  against  his  ex- 
actions, he  even  offered  to  restore  his  gifts.  Augustus  pro- 
posed to  employ  the  poet  as  his  private  secretary,  in  terms  so 
disrespectful  to  MjEcenas  as  to  be  hardly  respectful  to  Hor- 
ace. The  proposal  was  declined  without  offence,  and  Augus- 
tus continued  to  complain  that  Horace  was  ashamed  to  seem 
intimate  with  him.  He  would  have  liked  to  have  been  one 
of  the  chief  speakers  in  the  "  Satires.;"  he  protested  against 
being  excluded  from  the  list  of  Horace's  correspondents;  so 
Horace  wrote  him  a  letter  to  apologize  for  intruding  on  his 
political  cares  with  literary  discussions. 

The  genius  of  Horace  was  less  impersonal  than  that  of 
Vergil,  wiio  communicates  little  of  his  individual  life,  while 
Horace  almost  j^erplexes  us  by  his  free  disclosures  of  his 
whole  self,  as  a  living  man  acting  upon  ideal  impulses,  prac- 
tical inducements,  animal  appetites,  by  turn,  and  quite  in 
earnest  all  the  time  in  his  desire  to  cultivate  his  mind  and  im- 
prove his  character.  In  an  early  poem  we  learn  that  he  had 
his  fortune  told  by  a  Sabine  witch  ;  in  the  latest,  most  likely, 
of  all,  he  asks  himself  seriously  whether  he  has  overcome  the 
fear  of  witches,  ghosts,  and  dreams.  He  makes  much  of  all 
incidents  that  will  take  a  miraculous  color.  Pigeons  covered 
him  with  leaves  to  protect  him  from  serpents  when  he  strayed 
far  from  home  in  his  childhood;  a  wolf  ran  away  from  him 
in  a  wood  ;  he  was  caught  in  a  storm  and  escaped  shipwreck  ; 
a  tree  fell  in  his  grounds  and  did  not  crush  him  as  he  passed. 
He  even  professes  that  thunder  and  lightning  in  a  clear  sky 


HORACE.  281; 

converted  him  from  Epicureanism,  which  had  plentv  of  theo- 
ries to  account  for  thunder-storms  which  included  thunder- 
clouds. It  is  even  noticeable  that  almost  all  the  poems  which 
refer  to  his  quarrel  with  an  elderly  procuress  of  the  name  of 
Gratidia,  or,  as  he  calls  her,  Canidia,  turn  upon  her  reputation 
for  sorcery.  All  this  shows  that  there  was  a  perceptible  vein 
of  mysticism  in  Horace's  temperament,  which  commonlv  ac- 
companies a  craving  for  enjoyment  in  all  but  vigorous  men  of 
action.  Wieland  began  as  a  mystic  and  a  pietist,  to  end  as 
an  Epicurean  ;  Moore's  habitual  sentimentalism  in  literature 
was  the  other  side  of  his  habitual  joviality  in  conduct  •  and 
though  the  religion  in  which  he  was  bred  was  more  favorable 
than  Horace's  to  pietism,  he  too  gave  way  to  a  turn  for 
humor  which  was  often  sceptical  and  sometimes  irreverent. 
All  three  tended  more  or  less  to  revery — perhaps  it  might  be 
said  to  aspiration — in  the  intervals  of  pleasure  ;  and  all  three, 
prizing  the  mood  of  the  moment  above  everythin"-,  were  in- 
different to  what  is  called  the  serious  business  of  life,  and  so 
ceased  to  respect  the  conventions  which  regulate  it ;  and 
when  respect  for  conventions  has  disappeared,  respect  for  re- 
ligious traditions  can  hardly  maintain  itself  except  when  it  is 
fortified  by  asceticism. 

Like  Moore,  Horace  had  a  Platonic  admiration  for  au- 
sterity; unlike  Moore,  his  taste  and  judgment  went  together 
in  favor  of  simplicity,  though  his  vanity  was  flattered  by  in- 
vitations to  share  the  luxuries  of  the  great.  But  splendor, 
except  as  the  appendage  of  rank,  had  no  attraction  for  him; 
he  honestly  thought  that  wine  and  perfumes  and  garlands 
were  best  enjoyed  in  their  simplicity,  by  a  roaring  fire  in 
winter  and  by  a  shady  brook  in  summer.  Wine  and  love  are 
old  allies  in  the  hearts  of  poets  as  well  as  in  their  songs  ;  but 
Horace  trusted  wine,  and  he  distrusted  love.  Wine  cheered 
and  excited  him,  and  enabled  him  to  follow  in  his  cups  the 
footsteps  of  the  revellers  of  old,  whose  passionate  svmpathy 
with  nature  carried  them  through  wilder  solitudes  than  those 
to  which  the  Muse  drew  him  in  the  calm  of  day.  Love  was 
a  trouble  to  him;  he  uses  the  metaphor  of  fire  about  it  much 
more  frequently  and  exclusively  than  the  other  poets  of  the 


286 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


HORACE. 


day ;  it  meant  little  or  nothing  to  him  but  the  fever  of  desire 
at   liie  sight  of  beauty  ;  in  his  youth  the  desire  was  strong 
enough  to  determine  pursuit  by  the  help  of  vanity.     He  com- 
plained  like  other  poets  of  the  time,  though  with  as  little 
reason  as  any,  that  the  reigning  beauties  preferred  wealth  to 
wit ;  but  there  is  no  trace  that  he  was  capable  of  the  sus- 
tained passion  of  Catullus  or   Propertius,  or  of  the   tender 
sentiment  of  Tibullus,  or  even  the  restless  curiosity  of  Ovid, 
which  kept  him  long  in  a  labyrinth  of  the  kind  of  love-affairs 
best  called  intrigues.      In  his  maturity  he  no  longer  cared  to 
pursue:  whether  the  desire  was  gratified  or  not,  he   learned 
early  that  the  fever  would  pass.     He  came  to  think  love  was  a 
game  that  it  was  pretty  to  watch  and  ill  to  play,  at  least  with 
players  who  were  young  and  keen,  and  had  still  to  be  taught 
to  lose  with  patience.      A  lover   has  necessarily  plans  and 
hopes,  and  it  was  Horace's  ambition  to  live  without  plans: 
his  indifference  to  wealth  was  the  one  feature  of  his  character 
which  he  thoroughly  approved.     Unfortunately,  it  is  difficult 
for  an  impressionable,  imaginative  nature,  constantly  cravhig 
for  joy,  to  escape  the  tyranny  of  caprice  except  by  submission 
to  a  routine  of  duty,  or  by  resolute  effort  to  reach  a  high  and 
distant  goal ;  accordingly  Horace  reproached  himself  severely 
for  his  fitful  temper  and  his  restless  wish  for  change.     Ca- 
prices are  often  thwarted,  and  he  reproached  himself  for  irri- 
tability too.      He  was  never  vindictive,  and  at  one  time,  before 
his   position   was    assured,  while    it   was    still    important    to 
him  to  make  friends  and  to  be  conciliatory,  he  had  serious 
hopes  of  subduing  his  temper  to   a  constant  state  of  easy 

good-nature. 

Horace  was  twenty-three  years  old  when  the  battle  of 
Philippi  was  fought ;  he  was  twenty-six  before  he  was  admit- 
ted to  the  intimacy  of  Maecenas.  During  those  three  years  he 
had  everything  in  his  own  circumstances  and  in  public  affairs 
to  make  him  anxious  and  uncomfortable;  he  had  nothing  to 
cheer  him  but  his  talents  and  his  youth.  Even  if  he  inherited 
no  foundation  of  homely  virtue  and  good-sense  from  the  father, 
whose  bourgeois  precepts  of  prudence  and  probity  he  always 
loved  to  recall,  the  experience  of  those  three  years  was  certain 


287 


to  brace  and  harden  a  nature  which  they  did  not  sour.  One 
result  of  this  was  that  Horace  completely  escaped  the  error 
of  poets  like  Byron  and  Keats,  who  always  seem  to  be  more 
or  less  mistaking  their  talent  for  their  character.  Horace  is 
a  poet  for  men  of  the  world  and  for  men  :  he  thought  habitu- 
ally of  practical  things — of  his  circumstances,  his  neighbors, 
his  character,  his  behavior;  he  thought  intermittently  of  ideal 
interests ;  he  recognized  the  conditions  forced  upon  him  by 
the  hardness  of  his  early  experience,  perhaps  too  by  the  soft- 
ness and  openness  of  a  temperament  incapable  of  concentrat- 
ing itself  on  any  task  except  in  solitary  ease,  and  hardly  capa- 
ble of  living  long  with  any  task  alone.  He  tells  us  that  he 
found  it  impossible  to  go  home  and  write  after  going  through 
the  routine  engagements  of  a  man  about  town  :  it  was  of  the 
observations  of  a  man  about  town  that  he  first  began  to  write." 
We  have  no  data  for  determining  how  early  some  of  the 
slighter  odes  may  have  been  written,  but  we  know  on  Hor- 
ace's own  authority  that  he  had  a  reputation  as  a  satirist  at  a 
time  when  Varius  was  the  leading  heroic  and  Pollio  the  Lead- 
ing tragic  poet,  and  Vergil  was  chiefly  known  by  the  soft  grace 
of  his  bucolic  jests  and  the  tenderness  of  the  "  Georgics,"  then 
probably  incomplete. 

Whether  Horace  is  right  or  wrong  in  his  theory  that  Lucil- 
ius  founded  his  art  upon  the  old  Attic  comedy,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  his  own  "  Satires  "  are  founded  upon  Lucilius. 
The  two  main  interests  of  Lucilius  are  both  represented:  we 
still  find  personal  and  social  criticism  combined  with  literary 
criticism,  but  neither  reappears  without  change.  Horace  dep- 
recates publicity:  he  only  writes  for  his  friends  ;  he  never  re- 
cites; his  works  are  not  for  sale  :  it  is  almost  an  absurdity  to 
take  so  much  trouble  when  there  is  no  reputation  to  be  had 
by  it.  No  doubt  Horace  was  shy  by  temperament ;  he  shrank 
from  a  world  which  he  never  much  admired,  and  was  not  yet 
in  a  position  to  treat  with  open  disdain  :  but  he  traded  upon 
this  side  of  his  character  as  he  traded  upon  his  humble  birth — 
partly  to  disarm  envy,  to  which  he  was  always  extremely  sen- 
sitive (the  thought  that  people  with  no  power  to  hurt  him 
were  speaking  unkindly  of  him  behind  his  back  was  always 


288 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


enough  to  vex  him),  partly  too  from  a  coquetry  as  natural  to 
delicate  talent  as  to  delicate  beauty.     This  reserve,  whatever 
its  cause,  makes  Horace  very  unlike  his  predecessor,  who  said 
his  say  openly,  and  had  not  the  least  reluctance  to  be  known. 
As  Horace's  detractors  seem  to  have  said,  Lucilius  was  by 
comparison  a  man  of  station,  who  might  take  liberties  with 
less  oftence  ;  but  Lucilius  offended  citizens  almost  as  power- 
ful as  his  patrons,  which  Horace  never  did.     Again,  Lucilius 
is  censorious,  Horace  is  conciliating  :  Lucilius  had  no  purpose 
but  to  vent  his  spleen  and  show  up  rogues,  and  give  honest 
men  their  due:  he  has  no  style;   the  mere  copious  outpour- 
ing of  vigorous  and  sometimes  witty  speech  was  enough  for 
his  age.     Horace  has  a  purpose  and  a  standard  :  he  wishes 
to  give  advice  and  to  get  it  taken  :  his  personalities  are  all  in- 
cidental illustrations  of  some   thesis  in  the  major  or  minor 
morals  :   he  is  anxious  to  show  the  reader  his  faults  without 
making  him  wince,  to  get  him  to  join  his  monitor  in  a  good- 
humored  laugh  at  his  own  expense.    Then,  too,  he  is  not  only 
an  adviser,  but  an  artist :  satire,  he  s^ispects,  is  a  poor  thing  at 
best,  it  is  so  difficult  to  fuul  what  a  satirist  can  be  expected 
to  say  which  any  sensible  well-bred  man  might  not  say  too 
without  the  least  pretensions   to   be   a  poet.     Of  course  he 
would  say  it  in  prose,  but  then  verse  by  itself  does  not  con- 
stitute  poetry.    All  this  is  a  reason  why  a  satirist  who  respects 
himself  should    take  pains  with    his   satires,  which    have   no 
chance   of  being  valuable  unless  they  are   perfect   in   their 
kind.     To  begin  with,  the  redundancy  of  Lucilius  must  be  re- 
trenched ;  a  s^atirist  ought  to  say  nothing  that  can  be  spared  : 
besides,  if  he  is  to  write  in  verse  at  all,  the  verses  must  run 
smoothly  and  easily.     Then,  whether  satire  and  comedy  arc; 
true  poems  or  not,  the   satirist   ought  to  be  able  to  maku 
shift  to  pass  now  and  then  for  a  poet  or  an  orator  ;  now  and 
then  he  ought  to  show  his  breeding  by  keeping  within  his 

strength. 

The  metre  of  Horace  hardly  performs  what  he  promises : 
he  has  not  quite  mastered  the  hexameter --the  rather  monoto- 
nous flow  of  Catullus  was  certainly  unsuited  to  conversational 
satire  \  and  Horace  had  not  yet  formed  any  clear  ideal  of  the 


HORACE. 


289 


type  of  line  he  wishes  to  keep  to.    The  lines  jolt  less  than  the 
lines  of  Lucilius  or  even  of  Lucretius,  but  they  jolt  still  ;  there 
is  no  systematic  correspondence  between  the  pauses  of  the 
metre  and  the  pauses  of  the  sentence  :  sometimes,  though  not 
often,  the  order  of  the  words  is  forcibly  disturbed  by  metrical 
necessities.    The  "  Satires,"  so  far  as  metre  goes,  are  written  as 
the  author  could  rather  than  as  he  would  ;  for  the  "  Epistles," 
written  after  Horace  had  mastered  the  stupendous  metrical 
difficulties  of  the  Alcaic  stanza,  and  had  learned  from    the 
completed  "Georgics"  and  the  *'^neid"  the  full  range  and 
pliability  of  the  Vergilian  hexameter,  are  at  least  as  eaty  and 
careless  in  diction,  and  often  as  lively,  as  the  "  Satires." 

Another  characteristic  of  the  ''  Satires  "  for  which  we  are  not 
prepared  by  the  programme  is  that,  short  as  they  are,  they  are 
really  ditTuse  :  so  far  as  they  are  dramatic,  they  are  abrupt. 
The  dialogue  is  often  elliptical ;  the  transitions  from  one  sub- 
ject to  another,  from  one  speaker  to  another,  arc  so  rapid  and 
so  slightly  marked  that  a  modern  reader  is  continually  un- 
certain whether  ancient  readers  were  more  apprehensive  or 
whether  the  poet  was  obscure.     But  when  the  author  gives  us 
a  piece  of  exposition  in  his  own  person,  the  meaning  might 
have  been  put  in  many  fewer  words.     The  style  is  as  much 
the  reverse  of  "succinct"  as  the  dress  of  Maecenas.    We  can- 
not say  the  author  is  prolix— he  checks  himself  always  in 
trnie  ;  but  he  is  fragmentary  and  discursive,  while  in  the  lyrics 
of  his  full  maturity  he  is  terse  or  condensed.    Perhaps,  too,  the 
"  ^'^♦'^tires '^'  are  personal  in  a  way  the  "  Odes  "  are  not.'    In  the 
"  Satires"  Horace  seems  to  talk  about  himself  for  the  sake  of  it 
just  as  he  tells  us  that  when  he  had  a  piece  of  writing  finished 
he  took  it  straight  to  show  it  to  Maecenas,  without^'thinkin- 
whether  he  was  at  leisure  and  in  the  mood.     Like  many  re"^ 
served  persons,  he  was  never  at  ease  unless  he  could  take 
liberties  :  he  is  really  afraid  of  the  great  public,  but  he  claims 
all  the  privileges  of  intimacy  with  the  reader.     Perhaps  an- 
cient readers  of  the  journey  to  Brundisium  thought  he  pre- 
sumed upon  his  privileges.    The  details  of  such  a  journey  are 
unfamiliar  to  us,  but  to  contemporaries  they  must  have  been 
familiar  enough :  and  Horace  and  his  friends  seem  to  have 


k       i% 


290 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


HORACE, 


291 


seen  very  little  more  by  the  way  than  any  other  travellers. 
The  only  points  which  can  have  been  fresh  at  the  time  are  the 
sneers  at  the  notary  (Horace  himself  was  connected  with  the 
corporation)  who  set  up  for  a  great  rnan  as  the  Praetor  of 
Fundi,  the  jest  that  ball  is  a  bad  game  after  dinner  for  people 
with  weak  eyes,  and  the  lively  description  of  a  scolding  match 
between  two  blackguards.  Probably,  too,  they  appreciated  the 
discretion  with  which  the  writer  just  hints  at  the  importance 
of  Maecenas's  mission,  which  gives  the  zest  of  incongruity  to 
the  petty  discomforts  of  his  suite :  and  though  the  sort  of  in- 
terest of  a  Dutch  picture  is  never  a  permanent  interest  in  lit- 
erature, it  is  an  interest  which  always  makes  its  appearance 
at  a  certain  stage,  and  has  sometimes  strength  enough  to 
found  a  reputation. 

Another  satire  turns  entirely  on  a  scolding  match  which  it 
seems  Horace  witnessed  when  he  was  with  Brutus  in  Asia:  he 
says  it  is  an  old  story,  and  unluckily  the  only  point  is  a  rather 
poor  pun  ;  but  Horace  did  not  make  the  story,  and  tells  it 
with  humorous  exaggeration,  and  mock  heroics  were  a  nov- 
elty. 

There  is  the  same  mixture  of  weakness  and  strength  in  an- 
other satire,  which  is  really  intended  to  invite  public  gratitude 
to  Maecenas  for  laying  out  the  land  near  his  gardens  on  the 
Esquiline  for  building,  by  a  burlesque  description  of  how  the 
deified  scarecrow  he  had  set  up  there  had  frightened  away  a 
brace  of  old  women,  who  made  their  living  with  less  comfort 
than  Dame  Ursula  Suddlechop,  in  the  same  doubtful  way,  and 
filled  up  their  spare  time  by  trying  to  bewitch  those  of  their 
clients,  generally  of  the  opposite  sex,  whom  they  happened  to 
have  a  spite  against.  For  these  purposes  they  found  the  ceme- 
tery on  the  Esquiline  attractive,  because  necromancy  was  the 
most  naturally  stimulating  form  of  magic  at  a  time  when  it 
was  difficult  to  believe  in  anything  supernatural,  except  when 
the  eerie  sights  and  scents  of  a  graveyard  mingled  themselves 
with  the  awe  of  a  southern  night.  If  all  tales  were  true,  there 
was  another  attraction :  it  was  hard  sometimes  to  come  by  a 
supper,  and  generally  there  was  a  supper  to  be  found,  by  those 
who  were  not  ashamed  to  snatch  it,  upon  some  grave  or  other. 


The  description  of  the  incantations  is  well  done,  though  in  the 
fifth  epode  the  same  thing  is  done  better  :  but  the  catastrophe 
is  not  only  indecent,  but  inadequate :  we  were  prepared  for 
something  more  exciting.  Priapus  begins  as  if  he  were  going 
to  treat  us  to  a  burlesque  epic,  and  instead  he  gives  us  an 
anecdote  that  might  have  gone  in  an  epigram. 

The  most  perfect  of  the  "Satires"  is  certainly  the  ninth, 
which  is  also  the  earliest  example  of  a  method  which  runs 
through  a  great  deal  of  Horace's  later  work.  He  begins  with 
a  close  imitation  of  Lucilius  (xvi.  12) :  following  him  for  a  line 
almost  syllable  by  syllable,  but  the  body  of  the  poem  is  unmis- 
takably new,  both  in  form  and  substance.  Here  too  we  have 
to  read  between  the  lines  :  a  story  of  a  bore,  generally  supposed 
to  have  been  Propertius,  who  fastened  himself  on  Horace  and 
stuck  to  him  till  peremptorily  cited  into  court,  turns  out  to  be 
a  panegyric  of  the  principles  on  which  Msecenas  managed 
his  patronage,  and  a  defence  of  Horace's  own  reluctance  to 
give  introductions.  Here  too  the  poem  is  made  to  end  with 
a  small  jest,  though  the  jest  is  better,  and  is  not  made  the 
substance  of  the  poem. 

His  relation  to  Maecenas  supplies  the  form  of  the  sixth  sat- 
ire, while  the  matter  is  an  exposition  of  Horace's  theory  of 
rank,  which  comes  to  this,  that  high  station  is  a  burden  (to 
men  of  Horace's  temper),  that  any  one  who  aims  at  a  rise  of 
station  is  foolish,  and  that  talent  and  character  entitle  a  man 
of  the  lowest  station  to  intimacy  with  men  of  the  highest. 
Horace  is  far  from  holding,  with  Burns,  "The  rank  is  but  the 
guinea's  stamp  :"  he  treats  high  station  consistently  as  a  pre- 
sumption of  high  personal  eminence.  He  admires  Maecenas 
for  refusing  senatorial  rank,  but  he  compliments  him  un- 
weariedly  on  his  distinguished  pedigree:  all  the  more  per- 
haps because  it  seems  his  family  had  come  down  in  the  world. 
The  Cilnii  were  the  representatives  of  the  old  kings  of  Arre- 
tium ;  his  paternal  and  maternal  grandfathers  had  been  in  com- 
mand of  armies;  but  his  father  had  been  poor  and  obscure 
and  taken  petty  municipal  contracts.  Equally  characteristic 
is  Horace's  account  of  his  claims  to  Maecenas's  friendship  : 
he  is  not  avaricious  or  stingy,  or  given  to  low  debauchery; 


292 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


he  is  pure  and  innocent,  and  his  friends  value  him.  All  this 
is  due  to  his  fother,  who  gave  liini  the  best  literary  educa- 
tion that  could  be  had,  and  watched  over  his  character  in  per- 
son :  he  is  thankful  for  such  a  falhe^,  and  all  the  more  be- 
cause, being  a  freedman,  he  has  left  him  no  appearances  to 
keep  up.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  his  father  would  have 
appreciated  the  last  ground  of  gratitude  :  he  was  careful  that 
his  son  should  look  like  a  gentleman  as  well  as  behave  like 
one.  When  he  advised  him  to  do  a  thing,  it  was  by  the  ex- 
ample of  one  of  the  select  judges,  the  aristocrats  of  his  order  ; 
when  he  warned  him,  it  was  by  the  example  of  some  neighbor 
who  had  an  ill  name.  Horace  tells  us  this  as  an  excuse  for 
the  personality  of  his  "  Satires,"  which  had  given  offence  :  his 
reply  is  noticeable,  that  to  point  a  moral  at  the  expense  of 
strangers  is  better  than  to  garnish  conversation  with  depre- 
ciation of  intimates  behind  their  backs.  The  charge  is  no- 
ticeable too  :  it  implies  that  average  people  find  it  easier  to 
stand  attacks  upon  their  faults  when  they  can  surmise  a  per- 
sonal motive  in  the  assailant;  disinterested  censure  strikes 
them  as  gratuitous  malice.  Perhaps  their  resentment  was 
heightened  because  the  censor  stood  so  near  themselves: 
there  is  nothing  the  least  transcendental,  or  extravagant,  or 
Bohemian  in  the  ideal  of  life  which  Horace  sets  forth  in  his 
earliest  satires,  and  which,  wiiii  liule  change,  he  continues  to 
preach  to  the  end.  His  preaching  comes  to  this  :  some  of 
our  wishes  are  natural  ;  some  are  the  result  of  fashion  and  van- 
ity. The  first  are  what  gives  life  its  value  \  they  are  strongest 
in  youth,  and  it  is,  in  a  manner,  indecorous  that  they  should 
survive  it.  All  plans  and  ambitions  which  interfere  with  their 
prompt  gratification  are  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit:  so,  too, 
are  the  wishes  with  which  we  inoculate  one  another — the 
wishes  for  fortune,  and  splendor,  and  mistresses  that  can  be 
boasted  of.  These  wishes  have  a  further  disadvantage  — they 
not  only  spoil  our  proper  pleasures,  but  they  impair  our  re- 
sources :  to  diminish  one's  capital  is  as  foolish  as  to  hoard 
one's  income,  and  that  is  the  result  of  expensive  artificial 
tastes.  Besides,  they  give  every  one  who  is  not  immensely 
rich  a  bad  name,  and  Horace  thoroughly  agrees  with  his 


HORACE. 


293 


father  in  rating  a  good  name  high:  in  fact,  of  the  two,  he  may 
almost  be  said  to  rate  it  higher,  because  he  values  it  as  an 
end,  not  as  a  means  to  a  rise  in  station. 

In  truth,  Horace's  Epicureanism  differs  from  Stoicism  much 
less  than  we  suppose  :  it  is  a  difierence  of  temperament,  not 
of  doctrine.  The  principle  of  following  nature  is  common  to 
both;  only  with  Horace  the  voice  of  nature  makes  itself  heard 
more  plainly  in  normal  desires  than  in  normal  activities.  He 
goes  heartily  with  the  Stoics  in  their  appeal  to  nature  and 
reason  from  fiishion  and  tradition,  and  he  does  not  come  in 
confiict  with  them  on  the  question  between  virtue  and  pleas- 
ure :  his  objection  is  that  the  concrete  Stoic  is  a  pretentious, 
quarrelsome  prig.  It  was  quite  true  that  he  did  not  profess 
to  be  wise;  but  he  was  always  thrusting  "the  wise  man"  in 
people's  faces  :  and  the  wise  man  was  a  very  grotesque  object, 
a  capital  cobbler  who  had  never  made  a  shoe  in  his  life,  a  king 
who  could  be  hustled  in  the  street,  always  in  admirable  health 
except  when  his  phlegm  was  troublesome.  And  this  ludicrous 
ideal  was  used  to  abolish  all  rational  distinctions,  and  to  prove 
that  everybody  else  was  "  mad."  This  was  a  sure  way  to  spoil 
one  of  the  best  things  in  life,  friendship,  by  cultivating  an  un- 
meaning rigorism  which  could  see  nothing  anywhere  but 
faults  :  whereas  Horace  spends  great  part  of  a  satire  in  prov- 
ing (after  Plato)  that  we  should  use  our  imagination  in  ideal- 
izing even  the  faults  of  a  friend,  as  a  lover  idealizes  the  de- 
fects of  his  mistress.  Still,  his  first  satire  leaves  off  with  a 
fear  that  if  he  goes  on  he  will  be  suspected  of  plundering  the 
desk  of  blear-eyed  Crispinus  —  a  Stoical  rival  who  thought 
himself  cleverer  than  Horace  because  he  wrote  faster;  and 
certainly  a  Stoic  might  have  endorsed  everything  that  Horace 
has  been  saying  about  the  folly  of  people  who  never  know  their 
own  minds,  and  are  never  content  with  a  position  which  they 
do  not  really  wish  to  change,  and,  worst  of  all,  cannot  hit  the 
mean  between  being  money-makers  and  spendthrifts. 

There  are  si2:ns  in  the  first  book  of  "  Satires  "  that  Horace  was 
still  only  half  reconciled  to  Octavian  :  he  has  a  great  quarrel 
with  the  memory  of  one  Tigellius,  a  Sardinian  singer,  whom 
Octavian  and  Julius  had  patronized,  and  the  quarrel  is  man- 


294 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


aged  in  a  way  to  reflect  upon  the  patrons.  It  is  hardly  a 
compliment  to  Caesar  to  say  that  Tigellius  would  sing  when 
he  was  not  asked,  and  would  not  sing  when  he  was  ;  but  this 
might  pass  if  it  stood  alone  for  an  attack  upon  Tigellius.  Lut 
it  does  not  stand  alone  :  Horace,  who  is  so  anxious  to  prove 
that  his  own  conduct  and  character  do  credit  to  the  discre- 
tion of  Maecenas,  takes  the  low  habits  of  Tigellius,  who  was 
just  dead,  as  a  text  for  a  very  plain-spoken  sermon  on  the 
rules  of  behavior  which  he  recommends  as  a  succedaneum  for 
chastity.  He  congratulates  himself  that  his  book  is  not  for  the 
hands  of  the  vulgar,  or  Tigellius  ;  that  he  founds  himself  upon 
authors  whom  Tigellius,  and  the  monkey  who  never  got  be- 
yond singing  Calvus  and  Catullus,  never  read.  He  tells  us, 
in  a  word,  that  Octavian  petted  a  man  who  may  have  been 
good-looking  and  had  a  fine  voice,  but  who  had  no  taste  and 
no  sense,  and  worse  than  no  character. 

In  the  second  book  of"  Satires  "  we  find  an  advance,  though  a 
small  one,  towards  the  later  attitude  of  the  poet  to  the  empe- 
ror. By  a  curious  combination  of  circumstances,  incantations 
had  passed  without  any  breach  of  continuity  into  lampoons; 
and  so  it  was  possible  to  imagine  that  the  old  legislation 
against  incantations  was  applicable  to  lampoons.  Horace 
takes  refuge  from  this  danger  in  the  approbation  of  Cx'sar  : 
as  Cajsar  praises  his  *'  Satires,"  they  cannot  be  mala  carmina. 
Already,  too,  we  find  that  the  court  is  looking  out  for  poets. 
Horace's  mentor  asks  why,  if  he  must  write,  he  does  not  sing 
the  achievements  of  Caesar.  Naturally  Horace  does  not  reply 
that  Cx'sar's  achievements  up  to  that  date  had  been  scanty, 
and  those  of  which  he  could  approve  still  scantier  :  he  con- 
fines himself  to  the  answer,  which  lie  never  abandons  even 
when  an  enthusiastic  imperialist,  that  the  subject  is  beyond 
his  strength.  But  there  are  more  unequivocal  signs  of  inde- 
pendence than  this:  when  he  thanks  Maecenas  for  his  Sabine 
farm  which  he  had  given  him  after  seven  years  of  intimacy,  he 
is  so  explicitly  grateful  for  having  received  all  he  can  reason- 
ably wish  that  he  seems  to  protest  against  being  expected  to 
merit  more.  His  only  ambition  is  to  get  away  into  the  coun- 
try and  gather  hi«  '^'vn  friends  round  his  own  board,  where  he 


HORACE, 


295 


can  insure  that  everybody  shall  be  free  to  mix  his  wine  as  he 
likes  it,  and  can  lead  the  conversation  to  philosophy,  to  the 
questions  whether  it  is  riches  or  virtue  that  makes  men  well 
off,  whether  interest  or  character  is  the  bond  of  friendship, 
what  is  the  nature  of  good,  and  wherein  it  culminates.  Such 
discussions  are  pointed  with  good  old  wives'  tales  by  a  neigh- 
bor, who  proves,  for  instance,  that  we  ought  not  to  wish  for 
riches  that  will  make  us  anxious  by  the  fible  of  the  Town  and 
Country  Mouse.  The  town  mouse  preaches  exactly  Horace's 
philosophy  of  enjoyment ;  the  country  mouse  is  frightened  into 
his  philosophy  of  prudence.  And  this  comes  at  the  end  of  a 
satire  which  sets  forth  how  Horace  panted  to  escape  from  his 
round  of  occupations  in  Rome,  to  read  or  drink  or  sleep  as  he 
pleased  (he  is  the  only  writer  of  the  time  who  rates  sleep  high). 
The  truth  is,  Horace  was  affectionate  and  grateful,  but  he  was 
not  iienerous:  he  allowed  himself  to  feel  his  relation  to  Maice- 
nas  burdensome,  and  to  try  to  escape  from  its  burdens.  He 
did  not  like  being  a  personage,  with  visits  to  pay  and  ap- 
pointments to  keep  and  influence  to  bestow ;  to  know  some 
secrets,  and  to  have  to  keep  them,  and  to  have  the  credit  of 
knowing  all.  The  net  result  in  his  mind  was  that  every  day 
he  lived  he  was  more  exposed  to  envy;  and  so  he  simply 
resolved  to  be  as  independent  as  possible,  and  do  what  he 
could  to  hold  aloof  and  take  his  ease. 

The  second  book  marks  an  advance  in  another  direction 
too:  the  satires  are  more  completely  planned  and  more 
thoroughly  finished;  it  is  possible  to  assign  the  subject  of 
each,  and  none  is  a  mere  anecdote,  or  string  of  anecdotes, 
like  the  fifth,  seventh,  and  eighth  of  the  first  book  ;  the  didac- 
tic purpose  is  more  unmistakable,  the  personalities  are  more 
subordinate.  It  is  obvious  that  the  author  has  been  laying  to 
heart  the  double  criticism  passed  upon  his  previous  writings, 
that  he  went  too  far  and  cut  too  sharply,  and  that  all  he  wrote 
was  mere  chit-chat.  He  admits  that  in  his  hands  satire  has 
been  a  weapon  of  self-defence,  and  this  can  hardly  refer  to 
any  of  the  extant  satires  ;  but  he  professes  his  wish  for  peace. 
Perhaps,  at  the  same  time,  there  is  some  loss  of  spontaneity : 
at  least,  there  are  more  traces  of  preparation.      One  of  his 


1 


I 


296 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


HORACE. 


297 


critics  tells  him  that  he  has  taken  Plato  and  Menander  and 
Kupolis  and  Archilochus  into  the  country  with  him  ;  and  even 
without  this  ^ve  might  be  sure  that  he  is  translating  from  some 
Greek  soujce  or  another  when  he  introduces  a  lady  who  asks 
her  lover  for  five  talents.  This  occurs  in  a  satire  on  the  the- 
sis that  all  but  "  the  wise  man  "  are  slaves ;  but  the  thesis  is 
treated  ironically :  Horace's  slave  lectures  him  during  the 
Saturnalia,  and  he  has  picked  up  his  wisdom  from  the  door- 
keeper of  Crispinus.  Horace  does  not  commit  himself  to 
a  judgment  on  his  own  tastes,  or  those  of  his  contemporaries 
(for  Davus  reproaches  him  with  much  with  which  he  never 
reproaches  himself,  e.  g.,  pretensions  to  connoisseurship  and 
costly  and  illegal  amours) ;  he  only  shows  in  the  most  irre- 
sponsible way  how  much  the  refined  desires  of  men  of  the 
world  resemble  the  desires  of  a  slave.  In  fact,  by  Horace's 
own  standard,  the  slave  is  often  the  wiser  of  the  two  :  his 
pleasures  are  safer  and  cheaper,  and  at  worst  the  slave's  glut- 
tony only  entails  a  beating  ;  he  can  pay  for  an  occasional  de- 
bauch by  the  proceeds  of  petty  thefts  :  the  gourmatidisc  of  the 
master  ruins  his  health,  and,  if  carried  f\ir,  his  estate  to  boot. 
Besides,  not  only  are  the  masters  enslaved  by  unreasonable 
desires  which  they  have  not  even  the  manhood  to  avow  and 
pursue  consistently,  but  they  are  a  burden  to  themselves, 
never  content  with  their  own  company,  trying  to  cheat  care 
by  wine  or  sleep  or  travel.  It  is  noticeable  that  Horace  is 
almost  alone  in  takin;?  notice  of  the  restlessness  of  the  world. 
His  contemporaries  generally  thought  that,  if  they  were 
uncomfortable  or  anxious,  they  always  had  something  to  be 
uncomfortable  or  anxious  about,  and  did  not  inquire  as  to 
tlie  origin  of  their  susceptibility. 

Another  Stoic  thesis  is  that  all  but  the  wise  are  mad,  which 
is  treated  in  the  same  ironical  way  :  a  crazy  amateur  who  has 
ruined  himself  by  collecting  is  saved  from  suicide  by  Stertin- 
ius,  as  £rreat  a  sa<re  as  any  of  the  seven,  who  convinces  him 
that  everybody  else  is  mad  too,  and  turns  him  loose  to  lecture 
his  fellow-madmen  who  suppose  themselves  sane.  Having 
no  business  of  his  own,  the  new  missionary  devotes  himself 
to  other  people's,  and  so  comes  to  know  that  laziness  is  a  be- 


setting sin  of  Horace,  and  begins  by  scolding  him  for  not 
writing  more  steadily  ;  he  concludes  by  a  list  of  the  other 
signs  of  insanity  to  be  found  in  him.  These  are  that  he 
builds  as  if  he  w^ere  Maecenas;  that  he  dresses  above  his  fort- 
une ;  that  he  writes  poems,  which  no  wise  man  does  ;  that  his 
temper  is  horrible  ;  that  he  is  in  and  out  of  love  with  boys  and 
girls  by  the  thousand,  till  Horace  cries  for  mercy.  The  inter- 
val is  occupied  with  a  denunciation  of  avarice  and  ambition 
and  waste,  in  good  set  terms  and  with  the  inevitable  parade 
of  mythology :  every  parricide  is  madder  than  Orestes;  Aga- 
memnon, when  he  sacrifices  Iphigenia,  is  madder  than  Ajax 
when  he  butchers  the  sheep.  Mad  as  Horace  is,  Damasip- 
pus  is  madder,  for  he  makes  no  allowance  in  his  system  for 
the  conventional  compromises,  which  will  not  bear  discussion, 
and  yet  are  indispensable  because  nine  people  out  often  can- 
not find  their  way  without  them. 

In  two  other  satires  Horace  flies  at  smaller  game  ;  he  dis- 
trusts himself  when  he  has  to  attack  the  passions  and  am- 
bitions which  keep  the  world  going  ;  he  is  at  once  indignant 
and  afraid  and  amused  ;  he  is  amused  without  being  either 
frightened  or  angry  at  mere  social  pretension.  There  were 
many  who  looked  with  a  zeal  that  outran  discretion  for  the 
precepts  of  a  happy  life  in  the  cookery-book,  with  exactly  the 
same  fervor  and  seriousness,  almost,  one  might  say,  \vith  the 
same  compunction,  as  others  looked  for  them  in  books  of 
philosophy.  We  cannot  trace  the  precepts  which  Catius  re- 
tails to  Horace  in  Ennius  or  Lucilius  ;  to  judge  by  Pliny  and 
Athenceus,  they  are  a  collection  of  truisms  and  falsisms,  like 
the  precepts  of  Damasippus,  but  more  amusing.  Catius  is 
not  a  mere  butt :  he  preaches  the  importance  of  completeness 
which  Horace  preaches  too,  as  if  he  and  his  contemporaries 
were  always  tempted  to  find  something  to  be  proud  of,  and 
neglect  everything  else.  With  all  its  faults  the  theory  of 
Catius  is  better  than  the  practice  of  Nasidienus,  who,  it  seems, 
asked  Maecenas  and  his  friends  to  what  was  meant  for  a 
ijrand  dinner.  Fundanius  tells  Horace  the  result:  he  bored 
his  guests  with  the  rationale  of  an  eccentric  and  faulty  vieiiu  ; 
the  hangings  came  down  and  showed  how  dusty  they  were, 

I.-i-s* 


ill 


298 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


and  the  host  hiy  crying  till  one  of  the  guests  made  him  an 
harangue  on  the  uses  of  adversity  ;  he  grudged  his  guests  the 
wine  they  called  for,  they  refused  at  last  to  touch  his  dishes, 
and  all  the  time  they  laughed  at  him  behind  his  back.  The 
ringleaders  were  two  dependants  of  Maecenas,  whom  he  had 
brought  unasked,  and  who  probably  supposed  they  were  do- 
ing their  duty  to  their  patron  by  making  their  host  as  ridicu- 
lous as  possible. 

Horace  takes  the  conduct  of  Maecenas  and  his  friends  for 
granted.  The  refinement  of  feeling  which  can  renounce  the 
amusement  of  teasing  an  inferior  animal  is  commonly  reached 
very  late :  it  was  far  distant  in  a  society  where  a  man  who  fed 
his  lampreys  with  slaves  only  seemed  to  be  overstraining  the 
rights  of  property.  I>ut,  though  he  was  not  struck  by  their 
discourtesy,  he  was  struck  with  the  inherent  absurdity  of  the 
whole  thing ;  the  exclamation  '"  poor  riches "  is  the  one 
phrase  in  the  satire  which  is  not  ironical.  He  is  expressing 
his  sincere  convictions  in  the  harangue  which  he  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  Ofellus,  because  OfeMus  acted  up  to  it.  It  is 
remarkable  how  convenient  these  convictions  must  have  been 
to  the  government  under  one  of  whose  chiefs  Horace  had 
taken  service.  Ofellus  had  lost  his  estate  in  some  confisca- 
tion or  other,  no  friend  at  court  had  procured  its  restitution, 
but  the  new  proprietor  was  very  willing  to  have  his  property 
worked  by  his  victim,  who  throve  almost  as  well  as  before, 
and  took  the  change  of  circumstances  very  philosophically, 
reflecting  that  property  was  an  unmeaning  conception,  that 
every  one  had  the  use  of  the  land  by  turns,  and  no  one  had  a 
real  ownership:  the  moral  of  which  is  that  young  men  should 
live  hardly,  and  meet  adversity  with  bold  hearts.  Plain  living 
is  the  way  to  high  thinking :  a  young  man  who  pampers  him- 
self is  undermining  his  health,  and  is  making  a  fool  of  him- 
self and  so  destroying  his  character;  besides  which, suppose 
his  body  should  require  indulgence,  what  new  indulgence  can 
a  man  give  his  body  who  lives  at  the  fashionable  rate  while 
young?  Exercise  and  abstinence  will  make  the  coarsest  food 
palatable,  and  keep  up  the  old  Roman  character  and  temper. 
Even  the  few  who  can   really  afford  to  keep  a  fashionable 


HORACE. 


299 


table  without  being  ridiculous  should  remember  that  a  revo- 
lution may  sweep  away  their  property ;  and,  therefore,  while 
they  have  it  they  had  better  lay  it  out  munificently  upon  pub- 
lic objects.  For  instance,  it  is  a  disgrace  to  a  rich  noble  that 
there  are  temples  falling  to  ruin.  One  sees  throughout  that 
Horace's  tastes  coincide  with  the  interests  of  Octavian,  who  did 
not  wish  the  huge  fortunes  of  his  leading  associates  to  stimu- 
late the  emulation  of  the  public  at  large,  and  sincerely  de- 
sired to  use  the  position  which  a  revolution  promised  him  to 
inaugurate  a  thorough -going  reaction.  The  treasury  was 
probably  empty,  and  the  funds  which  in  ordinary  times  had 
met  the  censor's  contracts  for  keeping  public  buildings  in  re- 
pair were  not  forthcoming;  and,  if  private  munificence  could 
be  appealed  to  with  effect,  the  government  would  reap  a  two- 
fold advantage:  its  friends  would  make  it  popular,  and  it 
would  not  have  to  f^ice  the  disappointment  of  a  throng  of 
greedy  men  of  talent,  like  those  who  undermined  the  mon- 
archy of  July. 

The  eighth  satire  is  a  sequel  to  the  fourth  :  (he  fifth  is  a 
contrast  rather  than  a  sequel  to  the  second.  There  Horace 
had  recalled  the  lessons  of  a  sturdy  survivor  of  the  old  regime, 
for  the  instruction  of  the  generation  which  was  beginning  to 
form  itself  under  the  new  :  in  the  fifth  he  illustrates  the  mean- 
ness to  which  a  man  who  seriously  cares  for  money  is  sure 
to  descend.  Ulysses  has  been  informed  by  Tiresias  that  he 
will  return  to  Ithaca  a  beggar,  and  inquires  how  he  had  bet- 
ter repair  his  fortunes.  The  answer  is :  "  Do  what  every 
clever  reprobate  who  wants  to  make  his  way  in  Rome  does  : 
pay  your  court  to  every  elderly  man  of  fortune  who  is  child- 
less, flatter  him,  give  him  presents,  do  his  dirty  work  in  the 
law-courts,  and  say  you  do  it  out  of  devotion  to  his  virtue ; 
show  your  concern  for  his  health,  sell  your  wife  to  him— she 
will  gladly  consent  if  she  gets  her  share  of  the  price ;  don't 
be  daunted  by  a  single  failure.  AVhen  there  is  a  rickety  heir, 
pay  your  court  just  the  same ;  it  will  do  you  credit,  and  you  will 
not  have  too  long  to  wait  for  the  reversion.  Very  likely  your 
patron  will  offer  to  show  you  his  will :  say  you  cannot  look  at 
it,  and  mind  you  do.     If,  as  is  likely,  you  are  one  heir  among 


300 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TV  RE. 


many,  look  out  for  any  invalids  who  inherit  with  you,  and  pay 
your  court  to  them."  There  are  other  details,  but  even  these 
do  not  satisfy  the  curiosity  of  Ulysses,  and,  in  accordance 
with  Horace's  system  of  abrupt  terminations,  Proserpine  calls 
Tiresias  away  before  he  has  completed  his  description  of  the 
arts  of  the  Roman  fortune-hunter. 

As  WMs  perhaps  to  be  expected,  the  element  of  literary  crit- 
icism is  decidedly  less  prominent  in  the  second  book  than  in 
the  first.  It  is  one  sign  more  that  Horace  was  growing  cau- 
tious, that  he  had  passed  the  stage  when  an  ambitious  writer 
lashes  out  in  all  directions,  and  reached  the  stage  when  it 
seems  prudent  to  limit  the  number  of  enemies  and  to  secure 
as  many  allies  as  possible.  The  transition  is  marked  by  the 
last  satire  of  the  first  book,  where  he  winds  up  his  controversy 
with  Lucilius  and  his  admirers,  and  decrees  reputations  to 
various  members  of  Maecenas's  circle.  Thenceforward  when- 
ever he  has  to  mention  Lucilius  he  is  ostentatiously  deferen- 
tial to  his  predecessor,  whom  he  acknowledges  his  superior 
both  in  rank  and  talent :  only  here  and  there  we  find  a  sneer 
at  poor  Furius,  who  blows  himself  out  with  a  haggis,  and  then 
falls  to  singing  how  the  Alps  are  sputtered  over  with  snow, 
or  at  Fufius,  who  sleeps  through  the  part  of  Uione  when  Ca- 
tienus  is  roaring  "Mother!  mother!"  in  the  part  of  Deiph- 

obus. 

The  "Kpodes"  are,  in  many  respects,  the  most  puzzling 
portion  of  the  works  of  Horace ;  for  this  reason,  among  others, 
that  he  himself  says  so  little  about  them.  Once  he  tells  the 
daughter  of  Canidia  that  she  may  dispose  of  the  slanderous 
iambi  as  she  will.  Once  he  gives  as  a  reason  for  not  writing 
that  he  is  asked  to  write  such  different  things  :  Florus  likes 
odes,  another  likes  satires  seasoned  with  Bion's  black  salt, 
another  likes  iambics.  He  speaks  too,  when  forty,  of  his  hot 
youth,  when  Plancus  was  consul,  in  the  year  of  Philippi,  and 
perhaps  we  are  to  understand  that  Athens  was  the  scene  of 
his  earliest  amours.  The  internal  evidence  derived  from  the 
"  Epodes"  themselves  is  scanty.  The  one  which  opens  the  book 
seems  to  have  been  composed  when  Maecenas  was  going  with- 
out Horace  to  the  battle  of  Actium,  and  is  a  pathetic  exposi- 


IIORACE. 


301 


tion  of  the  anxiety  of  the  poet  at  being  left  behind.  The 
ninth  deals  with  his  exultation  when  it  was  known  that  the 
campaign  of  Antony  had  failed.  The  sixteenth  must  be  early. 
The  connection  with  Mx'cenas  must  from  the  first  have  in- 
volved some  deference  to  Octavian,  who  would  have  been  af- 
fronted if  Horace  had  published  his  despair  of  the  republic 
when  he  was  trying  to  save  it.  When  Horace  was  still  living 
among  the  vanquished  of  Philippi  —  some  of  whose  chiefs 
kept  enough  strength  in  the  /Kgean  to  choose  between  the 
j^rotcction  of  Octavian  and  Antony — when  the  land-owners  of 
Italy  were  making  their  last  despairing  stand  for  the  last 
fra<Tment  of  their  rights  in  the  dreadful  war  of  Perusia, 
Horace  may  well  have  been  tempted  by  the  dream  attrib- 
uted to  Sertorius  of  abandoning  Rome  to  seek  a  refuge  in 
the  happy  Isles  of  the  West.  The  same  note  of  despair  is 
struck  in  the  seventh  ;  the  fratricidal  madness  of  the  Romans 
will  deliver  Rome  to  the  Parthian  invader,  and  the  blood  of 
Remus  will  be  avenged  upon  his  brother's  city.  Put  there  is 
no  practical  recommendation  of  any  kind.  Horace  is  no 
longer  the  irreconcilable  purist  who  sees  no  safety  but  in  em- 
i<Tration,  but  he  is  not  the  declared  adherent  of  Octavian  :  he 
keeps  to  the  safe  generality  that  civil  war  is  a  disgrace  and  a 
calamity.  The  poem  might  very  well  date  from  the  campaign 
against  Sextus  Pompeius,  like  a  very  spirited  lampoon  on  a 
Spanish  freedman  who  had  obtained  equestrian  rank,  and  was 
appointed  military  tribune.  Though  the  expedition  cannot 
have  been  unpopular,  the  measures  of  Octavian  w^ere  not  yet 
sacred  to  the  client  of  Mcecenas,  and  prosperity  had  not  yet 
taught  Horace  to  lauiih  as  he  does  in  the  sixth  satire  at  small 
class  jealousies.  When  he  had  made  his  way,  he  could  smile 
at  a  freedman's  son  for  having  been  indignant  that  a  mere 
freedman  with  a  louder  voice  should  be  a  more  popular  trib- 
une of  the  commons  than  his  freeborn  self.  With  his  w^ay  to 
make,  he  thought  it  hard  that  he  who  was  freeborn  should 
have  to  take  affronts  from  a  slave  who  had  made  a  fortune, 
all  the  more  because  he  had  been  a  military  tribune  on  the 
lusing  side  before  his  rival  was  a  military  tribune  on  the  win- 
ning side.     Other  poems  turn  on   lighter  thefties;  Horace 


Hi 


302 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


banters  Maecenas  on  his  taste  for  garlic,  congratulates  bim  on 
his  good- luck  in  love,  and  laments  his  own  ill-luck,  which, 
he  tells  Maecenas  and  Pectins,  interferes  with  poetry. 

In  general,  the  "  Epodes,"  when  they  deal  with  love-affairs, 
have  an  air  of  greater  actuality  than  the  later  poems,  and  this 
actuality  is  not  always  pleasant;  among  other  things,  the  poet 
attracted  the  attention  of  an  older  woman  who  could  aftbrd 
to  be  liberal  to  her  lovers.  As  might  be  expected,  she  was 
coarsely  exacting,  and  she  was  repaid  for  her  exactions  and 
her  gifts  by  obscene  and  insolent  frankness.  Under  the  pat- 
ronage of  Maecenas,  Horace  was  charming,  though  irritable  * 
and  satirical ;  when  he  was  a  penniless  adventurer  he  was 
attractive,  vindictive,  and  bitter.  And  the  "Epodes,"  for 
the  most  part,  exhibit  him  in  this  less  amiable  phase,  and  are 
generally  regarded  as  the  least  valuable  section  of  his  writ- 
ings :  the  late  Professor  Conington  did  not  think  them  worth 
translating.  Put  what  has  little  positive  value  may  be  very 
useful  in  tracing  the  development  of  a  writer's  art  and  the 
first  rudiments  of  his  achievements.  This  is  so  even  when 
the  earlier  work,  like  most  of  Shelley's  and  some  of  Words- 
worth's, has  very  little  in  common  with  the  work  of  the  poet's 
maturity ;  but  the  transition  from  the  "Epodes''  to  the  "Odes'* 
is  an  evolution,  not  a  revolution,  accomplished  under  infiu- 
ences  to  be  described  later.  The  "Epodes"  themselves  are 
distinguished  from  all  other  poems  of  Horace  by  their  straight- 
forward simplicity.  The  "Satires"  are  by  turn  prolix  and 
curt,  fragmentary  and  discursive;  the  "Odes"  are  terse,  preg- 
nant, and  antithetical.  It  is  only  in  the  "  Epodes  "  that  Hor- 
ace says  what  he  has  to  say  plainly  and  continuously,  in  its 
natural  order  from  beginning  to  end.  He  hardly  seems  to 
select ;  when  a  topic  occurs  to  him  he  works  it  out  without 
interruption.  Neaera  promises  to  cling  to  him  closer  than 
ivy  to  ilex,  as  long  as  the  wolf  shall  vex  the  sheep,  and  Orion, 
who  stirs  the  winter  sea,  the  sailors,  and  the  breeze  shall  wave 
Apollo's  unshorn  hair.  His  successful  rival  may  be  richer, 
and  it  takes  two  lines  to  say  this  ;  as  beauty  and  wisdom  are 
less  important,  they  are  dismissed  in  a  line  apiece.  Again, 
the  catalogue  of  the  enemies  who  did  not  injure  Rome  runs 


HORACE. 


Z^2> 


on  for  six  lines  continuously,  and  the  list  of  the  portents  which 
must  occur  before  the  refugees  return  to  Rome  for  ten ;  the 
natural  advantages  of  the  happy  isles  occupy  sixteen,  and 
one  is  surprised  to  find  the  mythological  voyagers  who  never 
reached  them  dismissed  in  four. 

But  the  triumph  of  the  tendency  to  simple  enumeration  is 
reached  in  the  second  epode,  where  the  joys  of  country  life 
are  recounted  at  length  for  sixty-six  lines,  with  obvious  sin- 
cerity and  a  wistful  freshness  of  anticipation  that  are  plainly 
the  expression  of  the  poet's  own  feeling,  who  had  begun  to 
find  that  to  roam  through  woods  and  meadows,  by  streams 
and  waterfiills,  and  now  and  then  to  try  a  little  hunting,  was 
a  remedy  for  the  discomforts  of  love,  and  to  look  with  admir- 
in"-  desire  not  yet  divorced  from  hope  upon  the  family  life 
which  he  was  never  to  share.  To  a  blase  reader  there  may 
seem  to  be  something  pointless  in  the  catalogue  of  such 
simple  joys  :  he  might  miss  more  than  one  pretty  line  by 
the  way,  and  look  impatiently  to  the  ^w(\.  There  Horace  is 
ready  for  him.  All  that  he  has  been  reading  or  skipping  are 
the  words  of  Alphius  the  money-lender,  when  he  was  so  im- 
patient to  retire  into  the  country  that  he  got  in  all  his  money 
in  the  middle  of  one  month,  only  to  look  out  for  fresh  invest- 
ments at  the  beginning  of  the  next.  When  one  turns  back, 
one  sees  that  the  finale  has  been  kept  in  mind  throughout 
the  farmer's  pleasure  culminates  in  the  sight  of  the  swarm  of 
home-bred  slaves,  the  true  wealth  of  the  house.  He  does  not 
dream  of  sacrificing  more  than  a  lamb  at  the  great  feast  of 
beating  the  bounds  ;  or,  if  he  indulges  in  a  kid,  whose  flesh  is 
more  savory,  it  is  only  when  the  wolf  has  mangled  it ;  when 
he  snares  thrushes,  he  reflects  that  a  thrush  is  a  greedy  bird 
and  eats  his  fruit.  Even  the  use  of  a  wife  is  to  serve  a  din- 
ner which  you  need  not  buy.  The  assumption  is  not  carried 
through  quite  consistently.  It  is  more  like  Horace  than  a 
money-lender  to  reflect  that  a  farmer  is  not  roused  like  a 
soldier  by  the  pitiless  trumpet,  and  need  not  shudder  at  the 
anger  of  the  sea,  and  can  keep,  above  all,  from  the  forum  and 
the  haughty  thresholds  of  the  great.  Then,  too,  though  the 
farmer's  diligence  in  training  his  vines  and  trimming  and 


If  I 

|ii?i 


304 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


grafting  his  fruit-trees  is  hardly  like  Horace,  his  sense  of 
the  romantic  side  of  country  life  is  hardly  like  Alphius,  who, 
again,  would  hardly  have  noticed  the  drooping  necks  of  the 
oxen,  almost  too  tired  to  draw  the  light  plough  home  with  the 
share  turned  up. 

This  is  perhaps  the  nearest  approach  we  get  in  this  epode 
to  the  manner  of  the  "Odes."  The  image  is  subtle  itself,  and 
made  more  subtle  by  the  reticence  with  which  it  is  presented ; 
the  one  word  invcrsum  marks  the  exhaustion  of  the  oxen  who 
find  the  light  plough  hard  to  draw,  even  when  it  has  not  to 
be  drawn  through  the  resisting  soil.  But  Horace  is  not  yet 
sure  of  himself;  he  cannot  make  his  points  in  passing  ;  even 
this  is  prepared  by  ati  exaggerated  contrast :  the  sheep  who 
have  been  taking  their  ease  hurry  home  from  pasture  in  a  way 
in  which  they  certainly  do  not  hurry  home  in  England.  One 
traces  slighter  anticipations  of  the  writer's  later  manner  in 
the  value  given  to  single  epithets,  as  in  the  line 

Ut  gaudct  iiisitiva  deccipens  pira. 

The  use  of  an  epithet  where  a  modern  writer  or  an  early  Ro- 
man writer  would  have  used  a  relative  clause  is  characteristic 
of  Augustan  poetry,  and  still  more  of  the  poetry  of  Horace. 
Another  epithet  which  is  characteristic  in  a  different  way,  and 
more  characteristic,  it  may  be,  of  Vergil  than  of  Horace,  is 
tenaci  for  grass  :  it  is  obviously  the  direct  reflex  of  a  purely 
physical  impression.  Perhaps  the  nearest  English  equivalent 
would  be  "matted,"  which  renders  not  the  physical  impres- 
sion itself,  but  an  apprehension,  partly  intellectual,  partly  fiin- 
ciful,  of  the  group  of  conditions  which  determine  it.  We  have 
not  an  epithet  for  tiie  mere  sense  we  have  of  the  grass;  be- 
fore we  can  find  one,  we  have  to  notice  the  way  the  leaves 
and  stalks  twine  together,  and  then  to  remember  that  the 
fibres  of  a  mat  cross  each  other  very  much  in  the  same  sort 
of  way.  There  are  fewer  illustrations  to  be  found  of  the 
more  complex  felicities  of  Horace's  later  manner — the  studied 
collocation  of  words  to  pique  the  curiosity  of  the  reader,  and 
give  every  word  of  the  group  a  fictitious  yet  not  an  exagger- 
ated  interest.     The  tricks   and  turns  of  construction  which 


HORACES 


305 


meet  us  in  the  "  Odes  "  are  alike  the  product  of  the  metre 
and  of  the  ingenuity  needed  to  master  it.  In  an  artificial 
age  a  metrical  effect  suggests  a  grammatical  or  rhetorical  ef- 
fect, in  the  same  way  as  m  a  simpler  age  a  musical  tone  calls 
up  a  moral  feeling.  And,  if  this  seem  fiir-fetched,  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  observe  that  in  the  "Odes"  themselves  these  felici- 
ties are  abundant  in  proportion  to  the  intricacy  of  the  metre. 
From  the  "  Epodes  "  we  may  extract  one  or  two  specimens 
like— 

Me  libertina,  nequc  uno 
Contenta,  Phryne  maceiat. 

Unde  expedire  non  amicorum  queant 

Libera  consilia,  nee  contumelia;  graves; 
Sed  alius  ardor,  aut  puellaj  candidae, 

Aut  teretis  pueri,  longani  renodantis  comam. 

One  feels  that  the  turn  in  the  last  line  especially  is  taken 
from  the  Greek ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  whole 
poem,  whose  last  lines  we  quote  because  the  Gra^cism  in  them 
is  more  effective  in  Latin  : 

Illic  omne  malum  vino  cantuque  levato, 
Deformis  a^grimonice  dulcibus  alloquiis. 

The  first  three  books'  of  "Odes  "  belong  to  a  well-marked 
period  ;  none  can  be  proved  to  be  earlier  than  the  battle  of 
Actium;  or  later  than  the  restoration  of  the  standards  taken 
when  Crassus  was  defeated.  The  most  characteristic  of  them, 
with  hardly  an  exception,  can  be  proved  to  fall  within  the 
seven  years  ;  and  upon  the  work  of  those  years  those  who 
consider  Horace  a  great  poet  would  probably  rest  his  claim. 
They  belong  to  the  middle  of  Horace's  life,  to  the  years  be- 
tween thirty-four  and  forty,  and  this  is  noticeable  because  they 

'  The  third  book  is  an  after-thought,  explained  by  the  opening  series  of 
odes  on  the  several  reforms  of  Augustus  ;  and  their  effect  is  perceptible  in 
the  contrast  between  the  closing  ode  of  the  second  book  and  the  closing 
ode  of  the  third.  In  the  first,  which  is  intended  to  sum  up  his  lyrical  ac- 
tivity, Horace  thinks  of  nothing  better  to  say  than  that  he  feels  he  is  turn- 
''\fi  '"to  a  swan,  and  knows  that  he  will  be  read  from  the  Danube  to  the 
T  igris  ;  in  the  second  everything  grotesque  and  unreal  has  disappeared, 
he  only  dwells  upon  what  is  purely  Italian— the  stately  ritual  of  the  Capi- 
to),  the  parched  plains  and  roaring  torrents  of  his  native  Apulia. 


2o6  ^^  '^^^^  LITER  A  TURE. 

dwell  much  more  upon  the  shortness  of  hfe  than  the  earlier 
and  later  poems.     The  preoccupation  with  death  varies  very 
much  in  its  strength  in  different  ages,  and  in  the  same  age 
among  different  individuals  :  it  was  much  stronger  in  Horace 
than  in  Vergil  or  Ovid,  and  it  took  rather  a  different  form. 
So  far  as  Vergil  felt  it,  he  felt  it  as  a  matter  for  sympathy 
which  was  very  nearly  disinterested  ;  it   was  the  spectacle 
rather  than  the  prospect  of  mortality  that  moved  him.     It 
would  be  wrong  to  say  that  Horace's  feeling  was  selfish  :  the 
prospect  of  the  mortality  of  others  moved  him  as  much  as  the 
prospect  of  his  own  ;  but  it  is  still  true  that  he  was  moved  by 
the  prospect  rather  than  by  the  spectacle.    And  the  time  when 
the  prospect  moved  him  most  was  when  his  physical  prime 
was  just  beginning  to  be  over,  and  when  his  spiritual  prime, 
which  is  commonly  at  least  as  fleeting  as  the  physical  prime, 
was  just  setting  in.    It  was  his  rare  good-fortune  that  his  spir- 
itual   prime    coincided  with    one    of  the  happiest  and  most 
promising  moments  of  the  spiritual  life  of  the  world.    For  the 
seven  years  which  are  covered  by  the  first  three  books  of 
*'  Odes,"  Horace's  relation  to  his  contemporaries  was  the  most 
favorable  which  a  man  of  genius  can  possibly  occupy.     The 
improvement  in  their  life  was  large  enough  and  swift  enough 
to  lift  him  up  and  to  carry  him  forward  ;  and  the  spring  and 
buoyancy  of  his  own  nature  was  still  sufficient  to  keep  him 
well  above  them.     One  well-marked  sign  of  this  superiority  is 
a  serious  exultation  which  carries  with  it  an  exemption  from 
anxiety.     His  indifference  to  "rumors"  would  have  been  en- 
viable to  the  author  of  the  "  Imitation,"  and  he  lived  at  a  time 
when  rumors  had  unusual  power  :  great  events  had  just  hap- 
pened ;  hardly  anybody  was  left  in  a  familiar  and  assured  po- 
sition.    Within  the  Roman  Empire  the  work  of  restoration 
was  going  on  with  results  that  were  dazzling  for  the  moment, 
and  really  full  of  solid  promise  for  the  future ;  but  most  of 
those  who  profited  by  the  work  were  lookers-on,  who  were  not 
called  to  help,  and  had  no  help  to  give.     In  fact,  they  often 
profited  by  the  improvement  without  sharing  it.     Rome  was 
a  much  wholesomer  and  pleasanter  place  to  live  in,  while  some 
effort  was  being  made  to  restore  family  life  among  the  upper 


HORACE. 


307 


classes  :  but  Propertius  was  very  much  afraid  of  being  called 
to  found  a  family  of  his  own.  Horace,  who  was  not  a  knight 
and  did  not  come  under  the  new  laws,  could  afford  to  be 
enthusiastic.  But  spectators  less  capable  of  enthusiasm 
transferred  all  the  restlessness  which  the  events  of  the  last 
generation  had  bred  in  them  to  the  chances  of  what  might 
happen  abroad,  at  a  time  when  the  frontier  of  the  Euphrates 
had  been  repeatedly  violated  and- the  frontier  of  the  Danube 
had  not  yet  been  established.  The  loungers  in  the  streets  of 
Rome  were  full  of  fears  of  what  the  Dacians  would  do,  or 
what  might  happen  to  Tiridates ;  while  Horace  was  wrapped 
up  with  the  Muses  when  he  was  serious,  or  was  forirettin^ 
graver  cares  in  wine  or  love. 

His  exaltation  was  more  intelligible  to  his  contemporaries 
than  to  us.  An  Italian  of  the  Augustan  age  with  a  new  type 
of  Greek  poetry  to  naturalize  was  in  very  much  the  same  posi- 
tion as  an  Italian  of  the  fifth  or  the  nineteenth  century  with  a 
new  cult  to  naturalize.  And  Horace  was  in  more  exclusive 
possession  of  his  field  than  most  of  the  writers  of  the  time. 
We  have  the  judgment  of  Quinctilian  that  he  was  practically 
the  only  Roman  lyric  poet  worth  reading;  while  in  heroic 
and  elegiac  poetry  there  were  many  writers  of  whose  success 
we  are  still  able  to  judge,  and  the  unanimous  tradition  of  Ro- 
man literature  assures  us  that  many  of  the  numerous  writers 
of  tragedy  attained  what  was  accepted  as  success. 

Horace's  method  of  work  is  not  so  easy  to  ascertain.  We 
hardly  know  how  much  he  borrowed,  nor  how  far  what  he  bor- 
rowed was  transformed,  and  all  conclusions  must  be  a  little 
uncertain,  because  the  greater  part  of  Greek  lyrical  poetry  has 
been  lost.  Nor  do  we  know  the  extent  of  Horace's  obli^a- 
lions  to  other  parts  of  Greek  literature;  for  instance,  the  im- 
age of  Europa  at  nightfall  might  very  well  be  taken  direct 
from  Moschus,  although  it  is  impossible  to  prove  that  the 
Alexandrian  and  the  Roman  poets  were  not  both  imitating  a 
lost  Hellenic  original.  When  we  see  what  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  the  extant  lyrical  fragments  have  certainly  been 
imitated,  it  is  probable  that  there  are  very  many  imitations 
which  we  can  only  trace  by  guess.     But  if  it  could  be  shown 


i  li 


i 


3o8  ^^  ^^-^  LITER  A  TURE. 

more  completely  than  it  can  that  Horace's  materials  were  bor- 
rowed, we  should  still  have  to  ask  whether  he  was  a  mere 
echo ;  and,  if  that  is  a  suggestion  to  be  set  aside  at  once, 
where  his  originality  lies. 

For  one  thing,  he  has  transformed  the  Alcaic  and  Sapphic 
and  Choriambic  metres  in  the  same  way  as  Vergil  has  trans- 
formed the  hexameter.  He  has  given  them  the  smoothness 
and  exactness  which  were  needed  in  a  language  where  con- 
sonants were  much  more  plentiful  than  in  Greek,  sonorous 
vowels  and  diphthongs  much  rarer,  while  syntax  was  far  more 
developed,  and  inflections  at  least  as  well  preserved,  though 
less  copious,  so  that  the  free  use  of  particles  was  superfluous. 
Then,  too,  in  both  we  trace  the  influence  of  newly  perfected 
Latin  prose  :  there  is  the  periodic  structure  which  is  inde- 
pendent of  the  metrical  structure,  and  yet  always  kept  in  har- 
mony with  it,  so  that  the  emphasis  of  the  sentence  and  of  the 
metre  heiirhten  one  another.  But  in  Horace  this  efTect  is 
carried  further  than  in  Vergil ;  and  perhaps  we  may  find  an 
explanation  in  a  peculiarity  of  Greek  choral  poetry.  The 
collocation  of  words  in  Pindar  and  in  many  of  the  choruses 
of  yEschylus  and  Sophocles  is  quite  unlike  anything  else  in 
Greek  literature,  and  is  hardly  explicable  on  purely  literary 
grounds.  Still  less  can  we  suppose  that  such  great  writers 
were  baffled  by  metrical  difficulties,  and  arranged  their  sen- 
tences as  they  could  rather  than  as  they  would.  A  possible 
explanation  might  be  found  in  the  difficulty  of  singing  and 
dancing  at  once,  which  would  lead  to  much  arbitrary  trans- 
position of  words,  in  the  more  or  less  extemporary  choral 
songs  which  must  have  preceded  and  accompanied  the  rise  of 
great  schools  of  choral  poetry.  If  this  were  so,  it  would  be 
intelligible  that  choral  poets  took  what  may  be  called  the 
choral  dialect  for  granted,  and  did  not  add  to  the  difficulties 
of  their  task  by  clinging  to  the  hicidus  ordo  of  ordinary  speech. 
But  though  Horace  is  further  than  anv  other  writer  of  the 
AuiTUstan  ajre  from  the  natural  order  of  Latin,  which  we  find 
still  substantially  unimpaired  in  the  writers  of  the  Ciceronian 
age,  he  always  has  a  liicidiis  ordo  of  his  own.  His  Pindaric 
transpositions  are  utilized,  like  the  correspondences  between 


HORACE. 


309 


the  metrical  and  syntactical  emphasis,  as  far  as  a  delicate  and 
fiistidious  artist  could  utilize  them  ;  and  they  are  only  admit- 
ted so  far  as  they  could  be  utilized. 

Another  and  more  important  debt  to  Pindar  is  perhaps  to 
be  found  in  the  structure  of  the  more  ambitious  odes.  Horace 
wisely  refused  to  write  in  metres  like  Pindar's,  which  he  could 
not  scan  ;  and  the  intricate  implicit  harmony  of  plan  which 
Boeckh  and  Dissen  have  traced  beneath  the  apparently  aim- 
less discursiveness  of  so  many  epinicia  was  not  at  all  in  the 
spirit  of  Augustan  art.  But  the  combination  of  mythology  and 
ethical  precept  and  political  enthusiasm  is  in  itself  like  Pindar, 
only,  as  we  should  expect  in  a  Roman  poet,  the  proportion  of 
political  enthusiasm  is  larger;  for  in  Pindar  the  spirit  of  jubi- 
lant sympathy  with  the  heroic  and  spontaneous  side  of  life  is 
balanced  by  a  spirit  of  dry  caution,  not  to  say  of  timid  reserve, 
in  all  that  concerns  its  practical  business.  Moreover,  for  Pin- 
dar the  glory  of  the  state  is  centred  in  the  glory  of  heroic 
houses,  while  for  Horace  the  glory  of  individuals  shines 
brightest  in  the  glory  of  the  state.  Still,  though  there  is  much 
to  limit  the  resemblance,  such  a  poem  as  the  fourth  ode  of 
the  third  book  recalls  Pindar  in  the  method  and  arrangement, 
at  any  rate  from  the  seventh  stanza  onward ;  and  the  third 
ode  does  so  even  more  completely,  though  the  resemblance 
is  masked  by  the  greater  development  of  the  parts  of  a  scheme 
which,  though  simplified  and  reduced  in  its  proportion,  is  very 
like  a  scheme  of  Pindar's.' 

If  Horace  had  done  nothing  but  write  Pindaric  odes  in 
Alcaics  on  Roman  subjects,  in  a  Roman  spirit,  this  would  in 
itself  have  been  a  kind  of  originality  ;  but,  besides  this,  there 
are  many  elements  of  interest  which  are  due  to  his  special 
share  of  the  culture  of  his  time.  There  is  the  constant  incul- 
cation of  unworldliness,  of  the  limitation  of  personal  aims, 
and  the  sufTiciency  of  virtue,  which  contrasts  both  with  the 
'  Subordinate  resemblances  may  be  traced  in  the  abrupt  close  of  this 
ode,  and  in  the  odd  antiquarian  parenthesis  in  the  fourth  ode  of  the  fourth 
book  about  the  Amazonian  axes  of  the  Vindclici.  In  Pindar  such  a  di- 
gression would  not  offend  us,  but  in  Horace  the  general  finish  of  surface 
is  so  even  and  elaborate  that  the  interruption  seems  trivial  and  we  wish  it 
spurious. 


310 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


party  spirit  and  personal  peevishness  of  Alcaeus,  and  with 
Pindar's  oscillations  between  enthusiasm  for  the  assertion  of 
the  absolute  worth  of  his  patron's  personality,  and  his  sense 
of  the  necessity  of  caution  and  sobriety  in  dealing  with  others. 
Sometimes,  in  preaching  sobriety,  Pindar  seems  to  come  near 
Horace,  but  there  is  always  a  difference:  the  elder  poet  is 
concerned  chiefly  for  prudence  in  conduct ;  the  younger  is 
concerned  for  the  more  inward  prudence  whereby  a  man 
possesses  his  own  soul  in  patience  and  peace.     Then,  too, 
Pindar  idealizes  wealth  ;  Horace  idealizes  poverty.    The  pas- 
sion of  the  nobility  for  planting  and  palace-building  which 
alarmed  Horace  would  have  aroused  the  admiration  of  Pin- 
dar.   And  this  suggests  another  contrast :  in  his  "  Odes  "  Hor- 
ace is  less  independent  than  Pindar;  he  never  admonishes 
Augustus  as  Pindar  admonishes  Hiero  or  Arcesilas.     Where 
he  cannot  abound  in  the  sense  of  the  emperor,  he  is  discreetly 
silent ;  all  the  progressive  side  of  Augustus's  work  is  passed 
over,  and,  as  might  have  been  expected,  no  incense  is  burned 
at  the  shrine  of  the  great  Julius :  no  enthusiasm  greets  the 
architectural  magnificences  of  the  reign  which  found  Rome 
brick  and  left  her  marble.     That  the  old  temples  should  be 
rebuilt  was  well,  but  there  is  no  hint  that  it  was  well  that  the 
new  temples  should  be  more  gorgeous  than  the  old  :  all  that 
Horace  cares  for  is  that  pontiff  and  vestal  should  go  up  to 
offer  sacrifice  in  silence,  as  in  the  days  of  Numa. 

Again,  the  commercial  activity  which  followed  upon  the 
restoration  of  a  tolerable  degree  of  order  is  nothing  to  Hor- 
ace, or  next  to  nothing.  Tl>e  sea  is  a  barrier  that  it  is  im- 
pious to  cross ;  it  is  strange  that  men  should  risk  their  lives 
for  pepper  or  spice.  Almost  the  only  good  thing  he  says  of 
trade  is  that  it  enables  a  lover  to  bring  home  a  little  fortune 
to  his  sweetheart :  but  the  poet  is  more  serious  when  he  de- 
nounces the  wife  who  leaves  her  convenient  husband '  to  keep 
an  appointment  with  a  broker  or  ship-master  from  Spain.  All 
Horace's  heart  is  in  the  moral  regeneration,  which  seemed  to 
be  more  distant  than  ever,  in  spite  of  a  better  government  and 

*  It  is  noticeable  that  Horace  is  the  only  Augustan  writer  who  speaks 
of  this  character  with  natural  indignation. 


HORACE. 


311 


external  prosperity.  The  generation  that  came  into  life  af- 
ter Actium  was  very  like  the  generation  that  came  into  life 
after  the  2d  of  December  ;  but  the  temper  of  Horace  is  more 
like  the  temper  of  Lamartine  and  Chateaubriand— ideal  as- 
piration without  ideal  activity,  which  is  not  favorable  to  cheer- 
fulness or  hopefulness. 

The  extension  of  commerce  and  military  relations  gives  a 
new  character  to  the  geographical  background  which  Horace, 
like  his  Greek  predecessors,  values  rather  more  than  a  modern 
reader.    To  Pindar  the  wide  world  beyond  was  full  of  memo- 
ries of  heroes  who  had  wandered  through  it ;  to  Horace  it  is 
the  waste  field,  to  be  replenished  and  subdued  by  his  own 
fiime  and  by  the  laws  and  genius  of  Rome.     Every  Eastern 
embassy,  every  exploring  expedition  with  a  military  escort, 
was  the  occasion  of  poems  which  claimed  as  accomplished 
more  than  the  most  sanguine  observer  could  rationally  hope. 
But  these  exaggerations  are  never  quite  uncalculating.    When 
there  is  an  expedition  to  Arabia,  Horace  warns  his  friends, 
both  in  jest  and  earnest,  against  wishing  to  join  it  to  make 
their  fortunes.     When  the  standards  taken  with  Crassus  were 
at  length  restored,  it  may  have  occurred  to  Labienus   and 
others  that  the  standards  had  been  restored  without  the  cap- 
tives.   Horace  was  prepared  for  such  cavillers  :  Augustus  was 
a  god   upon  earth  who  had  subdued  the  Persians  ;   it  was 
scarcely  conceivable  that  captives  should  have  survived;  and, 
if  any  had,  they  deserved  to  be  left  to  their  fate,  on  the  prin- 
ciples advocated  long  ago  by  Regulus.     Perhaps  we  ought  to 
read  between  the  lines  an  apology  for  the  ingratitude  of  Au- 
gustus in  the  ode  where  Horace  invites  Maecenas  to  keep 
with  him  the  feast  of  his  deliverance  from  the  rotten  tree.    We 
know  that  Maecenas  was  hurt  at  being  left  in  ignorance  of 
state  affairs ;  and  Horace,  who  had  often  complimented  him 
upon  his  freedom  from  ambition,  advises  him  to  profit  by  the 
exemptions  of  his  private  station.'    In  the  same  way,  he  con- 

*  Perhaps  we  may  find  a  remoter  allusion  to  the  same  grievance  in  the 
majestic  ode  where  Horace  defies  the  uncertainty  of  fortune,  from  which, 
personally,  he  had  little  to  fear  ;  while  Maecenas  might  with  less  absurdity 
torment  himself  with  the  suspicion  that  the  loss  of  power  foreshadowed 
the  loss  of  station  and  fortune. 


II 


li 


312 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


soles  Maecenas  for  the  reports  of  his  wife's  infidelity  by  a  per- 
sistent optimism,  and  meets  the  complaints  of  a  broken-down 
politician  and  voluptuary  with  promises  of  fidelity  to  death 
and  reminders  of  the  bright  days  he  had  known,  especially  of 
the  applause  he  had  received  when  he  appeared  in  the  theatre 
after  an  illness.     In  a  more  independent  mood,  Horace  half 
adopts  the  grievances  of  Lollius,  who  had  a  bad  name  among 
historians  for  charges  which  Horace  expressly  sets  himself  to 
rebut.     Horace  had  a  strong  imaginative  sympathy  with  any- 
thing that  looked  like  sturdiness.     He  liked  to  imagine  Au- 
gustus a  model  of  constancy,  proof  against  the  tyranny  of  one 
and  the  madness  of  many,  because  he  frowned  on  the  dream 
of  transferring  the  capital  to  the  Hellespont  under  the  name 
of  restoring  Troy.     No  doubt  the  civil  wars  fought  out  on  the 
coasts  of  the  ^Egean  had  led  many  to  see  that  Consular  Asia 
was  a  more  desirable  country  than  Italy.     But  there  was  no 
effective  pressure  upon  Augustus  to  anticipate  Constantine  ; 
there  were  only  exiles  and  loiterers  in  no  haste  to  return.    An 
ode  to  Munatius  Plancus,  one  of  these  refugees,  is  a  cento 
from  the  Greek  with  a  Roman  application  ;  a  Greek  epithet 
of  Argos  is  rather   awkwardly  paraphrased.     In  a  letter  to 
Bullatius,  we  have  the  same  patriotic  precepts  in  a  less  am- 
biguous shape.     There  is  as  yet  no  homage  to  Augustus  in 
either  poem,  nor  in  the  ode  on  the  restoration  of  Pompeius 
Grosphus,  who  found  it  easier  to  forget  his  wrongs  in  wine 
than  to  thank  the  unnamed  benefactor  who  had  restored  him 
to  the  gods  of  his  fathers  and  the  sky  of  Italy,  as  if  a  Roman 
had  no  political  birtiuight. 

Manliness,  according  to  Horace,  does  not  imply  the  least 
attention  to  civic  duties.  There  is  nothing  anywhere  incon- 
sistent with  the  hearty  sneer  at  opdla  forcnsis'  the  drudgery 
of  the  forum.  The  ordinary  business  of  a  young  man  of  spirit 
is  to  exercise  himself  in  breaking  horses  and  hurling  javelins 
in  the  Campus  iMartius;  his  ordinary  pleasure  is  with  the  lass 
who  loves  and  hides,  and  is  caught  because  she  cannot  keep 
from  laughing  at  the  bewilderment  of  her  lover,  who  snatches 
a  bracelet  or  ring  as  a  pledge  that  at  their  next  meeting  she 
*  Unless  we  count  his  esteem  for  a  great  advocate. 


HORACE. 


Zn 


will  be  as  punctual  and  less  coy.  The  doctrine  that  the 
pleasure  of  the  moment  is  always  to  be  taken  in  youth  is  not 
only  an  affair  of  temperament  with  Horace;  it  is  a  lesson  of 
experience.  He  had  lived  with  men  who  could  never  be  cer- 
tain of  the  morrow,  and  whose  plans  always  failed  :  the  worth 
of  such  lives  was  realized,  as  a  matter  of  fiict,  in  moments,  and 
not  in  the  long-run.  Another  result  of  this  life  is  the  ideal- 
ization of  ease,  which  we  find  in  a  Sapphic  ode  to  the  same 
friend.  The  poem  is  interesting  in  another  way,  as  almost  the 
only  indication  of  conscious  rivalry  with  Catullus,  who  de- 
nounced ease  with  a  vehement  passion  only  less  impressive 
than  Horace's  tone  of  intense  yearning,  and  we  may  note 
Horace's  clear  conviction  that  it  is  only  to  be  won  by  a  moral 
effort  to  resist  the  restlessness  and  anxiety  which  are  the 
plague  of  half-occupied  men. 

After  all,  the  hours  of  gladness  and  the  days  of  repose  w^ere 
not  the  whole,  or  anything  like  the  whole,  of  life;  there  was 
always  a  background  of  dissatisfaction  and  irony.  The  last  j 
weighty  words '  of  the  great  series  of  ethical  odes  at  the  be- ' 
ginning  of  the  third  book  really  sum  up  the  expression  of  an 
undercurrent  of  feeling  which  flowed  on  beneath  the  poetical 
enthusiasm  of  the  patriot  and  the  bacchanal.  The  wounds  of 
the  civil  war  seem  to  baVe  been  always  bleeding  inwardly. 
He  recurs  to  the  subject  again  and  again,  as  if  the  stain 
could  never  be  effaced ;  and  when  Pollio  undertook  a  history 
of  them,  Horace's  complimentary  anticipations  of  the  result 
.  almost  read  like  dissuasives.  He  shudders  at  the  thought  of 
the  shrill  trumpet  ringing  in  his  ears  :  he  sees  great  chiefs 
laid  low  in  the  dust,  which  is  no  dishonor,  and  all  the  world 
subdued  except  the  fierce  spirit  of  Cato— the  one  anti-Cassarian 
hero  whose  praise  the  Augustan  poets  felt  it  safe  to  sing,  be- 
cause his  opposition  had  been  disinterested,  not  to  say  un- 
practical. He  sees  all  the  perils  of  the  work,  and  he  does  not 
seem  to  imagine  it  could  have  lessons.  For  instance,  though 
he  IS  fond  of  the  topic  that  true  friendship  which  does  not 

'  "The  age  of  our  sires  was  worse  than  the  days  of  our  grandsires  ;  we,  \ 
its  children,  are  waxen  worse,  and  our  posterity  shall  be  yet  more  cor-/ 
rupted.'*  4 

I. — 14 


T  A  Tr\T  r  rrp-  k^  A  tttk>jt 


nORA  CR. 


tie 


m 


314 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


change  with  fortune  is  a  rare  distinction,  it  does  not  strike 
him  that  it  is  a  distinction  especially  rare  in  revolutionary 
times ;  for  when  great  positions  are  seldom  shaken,  respect 
for  them  is  strong  enough  to  survive  the  shock.  As  it  is,  he 
shrinks  from  the  subject,  as  he  generally  does  shrink  from 
higher  subjects  altogether,  partly  from  a  sense  that  he  himself 
cannot  be  serious  without  unreality,  and  partly  from  a  distaste 
for  the  subjects  about  which  he  was  expected  to  be  serious. 
He  often  tells  us  that  Phoebus  forbade  him  to  sing  of  battles 
and  of  conquered  cities,  and  that  he  must  leave  such  themes 
to  Varius,  who  could  soar  aloft  on  the  wings  of  Homer ;  but 
for  once  he  is  entirely  frank,  and  says  that  Maecenas  had  bet- 
ter write  Augustus's  deeds — in  prose. 

All  this  explains  the  shortness  of  the  period  of  Horace's 
spontaneous  activity  as  a  lyric  poet :  illusions  came  to  him 
late  and  did  not  stay  long.  He  had  always  felt  that  wine  and 
women  were  for  youth,  and  he  was  quite  in  earnest  with  his 
resolution  to  forsake  both  at  the  proper  time.  He  had  not 
the  constitution  of  an  Anacreon  to  tempt  him  from  his  reso- 
lution. He  feared  the  spiteful  comments  which  he  had  be- 
stowed himself  on  the  companions  of  his  revels  who  had  gone 
on  too  long.  When  the  time  came  to  keep  his  resolution,  he 
found  that  it  made  him  languid  and  irritable.  The  Muse  had 
forsaken  him,  and  her  kisses  left  him  weak.  He  professed  to 
regret  his  youthful  inspiration  no  more  than  his  youthful  locks, 
and  to  think  sleep  a  better  occupation  for  a  man  of  his  years 
than  writing  verses.  He  reflected  soberly  on  the  chances  of 
failure,  and  was  resolved  not  to  run  the  risk  of  exposing  the 
decay  of  his  powers  to  public  contempt.  He  had  other  in- 
terests in  prospect,  and  hoped,  not  unreasonably,  to  find  com- 
pensation in  philosophy.  He  saw  clearly  that  character  was 
the  foundation  of  national  and  individual  happiness,  and  that 
reflection  and  self-discipline  were  capable  of  producing  great 
and  beneficial  changes  in  character.  Besides,  the  mere  mag- 
nitude of  philosophic  problems  excited  him.  Philosophy  was 
the  study  of  the  vocation  of  man  ;  how  could  a  man  live 
rightly  without  studying  his  vocation  ?  how  could  a  man  who 
was  studying  his  vocation  fail  to  be  well  employed  t     Horace 


HORACE. 


315 


was  quite  ready  to  adopt  from  Stoicism  its  exaggerated  sense 
of  moral  responsibility  and  its  exaggerated  condemnation  of 
the  natural  man,  who  lives  by  habit  or  temper,  not  by  system. 
But  the  system  of  Stoicism  did  not  grow  upon  him  ;  besides 
the  objections  which  he  felt  from  the  first,  the  attitude  of 
comparing  doctrines  and  trying  experiments  was  much  more 
fivorable  to  selfcomplacency  than  going  humbly  to  school 
when  he  was  growing  old.  Sometimes  he  thought  of  doing 
all  the  business  which  could  not  but  come  in  the  way  of  an 
intimate  of  Maecenas  heartily,  and  making  himself  a  useful 
citizen  ;  sometimes  he  indulged  his  natural  love  of  ease,  and 
found  reasons  for  staying  at  his  Sabine  farm  or  elsewhere,  to 
arrange  things  to  his  own  mind  instead  of  trying  to  fit  him- 
self to  the  course  of  the  world.  Naturally  the  study  was  not 
a  srreat  success  ;  Horace  found  himself  as  irritable  as  ever, 
and  more  peevish  than  he  had  been  before ;  the  letter  to 
Albinovanus  contains  a  confession  of  his  failure.  But  in  spite 
of  discouragement  he  persevered  ;  he  knew  that  a  neglected 
character  goes  to  pieces  in  a  disgusting  manner  when  the 
constitution  gives  way,  and  that  a  character  well  trained  in 
time  gains  in  purity  and  dignity  as  the  lower  nature  decays. 
Although  he  probably  knew  that  he  had  no  natural  vocation 
for  perfection,  that  he  was  born  with  a  weak  will  as  he  was 
born  with  weak  eyes,  the  inference  he  drew  was  that  it  was 
needful  to  take  care  of  both,  and  he  probably  felt  his  superi- 
ority to  the  mechanical  one-sided  absolutism  of  the  Stoics, 
when  he  observed  that  it  is  possible  to  go  on  to  a  certain 
point,  if  not  permitted  to  go  further.  It  is  of  a  piece  with  this, 
that  in  the  first  letter  to  Lollius  he  concludes  with  a  resolu- 
tion to  go  his  own  pace,  without  waiting  for  laggards  or  press- 
ing on  those  in  front  of  him.  It  is  characteristic,  too,  that  he 
lays  down  the  principle  that  Homer  is  a  better  ethical  teacher 
than  Chrysippus  or  Grantor.  This  is  a  way  of  saying  that 
what  he  wants  is  not  a  body  of  ethical  doctrine,  but  an  illus- 
tration of  a  very  few  ethical  aphorisms.  One  has  been  often 
quoted  which  tells  how  peoples  suffer  for  the  faults  of  kings ; 
perhaps  Horace  attached  more  importance  to  the  comparison 
between  himself  and   most  of  his  contemporaries  and  the 


i6 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


worthless  crowd  who  fill  up  the  background  of  the  *•  Odys- 
sey." The  craving  for  coarse  pleasure,  the  indifference  to 
noble  action,  which  are  always  general  on  the  morrow  of  revo- 
lutions, disturbed  him  almost  as  much  as  the  recklessness 
with  which  people  allowed  envy,  anger,  and  avarice  to  grow 
upon  them  without  reflecting  on  the  misery  they  were  laying 
up.  It  is  noticeable  as  a  proof  of  Horace's  conscientious 
good-sense  that  he  does  not  attack  the  cynic,  who  thinks  that 
virtue  is  so  much  words  as  a  wood  is  so  much  logs,  and  throws 
himself  with  conviction  into  money-making.  Such  a  man  is 
really  not  avaricious;  he  is  never  at  leisure  to  be  tormented 
by  the  craving  for  money,  which  is  felt  most  keenly  in  the  irk- 
some intervals  of  energetic  efforts  to  get  it. 

This  state  of  mind  is  not  favorable  to  literary  activity,  and 
Horace  wrote  little  except  letters,  and  we  cannot  assume  that 
anything  like  all  the  twenty  letters  contained  in  the  first  book, 
which  was  published  when  he  was  forty-four  —  with  serious 
doubts  as  to  whether  it  was  worth  publishing — were  recent 
then.  Several  are  mere  notes  of  introduction  or  invitation, 
and  even  an  introduction  is  the  pretext  for  the  lecture  on 
money  matters  to  Iccius,  who  had  philosophical  pretensions, 
and  a  temperament  more  given  to  gain  than  Horace  approved. 
So,  too,  the  letter  to  Albinovanus  seems  a  congratulation  on 
his  position  as  secretary  to  Tiberius  in  his  Armenian  expedi- 
tion, which  in  one  way  or  another  is  the  occasion  of  several 
of  Horace's  notes.  The  letters  which  show  most  deliberate 
intention  are  the  first  to  Maecenas,  which  must  be  one  of  the 
latest,  and  the  pair  of  letters  to  Scaeva  and  Lollius  on  the 
whole  duty  of  a  retainer.  That  to  Scaeva  brings  out  the  rea- 
sons a  young  man  of  spirit  has  to  court  the  great — unless  he 
chooses  to  vegetate  in  a  corner,  "for,  after  all,  to  be  born  and 
die  without  notice  is  no  bad  life."  At  the  same  time,  he  must 
remember  his  own  dignity,  never  ask  for  money  or  money's 
worth,  either  because  he  is  really  poor  or  because  he  says  he 
has  been  robbed.  Lollius  apparently  had  entered  upon  the 
career  about  which  Scaeva  still  was  hesitating;  and  Horace 
lectures  him  on  a  fault  opposite  to  that  on  which  he  lectures 
Scaeva.     The  retainer  must  not  give  himself  airs  of  indepen- 


HORACE. 


317 


I 


dence  about  trifles  :  if  he  tries  to  set  up  for  being  as  fine  a 
gentleman  as  his  patron,  he  makes  himself  ridiculous  :  it  is 
only  a  very  rich  man  of  high  station  who  can  afford  to  play 
the  fool.     Then,  too,  the  retainer,  besides  avoiding  self-asser- 
tion and  display,  must  be  willing  to  humor  his  patron  and  to 
share  his  interests.     He  must  be  careful  how  he  gets  his  pa- 
tron talked  about,  and  he  must  avoid  the  mistake  which  Vergil 
made  about  **  Alexis  :"  he  must  be  careful  what  introductions 
he  gives;  and,  when  he  has  given  one,  he  must  defend  the 
friend  he  introduces,  in  case  of  need,  up  to  the  latest  possible 
moment.     After  all,  it  is  a  risky  line  of  life,  in  which  success 
depends  very  much  on  the  retainer  having  a  temperament  to 
suit  the  patron  ;  and  at  Horace's  age,  whenever  it  is  possible 
to  get  quietly  into  the  country,  nothing  in  the  way  of  advance- 
ment seems  so  desirable  as  to  live  the  end  of  life  to  one's  self 
in  health  and  peace,     This  was  difficult  enough,  as  we  see 
from  a  letter  to  Maecenas  in  which  Horace  apologizes,  with  an 
odd  mixture  of  cajolerie  and  obstinacy,  for  his  determination 
to  prolong  a  five  days'  leave  of  absence  indefinitely :  Maece- 
nas would  not  surely  wish  him  to  risk  his  health  in  the  heats 
of  autumn  ;  and  then,  when  winter  comes  on,  he  will  have  to 
take  care  of  himself  and  get  into  a  corner  and  read.     Maece- 
nas knew  the  value  of  his  gift  when  he  made  Horace  inde- 
pendent ;  and  if  he  disapproves  the  use  he  makes  of  his  inde- 
pendence, it  is  for  the  patron  to  reclaim  his  gifts  :  they  will 
be  restored  as  cheerfully  as  they  have  been  enjoyed.     This, 
like  the  letter  at  the  beginning  of  the  book,  looks  late.     That 
which  stands  last  but  one  may  be  earlier :  it  seems  to  date  from 
the  days  when  Horace  still  drank  hard  and  gayly,  and  had  ap- 
parently not  written  many  of  his  loftier  odes.     Another  letter 
equally  early,  not  earlier,  may  be  that  to  Tibullus,  which  implies 
that  Horace  was  mainly  known  as  a  satirist,  and  is  probably  a 
remonstrance,  half  literary,  half  political,  on  the  inactivity  of  a 
charming  poet  who  to  the  last  refused  to  rally  to  the  empire. 
The  letters  to  Fuscus  and  Quinctius  about  his  farm  are  likely  to 
to  be  early  too :  in  the  first  he  observes  that  his  farm  has  aes- 
thetic attractions,  which  Fuscus  found  hard  to  imagine;  in  the 
second  we  see  that  most  of  his  friends  thought  more  of  its  value 


3i8 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUKE, 


than  of  its  beauty,  and  turned  first  to  the  question  whether  it 
grew  corn  or  oil,  because  there  was  a  profit  to  be  got  out  of  oil, 
while  corn  could  not  be  depended  upon  for  more  than  a  livino-. 
Of  course,  we  have  no  right  to  suppose  that  the  later  letters 
were  the  only  product  of  the  years  of  comparative  idleness 
which  came  between  the  publication  of  the  three  books  of 
"  Odes  "  and  that  of  the  fourth.     In  fact,  the  superb  ode  to  the 
elder  Lollius  cannot  but  fall  within  a  year  or  two  of  the  pub- 
lication of  the  three  books;  and  if  we  disregard  the  tradition 
which  makes  the  Vergil  of  the  twelfth  ode  another  than  the 
ej3ic  poet,  we  should  be  obliged  to  date  that  before  his  death. 
The  whole  book,  however,  has  rather  the  appearance  of  "  after- 
math :"  the  main  harvest  has  been  reaped,  and  the  later  crop, 
though  rich  in  quality,  is  scanty.     Like  its  predecessors,  the 
fourth  book  draws  its  inspiration  from  events.     The  campaign 
of  Tiberius  and  Drusus  in  the  Orisons  and  the  country  tow- 
ards the  Danube  naturally  appealed  to  the  pride  of  the  em- 
peror and  to  the  sympathies  of  the  poet  :  it  was  long  since 
such  a  considerable  military  achievement,  so  wholly  matter  for 
gratulation,  had  been  wrought  so  near  to  Italy.     It  seemed  a 
pledge  that  the  dynasty  would  be  happily  carried  on,  and 
so  called  out  the  enthusiasm  of  those  who  felt  anxiety  for  the 
future  which  they  could  not  express,  although  it  is  half  utter- 
ed in  the  ode  which  complains  of  Augustus's  prolonged  ab- 
sence in  Spain.     Another  source  of  inspiration  was  the  vigor 
with  which  Augustus  was  following  up  his  legislation  in  favor 
of  public  morality,  which,  as  Horace  grew  older,  seemed  more 
and  more  the  one  condition  on  which  he  could  hope  for  real 
durable   improvement.     The   enthusiasm   of  such   a  shrewd 
observer  is  probably  the  measure  of  the  good  effects  which 
followed  the  temporary  conformity  to  well-meant  laws.     The 
illusion  was  never  complete,  it  would  not  have  lasted;   but 
there  came  one  fortunate  moment  of  complete  fulfilment.     In 
the  year  737  it  was  decided  that  the  Sibylline  books  required 
the  celebration  of  games  in  honor  of  Apollo  and  Diana  at  the 
completion  of  a  secn/um,  which  was  supposed  to  consist  of 
a  hundred  and  ten  years,  and  to  mark  the  extreme  duration 
of  human  life.     At  these  games  a  choir  of  children  with  both 


HORACE. 


319 


parents  living,  whose  mothers  had  only  married  once,  had  to 
sin-  a  hymn  ;  and  of  course  Horace  had  to  compose  it.     1  he 
occ!asion  appealed  to  his  sense  of  piety,  which,  as  commonly 
happens  with  cultivated,  self-indulgent  men  in  an  old  society, 
attached  itself  to  ritual  rather  than  to  belief.     The  hymn  is 
stately  and  solemn,  in  spite  of  an  official  air,  which  strikes  a 
modern  reader  more  because  he  has  little  sympathy  with  the 
fervor  of  the  poet,  even  where  it  is  most  genuine,  and  comes 
nearest  to  the  tone  of  the  "Psalms  of  Degrees."     It  looks 
like  a  second  attempt,  for  in  the  fourth  book  we  find  another 
ode  to  Apollo  and  his  sister,'  which  shows  perhaps  a  fresher 
interest  in  the  celebration,  which  he  hoped  would  be  a  life- 
lon-  memory  for  the  choir.     In  taking  up  the  subject  for  the 
firsrtime,he  followed  Oreek  precedents  too  closely,  and  ciwelt 
more  on  topics  of  mere  mythology  than  suited  the  occasion  ; 
thou-h  perhaps  they  suited  Horace's  talent  better  than  the 
attempt  to  bring  out  the  physical  and  ethical  aspects  of  the 
worship  of  Apollo  and  Diana,  which  we  find  in  the  "Carmen 
Seculare"  itself.     To  find  a  measure  of  his  exultation  as  the 
chosen  psalmist  of  Rome,  we  must  turn  to  the  devout  ode  to 
Melpomene,  which  marks,  too,  a  sense  that  occasional  inspira- 
tion may  lead  to  an   enduring  consecration.     Whoever  has 
been  visited  by  the  Muse  is  a  being  apart,  to  whom  the  busi- 
ness and  the  interests  of  the  world  have  lost  their  meaning. 

As  this  ode  shows  the  persistence  of  Horace's  unworldh- 
ness,  others  show  that  his  hopes  that  years  would  subdue  his 
animal  nature  came  to  little.  Love  did  not  cease  to  torment 
him,  nor  wine  to  cheer  him,  though  one  notices  that  the  en- 
joyment of  both  is  quieter;  he  speaks  of  being  "mellow"  in- 
stead of  being  "  drunk."  When  he  invites  his  mistress  to  keep 
Maecenas's  birthday  with  him,  he  tells  her  with  an  air  of  convic- 
tion that  he  is  too  old  to  love  again,  and  he  only  asks  to  be  ac- 
cepted as  a//>  aller  instead  of  "Telephus,"  whom  "Phyllis" 
would  have  if  she  were  not  forestalled  by  a  lady  as  willing  and 
richer.  This  frank  recognition  of  unideal  relations  does  not 
exclude  real  delicacy  of  feeling;  but  there  are  signs  that  Hor- 
'  Unless,  indeed,  like  the  similar  ode  in  Catullus,  it  may  have  been  in- 
tended  for  some  minor  ceremony. 


320 


LA  T/iV  LITER  A  TURE. 


HORACE. 


321 


ace  was  not  satisfied  with  himself.  He  had  called  himself  a 
pig  of  Epicurus's  sty:  one  might  almost  suppose  that  he  was 
still  thinking  of  himself  in  the  memorable  lines  which  end  the 
second  book  of  letters.  If  so,  he  thought  it  was  time  for  him 
to  die  without  waiting  till 

Voutli  tliat  wears 
Its  motley  better  kick  thee  down  the  stairs. 

However  this  may  be,  he  did  not  become  indifferent  to  litera- 
ture because  he  had  outlived  his  own  literary  activity:  he 
wished  to  be  a  whetstone  for  other  men's  wit  when  his  own 
had  lost  its  edge.     His  criticisms  are  extremely  penetrating, 
though  fragmentary  and  not  very  fruitful.     He  pointed  out 
s*!irewdly  enough  the  most  conspicuous  defects  in  contempo- 
rary literature,  and  it  is  possible  from  his  criticisms  to  form 
some   idea   of  the  general  condition  of  which  these  defects 
were  symptoms  j  but  a  large  and  connected  scheme  of  doc- 
trine is  necessary  for  a  writer  whose  criticisms  are  to  issue  in 
a  literary  reformation.     It  is  true  that  when  we  come  to  Hor- 
ace's continuator,  Persius,  we  find  traces  of  a  change  of  fish- 
ion  among  the  mob  of  gentlemen  who  wrote  with  ease.     What 
Horace  complains  of  is  a  tendency  to  fluent  showy  incorrect- 
ness; what  Persius  complains  of  is  a  fluent  mechanical  over- 
finish.     One  can  account  for  the  change  from  rude  vigor  to 
empty  pathos  by  the  decline  of  public  spirit  and  national  en- 
ergy, but  the  eager  search  for  refinements  of  verbal  melody  is 
not  a  necessary  consequence  of  this  change,  and  it  is  not  un- 
likely that  the  fashion  which  ran  to  seed  under  Nero   may 
have  been  influenced  in   some  degree  by  writers  who  had 
half  appropriated,  or  misappropriated,  a  precept  of  Horace. 

The  real  objection  with  Horace  lies  deeper:  he  shows  some 
perception  that  Roman  literature  suffered  from  being  the  ac- 
complishment and  the  pastime  of  a  class  instead  of  being  the 
work  of  trained  organs  of  the  national  life.  Poets  formed  a 
mutual-admiration  society  :  some  elegiac  poet  (Tibullus.?)  told 
Horace  he  was  a  new  Alcaeus ;  the  elegiac  poet  was  a  new 
Callimachus,  If  that  seemed  cheap  praise  (Propertius  had 
appropriated  it),  then  he  was  a  new  Mimnermus.  Admission 
to  the  society  was  easy.    Everybody,  educated  and  uneducated, 


wrote  poetry  :  and  it  was  more  than  doubtful  whether  it  was 
worth  while  to  convince  bad  poets  that  their  poetry  was  bad ; 
it  amused  them  and  hurt  nobody,  and  Horace  was  too  rea- 
sonable to  suppose  that  everybody,  or  nearly  everybody,  who 
enjoyed  writing  bad  poetry  could  learn  to  write  good  by  tak- 
ing pains.     He  has  a  sort  of  fellow-feeling  for  even  bad  poets, 
for  the  world  at  large  despises  good.     The  average  respect- 
able Roman  was,  above,  all  things,  according  to    Horace,  a 
man  of  business :  compound  addition  and  subtraction  were 
the  foundation  of  education ;  and  in  the  character  which  this 
education  developed,  all  the  springs  of  feelings  which  express 
themselves  in  poetry,  or  respond  to  poetr}-,  were  dried  up. 
Such  sentimental  or  aesthetic  interest  as  the  man  of  business 
is  capable  of  clings  round  old  associations :    he  gets  to  be 
fond  of  what  his  fathers  admired  before  him.     Horace  is  al- 
ways coming  back  to  the  grievance  that  the  literature  of  the 
Scipionic  age  was  popular  among  his  contemporaries  in  a  way 
in  which  the  literature  of  the  Augustan  age  was  not :  it  is  sig- 
nificant in  the  same  sense  that  plays  like  Sheridan  Knowles's 
sometimes  had  a  striking  success.     The  public,  if  it  was  to 
listen,  liked  to  listen  to  showy  handling  of  ethical  or  political 
commonplaces,  set   forth  by  characters  whose  behavior  was 
governed  by  a  strong  sentiment  of  their  age  and  station  :  if 
they  could  say  "  How  like  a  young  man  !"  or  "  How  like  a 
slave  !"  they  did   not  miss   mere  aesthetic   merits,  gracefully 
conducted  dialogue,  telling  situations,  or  skilfully  managed 
plots.     Then,  too,  the  part  of  the  audience  which  valued  it- 
self on  its  judgment  was  still  at  the  stage  of  judging  by  the 
moral :    Horace  himself  was  still  at  the  stage  of  respecting 
and  accepting  any  success  that  was  reached  by  what  could  be 
called  literary  means;  for  the  public,  even  the  instructed  pub- 
lic, had  reached  the  point  at  which  their  whole  pleasure  in  a 
play  was  derived  from  the  spectacle.     So  far  as  his  advice  to 
literary  aspirants  is  directed  to  their  own  conscience,  its  bur- 
den is  finish  and  self-criticism  :  nothing  is  to  be  treated  that 
cannot  be  treated  brilliantly  ;  nothing  that  can  be  treated  brill- 
iantly is  to  be  left  till  it  is  brought  to  its  full  effect.     One  of 
the  topics  which  were  most  discussed  was  the  tone  of  diction 

I.- 14* 


322 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUKE. 


to  be  adopted.    The  popularity  of  the  old-fashioned  poets  told 
in  favor  of  archaism  :  there  was,  besides,  a  current  of  mere 
"urbanity,"  catching  the  tone  of  good  society  and  tending  to 
a  narrow  fluctuating  vocabulary,  often  half  unintelligible  ex- 
cept to  the  initiated.     Horace  lays  down  that  the  poet  will  not 
fly  too  much  in  the  face  of  usage,  and  that,  subject  to  this,  he 
will  avail  himself  of  all  the  resources  of  the  language.     Per- 
haps the  theory  is  founded  upon  VergiTs  practice.     Another 
point  on  which  Horace  lays  stress  is  the  ars  cclarc  artem :  it 
is  noticeable  that  he  illustrates  this  by  the  skill  of  a  practised 
dancer,  as  he  illustrates  the  preliminary  training,  with  which 
poetasters  were  so  ready  to  dispense,  by  the  training  of  the 
athlete.     Both  illustrations  are  suggestive:   it  seems  as  if 
Horace  thought  of  the  poet  as  having  learned  to  do  difficult 
things  easily  when  he  was  at  his  best;  and,  when  he  came 
short  of  doing  his  best,  trying  over  and  over  till  the  best  came 
of  itself. 

It  is  in  the  same  spirit  that  Horace  urges  the  Pisos  to  con 
the  models  of  Greece  by  day  and  night.  He  is  still  without  a 
theory  of  art,  and  can  only  recommend  repeated  and  fastidious 
endeavor  in  the  presence  of  the  best  results.  And  it  is  to 
be  noticed,  further,  that  he  practised  what  he  preached,  for  in 
the  fourth  book  and  the  "Carmen  Seculare"  we  find  a  slight 
tendency  to  revert  to  the  freer  metres  of  Greece.  He  cer- 
tainly decided  that  in  the  Sapphic  a  weak  ciEsura,  as  in  the 
line 

Sicleiiim  regina  bicornis  audi, 

supplied  a  valuable  element  of  variety,  which  might  be  free- 
ly used  provided  that  the  line,  where  it  occurred^ was  other- 
wise sonorous.  He  was  inclined  to  doubt  whether  it  was 
necessary  that  the  first  choriambus  in  his  favorite  glyconic 
rhythm  should  end  with  a  word ;  but  a  line  like 

Non  incendia  Karthaginis  impiaj 

did  not  seem  to  invite  repetition:  and  the  next  line,  which 
begins  with  an  ignoble  pronoun,'  suggests  that  the  experiment 

'  Ejus  only  occurs  here  and  in  one  other  passage  of  the  "Odes  ;"  both 
have  been  obelized  by  ancient  and  modern  hypercriticism. 


HORACE. 


zn 


f 


may  have  been  partly  the  result  of  indolence — perhaps,  too, 
of  haste,  for  the  poem  to  Censorinus  was  probably  intended 
as  a  New-year's  gift.  It  is  remarkable  that  Horace,  who  in 
his  letters  depreciates  the  literary  achievements  of  his  lime, 
and  ridicules  the  commerce  of  adulation  which  he  shares, 
should  speak  more  seriously  and  loftily  of  poetry  in  his  "Odes" 
than  any  other  contemporary  writer ;  and  still  more  remark- 
able, that  his  estimate  seems  to  have  risen  as  his  inspiration 
flagged.  In  the  early  odes  the  feeling  seems  to  be  that  the 
Muse  admits  the  poet  into  an  ideal  world,  from  which  all  the 
sordid  anxieties  and  agitations  of  the  real  world  are  happily 
excluded  :  in  the  later  odes,  the  feeling  is  rather  that  the  poet 
idealizes  history,  that  all  the  great  men  of  the  past  whose 
memory  is  the  light  of  the  world  owe  their  glory  to  the  poet. 
Perhaps  this  view  was  suggested  by  Horace's  knowledge  that 
the  grandeur  of  the  Augustan  age  had  a  side  which  was  not 
ideal,  and  that  it  required  a  special  effort  to  see,  and  a  special 
power  to  show,  the  ideal  side,  which  he  had  made  it  his  mis- 
sion to  glorify.  We  are  accustomed,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to 
believe  that  the  best  that  is  done  in  the  world  is  immeasura- 
bly better  than  the  best  that  can  be  said  of  it :  and,  therefore, 
Horace's  view  of  the  functions  of  the  sacred  bard  may  offend 
us.  If  it  is  less  reverent  than  Vergil's  blessing  on  those 
"who  were  faithful  bards  and  spake  aright  in  Phoebus'  name," 
it  is  higher  than  the  view  of  the  elegiac  writers,  who  seem 
most  serious  when  they  anticipate  the  personal  reputation 
which  is  to  reward  their  accomplishments.  One  finds  this 
feeling  in  Horace  too ;  it  comes  between  the  w^orthier  feeling 
of  the  ode  to  Fuscus  and  the  ode  to  Lollius. 


324 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURK, 


CHAPTER   IV. 

TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID. 

When  we  turn  from  Vergil  and  Horace  to  Tibullus,  Pro- 
pertius,  and  Ovid,  we  find  that  Augustus  had  done  as  much 
to  emancipate  frivolity  as  to  embody  day-dreams.  We  are 
taken  into  a  world  that  seems  emptied  of  all  serious  interests, 
where  everybody  is  out  of  work,  and  sad  for  love  out  of  pure 
idleness.  Tibullus  stands  aloof  from  the  contemporary  en- 
thusiasm, and  will  not  recognize  any  hero  but  Messalla,  who 
stood  aloof  too.  And  he  only  honors  Messalla  because  he 
loves  him  :  he  loves  him  not  for  his  glory,  but  in  spite  of  it. 
His  natural  mood  is  indignation  that  men  should  let  politics 
and  war  withdraw  them  from  the  true  interests  of  life,  which 
are  onlv  to  be  found  in  the  heart  and  the  home.  He  hates 
effort;  his  ideal  is  to  go  through  a  narrow,  simple  round  of 
pleasures  and  duties  with  tranquil,  meditative  enjoyment.  It 
is  cruel  to  bid  him  go  to  the  wars  or  to  sea.  He  likes  to  pity 
himself  for  misfortunes  which  were  almost  imaginary.  If  his 
mistress  asks  for  money  or  turns  to  a  rival  with  a  fuller  purse, 
he  is  almost  heart-broken  :  he  is  almost  ruined  to  his  own 
satisfaction  because  in  his  minority  the  agents  of  the  trium- 
virs revised  the  boundaries  of  his  ancestral  estate  ;  though 
Horace,  in  one  of  his  earlier  letters,  rallies  him  on  his  indo- 
lence, and  confrratulates  him  on  his  jrood  looks  and  his  wealth. 
In  the  same  way,  he  thinks  himself  intensely  devoted  to  Mes- 
salla,' for  whom  he  had  never  done  anything,  except  follow 

'  It  is  not  quite  impossible  that  his  devotion  made  him  Munder  into 
hexameters.  A  contemporary  panegyric  on  Messalla,  remarkable  for  noth- 
ing but  a  tasteless  display  of  erudition  and  enthusiasm,  appears  among  all 
the  MSS.  of  Tibullus  ;  but  this  proves  little,  as  any  remains  of  the  works  of 
other  members  of  Messalla's  jjoetic  circle  would  naturallv  be  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  possessed  the  genuine  writings  of  the  one  considerable  poet 
among  them  ;  and  sooner  or  later  some  copyists  of  the  collection  would 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;   OVID, 


325 


him  in  the  Pyrenees,  and  perhaps  in  the  Levant.     In  an  elegy 
on  Messalla's  Aquitanian  triumph  in  the  first  book,  after  ap- 
pealing to  the  rivers  of  Aquitania  to  attest  the  deeds  which 
they  witnessed  with  him,  he  asks  if  he  shall  sing  of  Cydnus 
and  the  Nile,  as  if  he  had  the  same  right  to  appropriate  Mes- 
salla's exploits  there.      Probably  he  had,  for  he  goes  off  into 
a  hymn  to  Osiris,  as  if  he  meant  to  celebrate  his  mysteries  in 
honor  of  Messalla's  triumph.     This  is  not  clearly  made  out : 
the  construction  of  the  poem  is,  as  often,  vague.     Tibullus  has 
plenty  of  ease  and  beauty  and  feeling,  but  he  pieces  his  verses 
together  almost  at  random  ;  he  hardly  ever  keeps  to  one  plan 
or^'one  view  of  one  subject  through  a  poem.     For  instance,  in 
the  middle  of  the  fifth  elegy  of  the  first  book,  the  faithless 
Delia  is  in  Armenia  with  a  rival ;  at  the  end,  Tibullus  is  at 
her  door  in  Rome,  appealing  to  her  pity,  and  warning  his  rival 
that  one  is  at  hand  to  supplant  him  in  his  turn.     Sometimes 
the  incoherence  goes  so  far  that  editors,  in  despair  of  estab- 
lishing a  connection,  are  driven  to  take  refuge  in  asterisks. 
Even  poems  which  can  be  read  continuously  have  little  tirades 
embedded  in  them  about  peace,  husbandry,  war,  and  avarice. 
Tibullus  is  not  alone  in  dilating  on  the  last  topic.     The 
rei"-ning  beauties  were  willing  enough  to  encourage  writers 
whose  homage  flattered  their  vanity,  increased  their  celebrity 
—it  may  be,  touched  their  feelings.    They  were  not  willing  to 
sacrifice  luxury  and  display  to  a  sentiment ;  nor  were  poets, 
with  the  exception  of  Horace,  manly  enough  to  accept  facts 
and  hold  their  tongues:  still  Tibullus  cries  out  loudest.     When 
a  rival  carries  the  beloved  into  the  country  out  of  reach,  Ti- 
bullus detests  the  country,  and  wishes  man  had  continued  to 
live  upon  acorns.     Of  course  this  is  sentiment  run  mad  :  no 
poet  loved  the  country  better,  his  sweetest  day-dream  was  to 
have  his  mistress  living  in  the  fields— with  him— in  chastity— 
and  waiting  upon  Messalla.     The  pieties  of  country  life  charm 
him  ;  he  is  the  one  genuine  believer  among  the  poets  of  the 
age;  he  has  the   simple  faith  for  which  Vergil   sighs.     He 
never  questions  the  ways  of  the  gods  ;  he  doubts  nothing  but 

start  a  tradition  ascribing  the  whole  to  the  best  known  or  only  known 
author  of  any  part. 


326 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


the  infallibility  of  evil  omens,  or  at  least  of  evil  dreams.     He 
is  half  in  earnest  with  his  thanksgivings  that  heaven  winks  at 
lovers'  perjuries  ;  he  is  quite  in  earnest  with  his  prayer  that 
the  curse  upon  the  fickle  Delia  may  not  come  true,  with  his 
tender  anxiety  to  propitiate  the  deities  on  her  behalf.     The 
tenderness  is  just  a  little  morbid  :   he  always  fancies  him- 
self dying  in  the  arms  of  Delia,  or  Delia  dying  in  his.     In  the 
same  spirit  he  says  of  his  second  love.  Nemesis,  who  was  as 
false  as  the  first,  that  he  is  not  worth  a  single  tear  of  hers. 
Such  delicacy  is  unique  in  Latin  literature  :  until  we  come  to 
Apuleius,  there  is  hardly  another  writer  who  understands  what 
delicacy  means.     Other  poetical  lovers  beat  their  mistresses, 
and  then  ask  to  have  their  hands  tied  ;  instead,  Tibullus  wishes 
that  he  might  never  have  had  hands  if  he  could  think  of  such  a 
thing. 

There  is  less  tenderness  in  what  may  be  called  the  dra- 
matic elegies  of  the  third  and  fourth  books:  the  third  deals 
mainly  with  the  loves  of  Lygdamus  and  Neaera  ;  the  fourth, 
in  a  more  fragmentary  manner,  with  the  loves  of  Cerinthus 
and  Sulpicia.  AV'e  may  guess  that  we  have  a  series  of  billets- 
doux,  or  only  the  scraps  of  verse  out  of  them ;  or  we  may  guess 
that  we  have  the  germs  which,  if  Tibullus  had  lived,  would 
have  grown  to  poems  on  the  scale  which  we  find  in  the  first 
two  books,  which  close,  not  very  impressively,  with  a  poem  on 
the  departure  of  Macer,  another  poet  and  lover,  to  the  wars 
—whither  Tibullus  would  follow  if  he  could  leave  his  love 
behind. 

As  Tibullus's  own  love-affairs  were  too  prosperous  for  the 
moment  to  write  about,  it  is  intelligible  that  he  should  have 
written  about  his  friends',  and  that  he  should  not  have  written 
so  well.  But  it  is  generally  held  that  the  inferiority  in  the 
fourth  book,  at  any  rate,  is  too  marked  to  admit  such  explana- 
tions. The  topics  in  the  third  book  are  practically  the  same 
as  those  of  Tibullus.  The  lover  is  still  patient,  and  the  mis- 
tress is  still  filse  :  the  shadow  of  death  is  still  over  all ;  there 
is  the  same  contempt  for  wealth  ;  the  same  anxious  affection- 
ate piety;  the  same  confession  that  drink  drowns  a  lover's 
cares,  though  there  is  a  sort  of  homage  to  love  in  the  very  im- 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID, 


327 


patience  with  which  Lygdamus  calls  for  wine  and  bids  the 
cup-bearer  mix  a  heady  draught.  One  fresh  topic  appears  in 
the  fourth  book  :  Sulpicia  is  a  lady  of  station,  and  is  jealous 
of  a  rival  in  a  rank  below  her  own  ;  perhaps  it  is  doubtful  if 
Cerinthus  could  have  legally  married  her.  If  so,  this  would 
be  an  additional  reason  for  the  obscurity  of  the  fourth  book  : 
the  lovers,  or  whoever  wrote  in  their  name,  would  think  it 
prudent  to  write  in  riddles,  especially  as  the  narrow  circle  for 
whom  the  poems  must  have  been  collected  would  have  the 
key  to  the  riddle  in  their  knowledge  of  the  circumstances. 

Tibullus,  with  all  his  piety,  is  very  indifferent  to  mythology, 
and  indeed  to  erudition  in  general :  all  his  poems  have  the 
character  of  a  musical  tete-a-tete,  in  which  the  reader  is  asked 
to  surrender  himself  to  a  kindly  egotist,  completely  taken  up 
with  himself,  or  his   friend,  or  his  love.     His  own  skill   in 
poetry  is  precious  to  Tibullus  only  as  it  commends  him  to 
Delia  or  Nemesis.     If  they  are  deaf  to  his  strains,  it  is  better 
for  him  to  be  silent ;  he  desires  no  fame  himself,  he  grudges  it 
them.     If  they  were  known  only  to  him,  it  would  be  easier  for 
them*  to  be  true.     The  splendors  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  are 
nothing  to  him.     He  agreed,  indeed,  to  send  a  copy  of  his 
works  for  the  library  of  the  Palatine,  with  an  added  poem  on 
the  Sibylline  books,  which  he  treats  rather  in  a  spirit  of  edifica- 
tion than  of  curiosity.     He  stands  alone  in  his  frank  indiffer- 
ence to  fame,  more 'unaffected  than  Horace's  indifference  to 
wealth;  he  stands  alone  in  his  independence  of  Alexandrme 
learning.      Perhaps,  like   Horace,  he  went  back  to  the  pre- 
Attic  literature ;  perhaps  he  is  the  friend  who  was  not  quite 
satisfied  till  Horace  had  hailed  him  as  the  Roman  Mimner- 
mus.      If  so,  Horace   was   less   adroit   than  usual   when   he 
thought  it  a  compliment  to  hail  him  as  the  Roman  Callim- 

achus. 

The  Roman  Callimachus  in  his  own  conceit  was  Proper- 
tius,  at  once  a  poet  and  an  antiquary,  a  lover  and  a  mytholo- 
gist;  though  Callimachus,  with  his  graceful,  temperate  self- 
possession,  might  question  whether  a  successor  so  boisterous, 
so  exuberant,  so  incoherent  — nay,  sometimes  so  clumsy  — 
had  not  failed  to  appropriate  the  best  part  of  his  inheritance. 


328 


LA  TIN  I.  ITER  A  TURK. 


In  most  things  the  Roman  Callimachus  is  a  complete  con- 
trast to  the  Roman  Mimnermus:  in  one  thing  he  is  like  him 
—he  is  in  earnest  with  his  love.     Even  here  there  is  a  differ- 
ence :  he  respects  neither  himself  nor  his   mistress;  he  is 
passionate,  not  sentimental,  and  he  does  not  spare  us  a  single 
phase  of  his  passion.     We  have  his  triumph,  his  indignation, 
his  suspicion,  his  insolence,  his  infidelity,  all  with  a  plentiful 
parade   of  mythological    illustration.     Cynthia   (whose   real 
name  was  Hostia)  was  one  of  the  most  learned  of  a  class  who 
often  piqued  themselves  quite  as  much  upon  their  learning  as 
upon  more  genuine  accomplishments,  so  that  Propertius  ?iad 
a  right  to  display  his  erudition  for  her  benefit.      He  is  credu- 
lous as  well  as  learned,  more  superstitious  than  Tibullus  in 
proportion  as  he  is  less  pious.     Tibullus  trusts  the  gods  of 
his  own  farm  spontaneously:  he  trusts  the  god  of  song  for 
healing,  and  the  god  of  wine  for  comfort;  he  enters  naturally 
into  the  devotion  of  his  mistresses  to   outlandish  Egyptian 
deities.     Propertius  thinks  little  of  the  gods  when  thhigs  ^o 
well:  when  they  go  ill,  he  is  afraid  of  death  and  of  gltosrs. 
He  tries  to  make  Cynthia  afraid  of  thunder,  that  fear  may 
keep  her  true.     In  spite  of  such  traits,  Propertius  is  not  an 
unmanly  or  ungenerous  writer:  he  is  absorbed  by  a  selfish 
passion,  but  not  without  a  protest.     He  does  not  imagine  that 
such  passions  are  the  only  interests  in  life;   after  *lhe  first 
book  he  admits  that  they  are  not  the  highest     He  attempts 
a  national  work  upon  Roman  antiquities  in  the  style  of  Cal- 
limachus, \yhich  would  have  covered  the  same  ground  as  the 
"Fasti."     The  plan  would  have  been  different,  and  perhaps 
better.  Ovid  wrote  at  least  half  of  a  poetical  almanac  ;  Proper- 
tius left  behind  him  fragments  of  a  poetical  guide-book.     He 
is  eager  about  all  national  concerns  :  he  has  a  song  of  triumph 
for  the  victory  of  Actium;  he  gloats  over  the  glorious  spoil 
which  Caesar,  the  new  god,  is  to  win   in  India.     Only  one 
thing  in  the   new  regime  displeases  him  :  it  is  the  abortive 
attempt,  soon  abandoned,  to  turn  him  and  all  other  Romans 
of  equestrian  rank  into  virtuous  patresfami/ias  by  law.      In  the 
same  spirit  of  obtrusive  enthusiasm,  he  poses  as  the  trumpeter 
of  Vergil  and  the  panegyrist  of  Mcecenas ;  he  writes  the  epi- 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 


329 


taph  of  Gallus.  Posterity,  represented  by  the  scholiasts,  has 
taken  him  at  his  word  :  it  has  accepted  him  as  the  chosen 
friend  of  all  with  whom  he  linked  his  name.  As  he  pays  no 
tribute  to  Horace,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  he  is  the  importunate 
acquaintance  on  whom  Horace  wrote  his  one  really  biting 
satire;  and,  beyond  his  own  testimony,  there  is  nothing  to 
show  that  his  homage  was  valued  at  the  time. 

To  judge  by  the  epitaph,  and  by  the  twentieth  elegy  of  the 
first  book,  he  was  intimate  with  Gallus,  precisely  the  most  un- 
reasonable poet  of  the  age,  whose  egotism  and  abruptness 
resembled  his  own.  He  is  not  incoherent  in  the  same  way  as 
Tibullus  :  he  always  aims  at  organic  unity,  but  seldom,  if  ever, 
reaches  it.  He  is  obscure  because  he  is  impatient;  he  is 
abrupt  and  desultory  in  the  exact  sense  of  those  words.  Two 
topics  or  more  are  in  his  mind,  and  he  says  something  of  one, 
stops  without  finishing,  and  goes  to  another:  he  leaves  his 
editors  to  devise  or  invent  the  connection,  and  conjecture,  if 
they  please,  that  he  would  have  made  it  clear  if  his  feelings 
had  not  been  too  impetuous  for  language.  Feelings  too  im- 
petuous for  language  are  seldom  deep  and  strong :  the  full 
river  runs  itself  clear.  A  mind  that  is  restless  and  not  full 
must  always  be  working,  and  often  must  work  upon  borrowed 
materials. 

Propertius  is  less  original  than  Tibullus.  He  seems  to  have 
translated  much  with  little  change  from  Callimachus:  even 
the  elegy  \q  Gallus  is  like  a  translation,  though  it  fits  the  cir- 
cumstances well,  and  the  epitaph,  if  it  were  not  too  stiff,  might 
very  well  be  an  extract  from  the  anthology.  The  obscurity 
of  the  first  book  is  just  the  obscurity  which  we  should  look 
for  in  a  translation.  And  there  is  this  excuse  for  the  ob- 
scurity, that  the  author  is  absorbed  by  the  question  of  metre  ; 
he  is  fascinated  by  the  charm  of  the  polysyllabic  ending  of 
the  pentameter.  Catullus  gave  no  special  pains  to  the  mat- 
ter :  in  his  early  poems  polysyHables  are  frequent,  in  the  later 
he  seems  to  settle  down  to  dissyllables  without  much  choice. 
In  Tibullus  the  dissyllabic  rule  is  observed  in  almost  all  cases 
without  reflection  ;  but  in  the  first  book  of  Propertius  it  is  the 
polysyllabic  endings  that  are  studied,  and  the  dissyllabic  that 


330 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


come  of  themselves.  The  attempt  is  interesting;  for  the 
comparative  absence  of  short  open  syllables  and  little  wards 
makes  it  impossible,  as  has  been  said,  for  a  Latin  verse  to  be 
an  exact  copy  of  a  Greek:  except  in  iambics  and  hendeca- 
syllables,  a  Latin  verse  has  to  be  more  highly  finished  than  a 
Greek,  if  it  is  not  to  be  more  unfinished.  Still,  the  attempt 
at  an  artificial  grace  compromises  the  independence  of  Pro- 
pertius :  he  ends  too  many  lines  with  Greek  proper  names; 
he  is  driven,  too,  to  particular  Latin  terminations,  especially 
to  datives  and  ablatives  of  the  so-called  third  declension  ; 
just  as,  in  English,  writers  who  aim  at  the  uncongenial  orna- 
ment of  double  rhymes  end  a  disproportionate  number  of 
lines  with  -i?ig  and  -dh.  Even  w  ith  these  resources  there  are 
whole  elegies  in  the  first  book,  which  was  published  sepa- 
rately, where  the  natural  dissyllable-ending  prevails,  with  per- 
haps the  insertion  of  one  solitary  quadrisyllable  :  in  others 
the  beginning  of  an  elegy  is  full  of  polysyllables,  and  the 
end  subsides  into  dissyllables  as  if  they  were  easier. 

The  first  book  has  a  character  of  its  own  in  other  ways:  it 
is  more  delicate  and  reserved,  and  less  passionate.  The  author 
is  still  on  his  good  behavior:  he  boasts  of  his  own  devotion, 
not  of  his  mistress's  favors;  his  reproaches  to  her  are  gentle 
and  vague.  It  was  wrong  of  him  to  leave  her,  as  it  was  wrong 
of  her  to  wait  to  dress  before  she  visited  him  in  his  illness. 
Already  death  haunts  his  imagination  :  he  is  content  to  die, 
if  Cynthia  will  cherish  his  memory.  When  he  meets  the  hero- 
ines of  the  Trojan  war,  he  will  see  none  so  fair  as  Cynthia; 
when  he  is  a  shadow  among  shades,  it  will  be  seen  that  he  is 
the  shadow  of  Cynthia,  not  of  his  old  earthly  self.  He  prom- 
ises to  come  back  to  her  as  Protesilaus  came  back  to  Laoda- 
mid ;  but  he  will  come  in  vain,  against  her  will.  Love  will 
have  dried  her  eyes  :  no  girl,  however  true,  can  brave  the 
displeasure  of  love.  Since  death  must  part  them,  let  them 
live  and  love  while  they  may. 

In  the  second  book  there  is  more  originality.  Propertius  is 
trying  to  be  an  independent  poet,  and  to  make  himself  useful  in 
the  same  way  as  Varius :  he  would  like  to  leave  the  old  tales 
of  the  wars  of  the  Titans,  and  the  worthy  deeds  of  Marius,  to 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 


Zl^ 


sin«-  of  Caesar  and  Maecenas,  and  he  finds,  to  his  surprise,  that 
love  is  too  strong  upon  him.  Whereupon  all  the  heroes  who 
ever  were  in  love  are  cited  to  excuse  the  poet  who  is  more  in 
love  than  any  hero.  The  period  of  sentiment  is  over,  and  the 
period  of  bitterness  is  not  quite  come  :  he  has  ceased  to  ideal- 
ize his  mistress;  indeed,  her  character  is  so  doubtful  that  he 
is  tempted  to  beat  her ;  but  as  that  would  be  an  unscholarly 
revenge,  he  resolves  to  brand  her  for  all  time  with  a  verse, 
which  is  either  unsymmetrical  or  ungrammatical  or  corrupt 
as  it  stands — 

Cynthia  forma  potens,  Cynthia  verba  levis  (II.  v.  28) 

— "Cynthia  a  shape  of  power,  Cynthia  light  of  words."  If 
we  might  think  that  Propertius  coined  two  perfectly  regular 
compounds,  and  that  neither  he  nor  any  one  else  ever  used 
them  again,  we  might  read — 

Cynthia  formipotens,  Cynthia  verbilevis. 

The  spell  of  her  beauty  is  unshaken  :  he  swears,  while  cursing 
her  and  her  other  lovers,  to  have  no  mistress  himself  but 
Cynthia,  with  her  stately  stature  and  her  long  taper  hands 
and  her  robe  of  bright  red  gauze,  with  her  skill  in  dancing 
and  poetrv.  In  more  cheerful  moods  he  boasts  alike  of  the 
friendship  of  Maecenas  and  his  fidelity  to  Cynthia,  which  was 
not  quite  disinterested,  for  he  noticed  that  most  lovers  sank 
into  common  ladies'  hacks.  He  is  still  as  full  as  ever  of 
mythology  :  when  Cynthia  objects  to  being  left  alone,  she  has 
the  opportunity  of  emulating  the  heroic  constancy  of  Penelope, 
or  Briseis,  who  was,  to  be  sure,  more  faithful  than  Achilles. 
In  the  third  book,  at  last,  the  poet  breaks  loose  :  he  is  able  to 
sing  of  other  things  than  love,  and  he  sings  of  love  all  the 
better.  He  takes  Cynthia  as  he  finds  her,  scolding  her,  using 
her  roughly,  even  treating  her  to  a  little  wholesome  neglect. 
He  is  still  anxious  when  the  summer  heat  makes  her  ill ; 
though  he  improves  the  occasion  by  suggesting  that  her  ill- 
ness was  the  effect  of  her  perjuries.  As  no  doubt  her  other 
lovers  exacted  as  much  perjury  as  Propertius,  she  had  plenty 
to  worry  her  and  something  to  reproach  herself  about,  and 


ii 


i 


33^ 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


she  seems  to  have  been  really  superstitious.  Propertius  com- 
plains that  she  goes  now  to  try  the  lots  at  Praeneste,  and  to 
propitiate  Hercules  at  Tibur ;  now  to  worship  Diana  at 
Aricia  by  torchlight,  with  halt"  Rome  in  her  train,  instead  of 
staying  with  Propertius  in  Rome.  There  was  a  crowd 
wherever  she  went,  so  it  was  useless  for  her  to  pretend  that 
she  left  Rome  to  be  out  of  the  crowd. 

In  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  we  have  less  of  Cynthia:  in 
the  seventh  elegy  of  the  fifth  book  the  poet  tries  to  lay  her 
ghost.  Having  done  with  his  own  love,  he  sings  the  loves  of 
others  (V.  iii.),  and  announces  for  the  first  time  his  full  literary 
pretensions.  He  is  the  Roman  Callimachus.  Like  Callima- 
chus,  he  prefers  love  and  legend  to  heroic  poetry,  and,  like 
Callimachus,  he  expects  a  higher  reputation  from  posterity 
than  from  his  own  contemporaries.  In  a  sense  he  was  right: 
Varius  was  a  much  greater  poet  in  the  eyes  of  Maecenas, 
A.u.c.  731,  than  Propertius,  who  seemed  to  be  allowing  an  un- 
worthy passion  to  fritter  away  his  powers  and  deprive  him  of 
the  reputation  which  he  might  have  earned  by  his  unmistak- 
able power  of  splendid  declamation  in  verse.  It  may  be 
taken  for  granted  that  contemporaries  were  quite  as  alive  as 
editors  to  all  the  disconnectedness  of  a  poet  who  lived  in  a 
state  of  suspicion  and  over-excitement  which  incapacitated 
him  for  steady  work.  They  were  more  sensitive  than  editors 
to  all  his  harsh  and  doubtful  phrases,  like  that  which  tells 
how  "  that  death  is  best  which  comes  fitly  when  our  day  is 
spare;"'  for  they  had  not  the  inducement  to  display  their 
knowledge  of  Latin  by  defending  the  MS.  text,  or  suggesting 
emendations  only  less  harsh,  and  could  recognize  intuitively 
the  phrase  which  his  irregular  fancy  was  distorting  under 
more  or  less  pressure  from  metrical  necessity.  They  would 
perhaps  be  less  sensitive  than  modern  readers  to  the  vul- 
garity of  the  imitation '  of  Vergil's  aspiration '  after  poetry 
and  science.  The  originality,  such  as  it  is,  consists  in  the 
frank  sensuality.  Propertius  finds  it  pleasant  to  have  haunted 
Helicon  in  early  youth,  and  to  have  twined  his  hands  in  the 

'  Optima  Mors  parca  quce  venit  apta  die. — IV.  iv.  18. 

^  IV.  iv.  19-46.  '  "  Georg."  ii.  475  sqq. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS:  OVID, 


333 


dances  of  the  Muses.  He  finds  it  pleasant,  too,  to  bind  his 
spirit  with  much  wine,  and  to  have  his  head  always  in  the 
roses '  of  spring.  It  is  only  when  he  is  too  old  for  what  he 
understands  and  enjoys,  when  the  heavy  years  have  cut  off 
love,  and  hoary  age  has  sprinkled  his  sable  locks,  that  he 
trusts  he  may  have  a  mind  to  learn  the  ways  of  nature.  Then 
he  goes  on  for  twenty  lines  or  more  with  an  empty,  frivolous 
enumeration  of  the  points  which  arouse  his  curiosity,  which  is 
never  aesthetical,  never  ethical.  What  he  is  nearest  being 
serious  about  is  the  life  to  come  :  and  even  then  he  only 
wonders  whether  there  are  judgments  of  the  gods  and  tor- 
ments of  the  giants  underground,  whether  it  is  possible  to 
hunger  in  the  midst  of  fruit,  and  thirst  in  the  midst  of  waters. 
For  himself,  Propertius  is  credulous :  when  Cynthia  is  dead, 
he  has  a  long  conversation  with  her  ghost,  who  appears  in  the 
form  of  her  corpse  as  he  supposed  the  funeral  pyre  to  have 
left  it.  When  in  a  later  poem  he  describes  the  death  of  a 
Roman  lady  of  rank,  the  incoherence  is  still  more  glaring. 
The  speech  of  the  dead  Cornelia  is  eloquent  and  pathetic, 
and  it  would  be  hard  to  overpraise  it,^  but  it  is  unreal  to  the 
last  degree.  The  poet  has  seen  that  the  farewell  charge  of  a 
dying  wife  and  mother  would  be  interesting,  but  he  is  not 
content  to  confine  himself  to  this  source  of  interest,  nor  yet 
to  renounce  it  when  he  is  attracted  by  the  idea  that  she  is 
answerinjr  for  her  whole  blameless  life  before  the  inflexible 
judges  of  the  world  to  come.  Even  this  thought  is  not 
steadily  kept  in  view.  The  speaker  calls  the  living  to  bear 
witness  in  her  behalf.  She  is  not  quite  sure  whether  she  is  in 
Elysium  already  ;  and  her  last  word  is,  "  Conduct  has  found 
the  way  to  heaven  ;  may  my  desert  make  me  worthy  to  have 
my  bones  borne  in  a  chariot  of  honor."  ' 

'  Does  he  wish  for  a  crown  of  roses,  or  for  a  pillow  of  rose-leaves  .^ 
"^  Admirers  of  Propertius  stake  his  fame  as  a  great  poet  on  this  work, 
though  it  has  none  of  the  musical  and  picturesque  redundancy  of  the  first 
book,  or  of  the  glowing  passion  of  the  third  or  fourth.  In  fact,  we  are 
asked  to  be  grateful  that  Propertius  is  on  the  way  to  become  like  every- 
body else  ;  and  no  doubt  a  powerful  and  eccentric  writer  commends  him- 
self most  to  general  approval  at  this  stage. 

*  Moribus  et  caelum  patuit ;  sim  digna  merendo 

Cujus  honoratis  ossa  vehantur  equis. 


334 


LA  TIN-  LITER  A  TURE, 


The  transition  from  Tibullus  and  Propertius  to  Ovid  is  the 
transition  from  the  poetry  of  personal  feeling  and  passion  and 
ambition  to  the  poetry  of  self-possessed,  self-conscious  art. 
Ovid  is  emphatically  a  "ladies'  man  ;"  he  is  the  only  poet  of 
the  Augustan  age,  except  Vergil,  who  was  a  water-drinker. 
The  excitement  of  haunting  women  took  the  place  of  wine  to 
him,  and  he  had  no  need  of  sleep  like  such  sentimentalists  as 
Horace  and  Tibullus.     He  is  singular,  again,  in  having  the 
sense  of  society.     He  liked  the  company  of  many  women  at 
once,  without  needing  to  be  in  love  with  any.    The  love-affairs 
of  others  were  as  interesting,  perhaps  we  should  say  as  enter- 
taining, to  him  as  his  own  :   he  never  seems  to  get  beyond 
being  interested,  or  at  most  teased  ;  a  mistress  might  be  pro- 
voking, but  the  lover  was  always  cool.     This  is  the  more  re- 
markable because  Ovid  allowed  himself  to  be  much  longer 
and  more  completely  absorbed  by  love,  as  he  understood  it, 
than  most  of  his  contemporaries.    The  other  classic  poets  were 
hardly  capable  of  anything  but  elegy  ;  moreover,  they  died 
young.     Quinctilian  has  the  air  of  repeating  the  opinion  of 
the  Augustan  age  when  he  says  that  Ovid  could  have  done 
much  more  if  he  would  have  submitted  to  the  restraints  of  a 
severe  form  of  art,  such  as  tragedy;  and  we  know  that  he  did 
write  one  tragedy,  the  "  Medea,"  which  was  highly  praised, 
and  that  he  had  hesitated  between  elegy  and  tragedy  himself. 
The  hesitation  was  not  very  serious;  it  left  no  trace  but  a 
very  conventional  dream  of  two  women  who  challenged  the 
poet's   allegiance   by  a  display   of  their   contrasted   charms. 
The  imitation  of  Prodicus's  choice  of  Hercules  is  decidedly 
more  frigid  than  Lucian's  burlesque  hesitation  between  litera- 
ture and  statuary.     It  is  certain  that  his  "  Medea  "  has  gone 
the  way  of  the  "Thyestes  "  of  Varius,  and  that  the  "  Letters  of 
Heroines"  have  held  their  place  among  the  most  vital  and 
most  fruitful  works  of  the  Augustan  age.     In  form  they  are 
not  absolutely  original :  the  transition  to  monologue  is  always 
an  easy  resource  when  the  dramatic  faculty  is  no  longer  at 
home  on  the  stage,  and  Lycophron,  the  obscurest  of  the  Alex- 
andrines, had  shown  the  way  in  his  "  Cassandra."     There  are 
hints  of  less  repulsive  writers,  including  Callimachus,  who  had 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 


335 


shown  that  it  was  feasible  to  conduct  a  monodrama  in  elegy, 
but  it  does  not  appear  that  any  of  their  attempts  were  cele- 
brated. Now  Ovid  was  celebrated  at  once.  He  had,  to  be 
sure,  a  talent  for  being  celebrated  :  he  wrote  much  and  well 
about  his  own  books,  and  doubtless  talked  more  than  he 
wrote;  and  he  had  none  of  the  shyness  of  Horace,  who, 
thouMi  he  knew  how  to  advertise  himself  to  a  high-class 
public,  preferred,  upon  the  whole,  that  his  reputation  should 
be  select. 

The  "Letters  of  Heroines"  are  an  early  work:  they  have 
a  generosity  and  purity  of  feeling  which  could  hardly  have 
survived  the  composition  of  the  "  Art  of  Love,"  and  made  the 
Middle  Ages  regard  the  book  as  a  work  of  edification — a  char- 
acter which  it  certainly  deserves  by  the  side,  not  only  of  Ovid's 
other  elegies  except  the  "  Fasti "  (which  are  uninteresting)  and 
the  "  Tristia"  and  "  Letters  from  Pontus  "  (which  are  positively 
dull),  but  of  the  wholesomer  works  of  Tibullus  and  Propertius. 
It  is  true  that  the  situations  are  often  extreme  ;  but  the  hor- 
ror of  extreme  situations  in  literature  is  only  intelligible  when 
the  majority  of  steady,  well-conducted  people  can  count  with 
almost  absolute  assurance  on  keeping  outside  such  situations 
in  real  life  ;  and,  in  fact,  it  may  be  said  to  date  from  the  moral 
revival  which  accompanied  the  expansion  of  English  industrial 
civilization  in  the  latter  part  of  last  century.  When  the  art 
of  writing  elegiacs  revived  at  the  Renaissance,  Ovid  received 
the  compliment  of  imitation  :  it  is  admitted  upon  all  hands 
that  the  three  replies  to  Phyllis,  Hypsipyle,  and  Ariadne, 
which  are  printed  in  most  collections  of  Latin  poetry  under 
the  name  of  Sabinus,  are  a  work  of  the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth 
century.  We  know  that  Sabinus,  a  friend  and  contemporary 
of  Ovid,  actually  did  write  replies  to  the  three  heroines 
named,  for  Ovid  tells  us  so  ;  but,  apart  from  the  absence  of 
MS.  authority,  many  vaguenesses  of  language  show  that  the 
author  wms  composing  in  an  unfamiliar  tongue,  although  he 
has  caught  the  superficial  aspects  of  Ovidian  Latin  sufficiently 
well  to  sive  a  kind  of  content  to  uncritical  scholars.  Besides 
these  imitations,  there  are  many  of  the  letters  of  the  heroines 
which  are  doubtful,  because  the  MSS.  of  that  portion  of  Ovid's 


Z2^^ 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


works  vary  considerably  in  the  number  of  letters  they  include, 
and  it  is  not  clear  whether  the  later  and  fuller  MSS.  represent 
a  lost  archetype,  or  the  supplementary  ingenuity  of  some  imi- 
tator more  successful  than  the  pseudo-Sabinus.  And  when 
such  a  question  has  once  been  started,  it  is  easy  to  see  how 
long  the  discussion  can  be  kept  up,  by  a  minute  examination 
of  all  discrepancies  of  style  and  diction  between  the  doubtful 
and  acknowledged  elegies,  and  by  a  microscopical  investiga- 
tion of  the  correspondence  and  divergence  between  the  letter 
of  Sappho  and  the  allusive  account  of  it  which  Ovid  wrote 
long  afterwards  ;  and  the  question  is  further  complicated  be- 
cause the  genuineness  or  the  reverse  of  the  letter  of  Sappho 
would  have  its  weight  in  deciding  the  antiquity  and  credibility 
of  the  tradition  that  Sappho  ended  her  career  at  the  "  J. over's 
Leap  "  of  Leucas.  Certainly  the  poem  must  be  called  a  failure 
by  the  side  of  others  :  there  is,  one  might  almost  think,  a  visi- 
ble transition  to  the  frigid  mythology  of  the  "Fasti."  When 
Ovid  is  speaking  in  his  own  person,  we  may  forgive  him  for 
learning  dull  legends  in  dreams:  it  is  worse  that  Sappho 
should  learn  the  legend  of  Leucas  in  the  same  way,  and  write 
a  letter  to  say  so,  on  the  eve  of  suicide.  She  has  nothing  else 
to  say  but  commonplaces.  The  thought  of  Phaon  makes 
everybody  else  insipid  :  she  dreams  of  him,  her  dreams  are 
very  vivid  ;  and  the  rough  tufa  of  the  cave  where  they  met  be- 
fore he  avoided  her  was  more  beautiful,  in  her  eyes,  than 
Phrygian  marble.  So  Juvenal  complains  of  the  marble  which 
defaced  the  grotto  of  Egeria  ;  but  our  author  is  just  as  likely 
to  have  remembered  the  cave  of  Dido  and  yEneas,  and  to 
have  invented  the  contrast  of  marble  and  tufa  for  himself. 
The  general  inferiority  is  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  Sap- 
pho's story  had  never  been  worked  out  by  a  succession  of 
poets ;  it  had  lingered  in  the  state  of  local  tradition,  and  even 
for  a  local  tradition  had  never  been  clear. 

A  modern  poet  would  have  felt  himself  more  at  ease  upon 
virgin  soil ;  but  Ovid,  who  is  modern  in  many  ways,  succeeds 
much  better  with  Dido  than  he  or  his  imitator  succeeded  with 
Sappho.  Without  being  in  the  least  embarrassed  by  the 
hazard  of  a  competition  with  Vergil,  he  uses  Vergil  without 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID.  337 

scruple,  as  a  pianist  improvising  a  fantasia  uses  the  airs  of 
greater  composers ;  nearly  everything  in  the  fourth  book  of 
the  "^neid  "  comes  over  again  in  a  quarter  of  the  space,  and 
yet  Ovid  looks  flowery  and  redundant  in  comparison  with  the 
passionate  simplicity  of  Vergil.  This  is  possible,  because  the 
story  is  taken  for  granted  by  a  series  of  ingenious  allusions, 
just  sufficient  to  reconstruct  it  by.  The  signature,  as  usual, 
gives  the  key  to  the  poem,  and,  as  often,  is  turned  into  a 
rather  heartless  epigram,  which  has  to  do  duty  as  an  epitaph. 
But  Ovid  intends  his  Dido  to  be  tenderer  than  Vergil's.  He 
does  not  care  about  her  dignity.  Instead  of  cursing  yEneas 
and  his  people  with  her  last  breath,  her  fear  is  that  his  guilt 
may  expose  him  to  shipwreck:  she  would  rather  lose  him  by 
any  way  than  death.  For  herself,  her  supplications  are  only 
another  form  of  complaint ;  she  hopes  nothing,  and  only 
writes  at  all  because,  after  losing  her  virtue  and  her  reputa- 
tion, she  thinks  it  a  light  thing  to  lose  her  words.  She  cer- 
tainly does  not  spare  them  ;  she  reproaches  ^neas  on  the 
chance  of  being  responsible  for  the  death  of  an  unborn  brother 
of  lulus. 

If  we  turn  to  the  lamentation  of  Hypsipyle  and  CEnone, 
who,  like  Dido,  had  done  service  to  lovers  who  had  deserted 
them,  we  shall  see  more  and  more  reason  to  admire  Ovid's  in- 
exhaustible fertility.  There  is  singularly  little  repetition.  It 
is  not  that  Hypsipyle  is  so  unlike  Ariadne,  or  Ariadne  so  un- 
like CEnone.  The  situation  is  reviewed  from  without,  not  from 
within  ;  but  no  circumstance  is  lost  sight  of  For  instance, 
^Enone  brings  in  the  virtue  of  Andromache  and  the  wisdom 
of  Antenor,  and  hints  that  Paris  will  find  a  successor  in  De- 
iphobus  ;  and,  with  a  pretty  affectation  of  ignorance,  she  won- 
ders how  far  he  was  forestalled  by  some  Theseus  or  other, 
and  gives  herself  airs  of  superior  virtue  to  any  woman  who 
can  leave  her  country  with  a  stranger.  It  never  occurs  to 
Ovid  to  alter  the  tradition  that  Apollo  had  been  the  lover  of 
(Enone  before  Paris;  it  never  occurs  to  him  either  to  make 
CEnone  humble  herself  to  Paris  because  he  was  not  the  first; 
and  he  does  not  overrate  his  resources.  His  CEnone  is  proud 
of  the  favor  of  the  god  who  built  the  walls  of  Troy,  which  will 

1—15 


^^ 


33^ 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


fall  by  the  guilt  of  Paris,  and  she  is  proud  of  her  own  inef- 
fectual resistance :  if  Apollo  overpowered  her,  at  any  rate  she 
tore  his  unshorn  locks.  This  is  on  the  borders  of  vulgarity; 
here  is  a  passage  which  comes  nearer  to  poetry : 

"  That  day  brought  doom  upon  poor  me  ;  thenceforth  be- 
gan the  evil  winter  of  changed  love,  that  day  when  Venus  and 
Juno,  and  Minerva,  who  looks  better  when  she  puts  on  her 
armor,  came  naked  to  your  judgment.  My  bosom  quivered 
with  dismay,  and  a  cold  trembling  ran,  as  you  told  the  tale, 
through  my  stout  bones.  I  questioned  (for  my  terror  was 
beyond  measure)  beldames  and  hoary  elders,  and  both  were 
sure  it  was  sin.  The  pine  was  felled,  the  beams  were  hewn, 
the  fleet  was  ready,  the  azure  wave  parted  before  the  trim 
galleys  ;  you  wept  at  parting,  spare  me  at  least  a  denial  of 
this  :  that  love  of  yours  is  more  reason  for  shame  than  the 
love  that  is  gone  by.  You  did  weep,  and  I  wept  too  :  you  saw 
the  tears  in  my  eyes  ;  each  of  us  was  sad,  we  mingled  our 
tears.  No  elm  is  clasped  as  close  by  the  vine  set  against  it 
as  your  arms  were  twined  about  my  neck.  Ah  !  how  often 
your  shipmates  smiled  when  you  would  complain  that  you 
were  wind-bound  ;  the  wind  was  fair.  How  often,  after  let- 
ting me  go,  you  drew  me  back  for  one  kiss  more  !  how  hardly 
did  your  tongue  bear  to  say  fiirewell !  The  light  breeze  lifts 
the  canvas  that  laps  idly  on  the  stiff  mast,  and  the  water 
whitens  beneath  the  plunging  oars.  Poor  I  can  but  follow 
the  parting  sails  with  my  eyes  while  I  may,  and  moisten  the 
sand  with  my  tears.  I  pray  the  green  maidens  of  the  sea  that 
you  may  come  home  with  speed.  Alas !  your  speed  was  to 
my  undoing.  So  it  was  my  prayers  that  brought  you  back, 
and  brought  you  back  to  another !  Woe  is  me,  that  I  hum- 
bled myself  to  the  profit  of  my  hateful  rival!  A  mass  of  na- 
tive rock  looks  upon  the  boundless  deep,  a  mountain  once, 
and  still  strong  to  breast  the  billows  of  the  main.  From  my 
station  here  I  was  first  to  mark  the  sails  of  your  galley,  and 
my  impulse  was  to  meet  you  through  the  waves.  While  I 
linger,  purple  methought  gleamed  on  the  front  of  the  prow  :  I 
trembled  sore;  it  was  no  garb  of  yours.  The  bark  drew 
nearer,  the  breeze  was  swift,  it  touched  the  shore  :  my  heart 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID. 


339 


shrank  as  I  saw  the  cheeks  of  a  woman.  Was  not  that  enouo-h  t 
AVhat  bewitched  me  to  stay  and  see  your  shameful  leman 
clinging  to  your  neck  1  Then  I  did  rend  my  robes  and  beat 
my  breast,  and  my  nails  shivered  as  they  tore  my  tearful 
cheeks.  I  filled  holy  Ida  with  the  storm  of  my  complaint, 
and  thence  I  bore  tears  of  mine  to  my  rocky  home."  ' 

»  Ilia  dies  fatum  miserrc  niihi  duxit,  ab  ilia 

Pessima  mutati  coepit  amoiis  hicms  ; 
Qua  Venus  et  luno,  sumtisque  deceiUior  armis 

Venit  in  arbitrium  nuda  Minerva  tuum. 
Attoniti  micuere  sinus,  gelidusque  cucurrit, 

Ut  mihi  narrasti,  dura  per  ossa  tremor. 
Consului,  neque  enim  modice  terrebar,  anusque, 

Longacvosque  senes:  constitit  esse  nefas. 
Caesa  abies,  sectaique  trabes,  et,  classe  parata, 

Ca^rula  ceratas  accipit  unda  rates. 
Flcsti  disccdens  :  hoc  saltern  parce  negare. 
Practcrito  magis  est  iste  pudendus  amor. 
Et  flesti  et  nostros  vidisti  flcntis  ocellos. 

Miscuimus  lacrimas  moestus  uterquc  suas. 
Non  sic  appositis  vincitur  vitibus  ulmus, 

Ut  tua  sunt  collo  brachia  nexa  meo. 
Ah  !  quotics,  quuni  tc  vento  quererere  teneri, 

Riserunt  comites  !     Illc  secundus  erat. 
Oscula  dimissae  quoties  repetita  dedisti ! 

Quam  vix  sustinuit  diccre  lingua,  Vale. 
Aura  levis  rigido  pendentia  lintea  malo 

Suscitat ;  et  remis  eruta  canet  aqua. 
Proscquor  infelix  oculis  abeuntia  vela, 

Qua  licet ;  ct  lacrimis  humet  arena  meis. 
Utque  celer  venias,  virides  Nereidas  oro  ; 

Scilicet  ut  venias  in  mea  damna  celer. 
Votis  ergo  meis  alii  rediture  redisti  ? 

Hei  mihi !  pro  dira  pellice  blanda  fui ! 
Adspicit  immensum  moles  nativa  profundum. 

Mons  fuit ;  aequoreis  ilia  resistit  aquis  : 
Hinc  ego  vela  tuae  cognovi  prima  carinae, 

Et  mihi  per  fluctus  impetus  ire  fuit. 
Dum  moror,  in  summa  fulsit  mihi  purpura  prora. 

Pertimui,  cultus  non  erat  ille  tuus. 
Fit  propior,  terrasque  cita  ratis  attigit  aura  : 

Fenn'neas  vidi  corde  tremente  genas. 
Non  satis  id  fuerat :  quid  enim  furiosa  morabar  ? 
Haerebat  gremio  turpis  amica  tuo. 


340 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


In  a  sense,  nothing  can  be  more  picturesque  or  terse  or 
musical :  it  is  even  moving.     On  a  second  or  third  readmg  it 
strikes  one  that  CEnone  is  too  voluble  to  be  deeply  moved 
herself;  but  this  is  hardly  a  reproach  to  a  poet  who  would 
not  press  Horace's  maxim,  that  he  who  would  make  another 
weep  must  grieve  himself,  too  far.     His  heroines  are  never 
self-forgetful  in  their  grief,  and  self-forgetful  grief  gets  little 
sympathy;  though  CEnone  carries  self-command  rather  far 
when  she  brings  botanical  science  to  bear  upon  the  levity  of 
Paris  :  he  is  lighter  than  a  leaf,  that  is  not  enough  ;  than  a 
withered  leaf,  that  is  not  enough  either ;  he  is  lighter  than  a 
leaf  just  then  when  it  flies  before  the  wind  whose  motion  has 
parched  it  and  it  has  no  sap  to  weight  it ;  there  is  less  sub- 
stance in  him  than  in  the  top  of  an  ear  of  corn  that  is  burned 
stiff  with  the  long  sunshine.     The  self-possession  of  Phaedra 
is  still  more  astonishing  ;  the  confusion,  which  is  even  more 
apparent   than   the    passion    in    Euripides,  is   wholly   absent. 
Even  the  passion  is  a  matter  of  inference :  the  writer  puts  his 
whole  strength  into  ingenuity.     The  tragic  part  of  the  situa- 
tion is  left  to  the  reader's  memory,  while  Phaedra  displays  her 
seductions,  and  dwells  upon  the  ease  with  which  Hippolytus, 
if  he  only  will,  may  yield.     It  is  probable  that  contemporaries 
recognized  the  seductive  matron  as  a  much  more  intelligi- 
ble Type  than  the  shy  queen  of  Euripides,  who  dies  without 
declaring  herself:  though  there  Euripides  had  yielded  to  his 
contemp°oraries,  and  rather  sacrificed  the  role  of  Phxdra  to 

Hippolytus. 

The  style  and  metre  of  the  "Heroines"  is  already  master- 
ly :  the  neat-fitting  couplets  without  a  superfluous  preposition 
or  conjunction  hint  at  everything  that  can  be  hinted  at  in  the 
space,  and  leave  the  connecting  links  to  be  supplied  by  the 
reader  for  himself.  The  structure  of  the  parentheses,  which 
to  a  practised  ear  are  never  an  interruption,  is  complete  from 

Tunc  vero  rupique  sinus,  et  pectora  planxi, 

Et  secui  madidas  ungue  rigente  gcnas : 
Implevique  sacram  querulis  ululatibus  Iden : 

mine  has  lacrimas  in  mca  saxa  tuli." 

Ovid,  "Her."  V.  31-72. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPER TI US ;  OVID,  341 

the  first.  Only  in  one  point  one  notes  an  imitation  of  Catul- 
lus which  disappears  later  on  :  we  have  the  spondaic  line,  like 

Non  haec  yEsonides  sed  Phasias  vEetine, 

where  both  the  spondee  at  the  beginning  and  the  pretty  affec- 
tation at  the  close  are  unlike  Ovid.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
"  Heroines  "  are  free  from  an  affectation  of  Ovid's  own,  which 
in  his  later  elegiacs,  from  the  "Fasti"  onwards,  becomes  very 
wearisome.  Fue/ia  in  almost  all  its  cases  is  a  capital  word  to 
end  an  hexameter  with,  but  neither  pueila  nor  faiiina  nor 
muiier  is  convenient  at  the  end  of  a  pentameter;  and,  unfortu- 
nately, it  occurred  to  Ovid  that  Jiurus,  which  properly  means 
a  daughter-in-law,  w^as  absolutely  convenient  if  used  without 
respect  to  its  natural  limitations  of  meaning. 

The  transition  to  the  "  Amores  "  from  the  "  Heroides  "  is 
the  transition  from  the  ideal  to  the  real.  Ovid  wishes  us  to 
believe  that  he  is  relating  his  own  experience,  and  boasts  that 
it  was  not  exactly  creditable.  Perhaps  the  personal  element 
would  have  been  clearer  if  the  original  edition  in  five  books 
had  reached  us  :  in  reducing  them  to  three,  nothing  that  was 
not  typical  and  of  permanent  interest  would  be  preserved. 
As  they  stand,  the  "Amores  "  are  a  complete  course  of  erotic 
philosophy,  teaching  by  example  what  the  "Art  of  Love  "  and 
the  connected  treatises  teach  by  precept :  one  might  almost 
say  that  they  are  an  elegant  letter-writer  for  the  use  of  lovers. 
In  flict,  they  are  this  and  more.  A  lover  could  hardly  be  in 
a  situation  in  which  he  could  not  find  a  love-letter  in  the 
"Amores"  to  suit  him,  and  he  might  be  full  of  sentiments 
which  he  could  not  conveniently  put  into  a  letter.  Then, 
too,  Ovid  supplies  him  with  model  entries  for  a  sentimental 
journal.  For  instance,  it  must  have  been  a  common  ad- 
venture to  be  stopped  by  a  swollen  river  on  the  way  to  an 
assignation;  and  Ovid  supplies  a  distressed  lover  with  over  a 
hundred  lines'  of  appropriate  reflections,  to  be  let  off  while 
waiting  to  see  whether  the  flood-water  will  run  off  in  time 
to  let  him* keep  his  appointment. 

First  he  tells  the  river  that  there  is  no  bridge  or  ferry,  and 

'  "Am."III.vi. 


342 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


that  he  remembers  it  used  to  be  quite  easy  to  ford  ;  that  he 
is  in  a  great  hurry,  and  will  be  no  better  for  his  haste  if  kept 
standing  there  ;  then  he  wishes  for  the  wings  of  Perseus,  or 
the  dra"-on-car  of  Ceres.  Presently  he  reflects  that  these  are 
fables,  and  tells  the  river  to  flow  within  its  banks ;  especially 
as  that  particular  river  cannot  afford  the  unpopularity  of 
stopping  a  lover.  In  fact,  lovers  have  a  special  title  to  the 
protection  of  rivers,  so  many  rivers  have  been  in  love,  from 
Inachus  to  Tiber,  who  fell  in  love  with  Ilia,  "though  her  nails 
had  marked  her  hair,  her  nails  had  marked  her  cheek!"' 
Then  comes  a  long  passage  of  mythological  pathos,  in  the 
manner  of  the  "  Heroides  :"  at  the  end  Ilia  "drew  her  rai- 
ment over  her  swelling  eyes,  and  so  cast  herself  to  perish  into 
the  swift  waters.  They  say  the  gliding  stream  spread  hands 
to  bear  her  bosom,  and  made  her  the  lawful  partner  of  his 

bed." 

Ovid  is  not  quite  clear  whether  he  means  to  rationalize  the 
tradition  into  the  suicide  of  Ilia  or  not :  perhaps  two  passages 
about  Ilia  in  the  first  edition  are  run  together  in  the  second. 
At  any  rate,  it  does  not  occur  to  Ovid  that  the  whole  story 
of  Ilia  is  just  as  credible  or  incredible  as  the  whole  story  of 
Perseus;  nor  does  it  occur  to  him  that  the  story  of  Leander  is 
more  credible  than  either,  and  at  least  as  relevant.  Instead, 
he  opines  that  the  river  which  stops  him  has  had  a  love-aff"air 
of  its  own,  of  which  the  groves  and  woods  have  been  faithful 
confidants.  Meanwhile,  he  notices  that  the  river  has  swollen 
instead  of  going  down,  and  abuses  it  in  good  set  terms  for  a 
nameless,  good-for-nothing  torrent,  which  deserves  nothing 
better  than  his  parting  curse,  that  the  sun  may  pass  over  it 
quickly  to  smite  it,  and  winter  always  leave  it  dry. 

Perhaps  we  owe  this  poem  to  the  fact  that  Ovid  had  mis- 
tresses in  more  parts  of  Italy  than  most  poets.  Corinna  was 
the  first,  but  she  was  not  the  only  one,  though  she  has  the 
honor  of  being  the  heroine  of  the  poem"  which  every  elegiac 
poet  seems  to  have  felt  called  to  write  in  honor  oi  the  first 
time  when  the  lover  embraces  the  beloved.     Naturally,  there 


1  (( 


Ungiie  notata  comas,  ungue  notata  genas." — Ovid,  "Am."  III.  vi.  48. 
2  "Am."  I.  V. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID. 


343 


is  nothing  of  the  imitation  of  a  marriage  contract  which  we 
find  in  Propertius,  always  more  earnest  than  his  contempora- 
ries, and  often  in  worse  taste.     All  the  other  commonplaces 
recur  with  variations,  and  an  evident  desire  to  be  complete. 
Ovid  is  most  original  in  his  description'  of  the  quarrel   in 
which  the  lover  beats  his  mistress,  and  brings  her  hair  about 
her  ears.     He  has  more  sense  of  humor  than  Propertius  ;  in- 
stead of  discussing  the  merits  of  the  case,  he  plays  quaintly 
with  his  pity  for  the   poor  lady  who  was   so  surprised  and 
frightened,  and  with  his  own  amazement  at  his  own  barbarity. 
There  is,  of  course,  the  assurance  that  the  disorder  was  be- 
coming, and,  equally  of  course,  not  a  hint  at  the  real  story. 
We  learn  from  the  "  Art  of  Love  "  that  his  remorse  sprang 
from  the  perception  that  a  lover  who  gave  no  costly  presents 
could  not  afford  to  lose  his  temper.     In  the  "Amores"  he 
suggests  that,  if  too   angry  to  confine  himself  to   words,  he 
ought  to  have  bitten  her  throat,  or  just  gone  through  the  form 
of  tearing  her  dress.     In  fact,  it  had  pleased  the  lady,  when 
her  color  and  her  wits  came  back,  to  insist  that  her  dress  had 
been  torn  in  the  scuffle:  and,  though  Ovid  did  not  believe  her, 
he  had  to  pay  for  the  imaginary  damage.     Even  economical 
lovers  had  to  give  presents,  and  Ovid  has  a  very  pretty  poem  '' 
on  the  sentiments  which  may  accompany  a  ring,  the  tender- 
est  of  all  cheap  presents,  tenderer  than   many  costly  ones. 
He  wishes  that  a  gift  in  which  there  is  nothing  to  prize  but 
the  love  of  the  giver  may  be  accepted.     He  hopes  that  the 
ring  may  fit  as  well  as  he  and  she  fit  each  other.     He  envies 
the  gift  that  his  mistress  will  handle:  then  he  longs  for  the 
art  of  Circe  or  of  Proteus  (he  does  not  name  either)  to  change 
him  into  his  gift ;  if  that  could  be,  he  would  firin  be  the  ring 
touching  her  body,  as  the  left  hand  steals  under  her  tunic. 
It  would  be  charming  to  slip  from  her  finger  where  the  ring 
had  clung  so  close  and  fall  on  to  her.     Then,  too,  it  would 
be  his  privilege  often  to  be  pressed  to  her  lips  when  she  had 
billets  to  seal,  for  fear  the  gem  should  be  dry  or  sticky,  and 
so  pull  the  wax  with  it  when  the  stamp  was  raised,  only  he 
hopes  he  would  never  have  to  seal  a  letter  to  a  rival.     When 


1   u^ 


m 


?> 


I.  vii. 


''  "Am."  II.  XV. 


344 


LA  ThY  LITER  A  TUNE. 


she  wishes  to  put  the  ring  away,  if  he  were  the  ring  it  should 
never  come  ofi;  and  so  forth.  He  concUides,  as  always,  with 
a  touch  of  irony.  All  his  prayers  are  vain:  a  ring  is  only  a 
ring,  not  a  man  ;  but  still  he  speeds  his  little  gift  on  the  way, 
with  a  wish  that  his  mistress  may  feel  that  he  has  given  his 
faith  with  the  ring. 

In  the  next  elegy,  Ovid  endeavors  to  compete  with  the 
rustic  sentimentality  of  Tibullus  ;  but  his  ingenuity  is  uncon- 
querable ;  he  puns,  and  is  too  accurate  in  his  topography. 
Ovid  is  in  the  country,  and  he  presses  his  mistress  to  come 
to  him  there  :  he  did  not  care  for  the  country  himself,  as 
Tibullus  did,  and  was  too  experienced  to  expect  his  mistress 
to  care  for  it  either :  he  only  ventures  to  appeal  to  her  prom- 
ise, though  the  words  of  a  girl  are  lighter  than  billing  leaves, 
and  are  trifles  that  wind  and  wave  bear  whither  they  will. 
Still,  if  she  has  piety  enough  to  care  for  the  lover  whom  she 
left,'  she  will  think  of  going  on  from  promise  to  performance, 
and  shake  the  reins  herself  over  the  streaming  manes  of  her 
ponies  as  they  whirl  her  little  car  along.  The  swelling  nioun- 
lains  are  to  fall  before  her,  and  change  to  an  easy  way 
through  winding  valleys.  The  real  attractions  of  Sulmo  are 
set  forth  with  appreciation  that  just  stops  short  of  enjoyment. 
In  the  vintage  Sulmo  is  healthy,  because  there  are  plenty  of 
streams  which  never  run  dry  in  the  greatest  heat;  the  soil  is 
never  hard,  and  the  grass  is  always  green  ;  the  rivers  float 
over  the  fields  ;  the  grass,  as  it  rises  again  above  the  water, 
casts  a  shadow  on  the  moist  soil ;  the  cool  breeze  caresses 
the  leafage  of  the  trees.  Then,  too,  it  is  a  good  country  for 
corn,  and  a  much  better  country  for  wine,  and  not  impracti- 
cable for  oil,  and  it  was  also  the  home  of  his  sires ;  and  yet 
Ovid  was  restless  there,  and  fancied  himself  among  the  sav- 
aj^es  of  Scythia  or  the  Caucasus  or  the  Taurus,  or  the  wilds 
of  Britain  where  the  natives  dye  themselves  green.  With  his 
mistress  he  could  go  anywhere  :  if  they  were  shipwrecked  to- 

*  Hence  we  may  infer  that  Ovid  was  able  to  get  his  mistress  to  come 
down  with  him  when  he  went  to  Sulmo,  no  doubt  for  the  prosaic  purpose 
of  looking  after  his  property,  though  she  took  the  first  opportunity  of  es- 
caping to  Rome. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID, 

345 

gether,  she  would  be  safe ;  as  he  puts  it,  ^'If  the  windy  might 
of  Neptune  prevail,  and  the  wave  sweep  away  the  gods  who 
would  have  helped,  still  do  you  lay  your  snowy  arms  upon  my 
shoulder;  it  will  be  easy  for  my  body  to  sustain  the  sweet 
burden."      He   remembers   that  Leander  was  drowned,  but 
then  Leander's  love  did  not   light  his  way.     One   touch  is 
very  like  Tibullus— it  was  a  cruel  idea  to  have  long  distances 
in  the  world.     Perhaps  the  tone  of  his  model  is  better  pre- 
served in  the  eighth  elegy  of  the  third  book,  where  he  com- 
plams  that,  though  his  mistress  likes  and  praises  his  poems 
Jie  cannot  find  his  way,  like  them,  to  her  presence,  because 
some  blood-stained  soldier  has  come  home  with  a  full  purse 
and  a  ring  as  a  knight.     All  the  notes  struck  are  characteris- 
tic of  Tibullus.     There  is  the  sentimental  contrast  between 
the  pure  holy  poet  and  the  cruel  mercenary  with  his  scars  • 
there  is  the  mythological  regret  for  the  discovery  of  gold  run- 
ning off  into  a  sentimental  regret  for  the  progress  of  indus- 
trial civilization.     There  is  even  the  note  of  political  inde- 
pendence—"  Men  have  built  cities;  they  have  trained  their 
hands  to  arms,  they  have  crossed  the  sea:  all  folly.     Why 
could  they  not  be  satisfied  with  earth  >     If  they  must  have  the 
sea,  why  not  the  sky?"     Then  comes  the  answer,  ''They  do 
what  they  can  :  they  build  temples  on  earth  to  their  dead,  to 
Romulus  and  to  Liber  and  to  Alcides,  and  now  to  Ccesar." 
'J'his  couplet  might  be  a  later  interpolation,  but  there  is  a  po- 
htical  flavor  about  the  denunciation  of  the  "census"  which 
IS  the  key  to  honor,  and  gives  gravity  to  the  judge  and  char- 
acter to  the  knight.     And  this  points  to  a  tolerably  late  pe- 
riod of  the  rule  of  Augustus,  when  the  gloss  had  worn  off  his 
reforms,  and   there   was  room   for  discontent  at  court.      It 
might  almost  seem  as  if  Julia  liked  to  sneer  at  her  father  and 
his  uncle.     The  sneer  is  unlike  Tibullus,  who  is  never  mali- 
cious and  never  witty,  and  Ovid's  wit  in  this  poem  is  a  fair 
promise  of  the  ingenuity  that  runs  riot  in  the  "Art  of  Love." 
^\e  know  that  he  was  writing,  if  he  had  not  written,  that  work 
before  the  last  poems  in  the  collection  of  the  "Amores"  were 
flmshed.     On   the  other  hand,  there   is  no  allusion   to  the 
Fasti "  or  the  "  Metamorphoses."    There  are  anticipations 


346 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


of  the  manner  of  the  "  Fasti "  in  the  v.ston  m  the  grove 
where  the  poet  chooses  between  elegy  and  tragedy  and  rec- 
ognizes the  former  by  one  foot  being  longer  than  the  other  ; 
and  perhaps  a  pleasanter  one  in  the  poem  =  on  the  mourntng 
of  Ceres,  who  is  thanked  for  her  benefits,  and  bantered,  not 
too  disrespcctfullv,  upon  her  own  love-affair  with  Jupiter  in 
Crete-even  Cretans  tell  the  truth  sometimes— just  to  prove 
the  inconsistency  of  trying  to  do  her  honor  by  suspending  all 
other  love-affairs  upon  her  festival ;  which,  like  all  other  feasts 
of  the  lord  gods,  ought  to  be  kept  with  the  acceptable  otfer- 
inss  of  love  and  song  and  wine. 

On  the  whole,  it  is  safest  to  suppose  that  the  three  earlier 
series  of  elegies  proceeded  pari  passu,  though,  speaking 
rou-hlv,  the  '-Heroines"  may  be  put  at  the  commencement 
of  that'  stage  of  Ovid's  career,  and  the  "Art  of  Love    at  its 

*"  °He  had  exhausted  all  phases  of  the  subject  in  practice;  he 
had  even  married;  and  one  of  the  prettiest  of  the  later  ele- 
gies is  on  the  feast  of  Tuno  at  Talerii,"  which  he  attended  be- 
cause his  wife  was  a  native  of  the  place.     There  is  no  love  in 
the  poem,  and  only  a  vague  account  of  the  legend  :  such  leg- 
ends are  clearer  in  the  "Fasti."     What  Ovid  could  feel  f.r 
a  wife  is  better  seen  in  the  "  Tristia."     His  feeling  was  never 
of  the  same  kind  as  his  feeling  for  his  mistresses;  and  his 
feelin-  for  his  mistresses  always  ended  in  disgust,  partly  at 
himself,  and  partly  at  his  mistress.     He  boasts  of  his  eman- 
cipation ;  he  boasts  of  the  reputation  he  has  conferred,  and 
then  complains  that  he  has  given  himself  rivals.     He  soon 
comes  round  to  the  admission  that  he   hates  and    oves  at 
once,  and  is  afraid  that  love  will  prevail.     He  appeals  to  his 
mistress  to  decide  whether  he  shall  love  her  of  his  \y,ll  or 
against  his  will.     The  last  elegy  but  one  is  still  more  mgen- 
iouslv  abject.    The  poet  is  quite  content  that  his  mistress 
should  be  f^tlse,  if  only  she  will   not  force  him  lo  know  it. 
After  the   cvnical  humility  with  which  Ovid  deprecates  her 
cynical  etfronterv,  we  are  not  surprised  or  sorry  to  hear  him 
bid  the  mother  'of  tender  loves  seek  another  poet,  and  are 
•  ".\m."iii.  I.  Mb.  ID.  =Ib.  13- 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 

rather  grateful  to  horned  Bacchus,  who  has  put  it  into  his 
mind  to  tread  a  wider  floor  with  his  mighty  steeds. 

But  though  Ovid  takes  leave  of  elegy  here,  we  have  still  to 
consider  his  great  work,  the  "Art  of  Love."     This  poem  is 
divided  into  three  books,  of  which  the  first  two  are  addressed 
to  men,  and  the  third,  by  an  after-thought,  to  women.     They 
are  all  remarkable  for  their  daring  and  ingenuity.     I'he  pre- 
tence that  the  love  he  teaches  does  not  soil  the  robe  of  a  Ro- 
man  matron  is  only  a  pretence.     All  the  ladies  whom  he 
teaches  the  art  of  courting  are  married,  more  or  less;  a  great 
many  of  them  have  law  business,  important  enough  to  make 
an  excuse  for  claiming  the  attendance  of  their  lovers;  not  a 
few  have  enough  property  to  bequeath  to  make  it  worth  while 
to  be  very  anxious  and  attentive  while  they  are  ill.     Some  la- 
dies are  a  little  too  "savage"  to  be  approached  by  ordinary 
means;  then  it  is  wise  to  begin  by  "paying  court"  as  a  de- 
pendant, until  it  is  possible  to  pay  court  as  a  lover.     With  a 
lower  class,  the  inevitable  overcrowding  at  the  circus  -ave 
many  opportunities  for  gallantry  (especially  in  days  wheli  it 
was  possible  to  lift  a  lady's  robe  out  of  the  mud  and  pay  one^s 
self  by  a  peep  at  her  ankles).     It  is  needless  to  bid  a  lover 
interest  hmiself  in  the  horse  or  actor  that  she  favors  (one 
hears  much  more  about  the  horse  than  the  actor,  as  if  ladies 
of  all  ranks  followed  the  fashion  set  by  the  law,  which  admit- 
ted "matrons"  to  the   circus  and   excluded  them  from   the 
theatre).     Of  course,  neither  the  theatre  nor  the  circus  is 
the  only  scene   of  gallantry;    and  the  whole  description   of 
gallantry  implies  that  the  idea  was  a  noveltv,  and  that  the 
lover  would  require  a  great  deal  of  encouragement  to  enable 
hmi  to  make  the  sacrifice  of  paying  such  attentions  as  could 
be  commanded  from  a  servant.     This  throws  a  new  light  on 
the  habit  the  Augustan  poets  have  of  calling  their  mistress 
dominaM^xc\,  is  more  noteworthy,  for  they  call  no  man  domi- 
nus.     One  does  not  trace  the  idea  at  all  in  Latin  comedv 
where  the  heroines  are,  for  the  most  part,  only  too  thankful  to 
be  caressed  and  protected.     One  finds  the  word  in  Lucilius 
but  even  in  Catullus  it  is  hardly  established.     Li  "  Acme  and 
beptimius, '  Acme  prays  that  she  and  Septimius  may  continue 


^^8  ^^  ^^^^  LITER  A  TURE, 

fellow-servants  of  one  love.  Catullus  himself,  though  he  was 
more  absorbed  by  his  passion  than  he  liked,  was  much  more 
anxious  to  master  Lesbia  than  to  pose  as  her  slave.  There 
is  always  something  unreal  in  the  love  which  consoles  itself 
for  the  discovery  that  a  mistress  is  capricious  and  tyrannical 
by  ostentatiously  hugging  her  chains. 

Ovid  is  never  seri^ous  for  an  instant,  and  he  is  always  af- 
fecting seriousness  and  even  enthusiasm.     Ccesar's  pageant 
of  a  sham  sea-fight  (?  in  2  B.C.)  is  described'  as  having  brought 
all  Italy  together,  and  many  love-aff\irs  were  the  result :  and 
then  the  still  more  glorious  triumph  which  Caesar  is  going  to 
win  over  the  Parthians  is  described  with  apparently  a  disinter- 
ested dow  of  flatterv.     The  avenger  of  Crassus  is  at  hand  ; 
he  will  approve  himself  a  general  in  his  first  campaign  ;  he  is 
a  boy,  but  he  conducts  a  war  too  great  for  a  boy.     But  faint 
hearts  ought  not  to  count  the  birthdays  of  a  god.     Virtue 
comes  before  its  season  to  the  house  of  Coesar.     Hercules 
crushed  the  snakes  in  his  cradle;  Bacchus  is  still  a  boy,  and 
can  have  been  no  more  when  he  conquered  India :  and  so  on 
for  forty  lines.     And  then,  when  we  have  finally  come  to  the 
procession  of  conquered  generals,  with  chains  on  their  necks 
to  prevent  their  finding  safety,  as  heretofore,  in  flight,  we  learn 
they  will  be  a  show  for  joyous  lads  and  lasses,  and  the  minds 
of  all  will  be  enlarged  that  day.     When  one  of  them  asks  the 
names  of  the  kings,  and  of  the  countries  and  mountains  and 
waters  whose  emblems   are  being  carried  by,  the  lover  will 
do  well  to  have  an  answer  for  everything;   indeed,  he  had 
better  not  wait  to  be  asked.     He  should  tell  all  that  he  knows, 
and  all  that  he  can  guess;  the  blue  liairs  of  one  river  god 
must  do  for  the  Tigris,  and  the  crown  of  pale-green  reeds  is 
to  be  the  ensign  of  the  Euphrates.     He  will  always  be  able  to 
name  the  generals,  even  if  he  does  not  happen  to  know  them 
by  sight. 

Then  a  festival  leads  to  a  feast,  and  a  feast  is  full  of  oppor- 
tunities. There  Love  pushes  back  the  horns  of  Bacchus ; 
there  Love  wets  his  wings  till  he  cannot  fly  away.  Only  a 
lover  must  be  careful  not  to  commit  himself  by  lamplight, 

*  "  Ars.  Am."i.  171  sq. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 


349 


which  makes  every  woman  beautiful.  The  great  question, 
however,  is  not  how  to  make  sure  of  the  lady :  every  woman 
is  to  be  won.  Those  who  say  yes  and  those  who  say  no  are 
both  glad  to  be  asked.  Mythological  precedents  are  so  en- 
couraging that  we  almost  wonder  that  the  thriving  wooer  must 
begin  by  making  sure  of  the  maid's  good  word  before  he  ac- 
costs the  mistress;  it  is  a  knotty  point  whether  it  answers  to 
be  in  love  with  both.  Ovid,  who  always  leans  in  favor  of  de- 
cency, thinks  not.  Apparently  the  most  likely  time  for  the 
lady  to  yield  is  when  she  is  in  high  spirits,  with  nothing  to  be 
in  high  spirits  about,  for  whenever  there  is  any  special  attrac- 
tion (for  instance,  some  extra  decorations  in  the  circus)  she  is 
sure  to  put  her  lover  oft'  impatiently.  Unlucky  days,  however, 
do  a  lover  no  harm :  he  may  begin  a  prosperous  courtship  on 
the  day  of  Allia,  or  on  the  Sabbath  of  the  Syrians,  which  was 
recognized  as  a  day  unfit  for  business. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  lady's  birthday  is  eminently  unlucky, 
because  a  present  is  sure  to  be  expected ;  not  that  precau- 
tions against  presents  are  much  use :  a  hawker  will  call  when 
you  are  there  with  just  the  wares  your  mistress  wants,  and  she 
will  be  sure  to  tell  you  that  it  is  a  capital  time  to  buy.  If  you 
tell  her  that  you  have  no  cash  ready,  the  salesman  will  be 
happy  to  take  your  note  of  hand.  Besides,  it  is  no  good  keep- 
ing away  on  the  day  you  think  is  her  birthday;  as  many  days 
in  the  year  as  suits  her  she  will  greet  you  with  a  birthday  cake, 
and  expect  a  present  in  return.  It  is  better  to  submit  to  her 
rapacity  with  a  good  grace,  though  it  is  worth  a  great  effort  to 
win  the  first  caresses  without  buying  them. 

Everything  is  analyzed  in  the  same  style  of  heartless,  kind- 
ly ingenuity.  Ovid  is  always  careful  to  inculcate  prudence, 
politeness,  and  decency:  sometimes,  as  in  the  matter  of  cor- 
respondence, it  is  possible  to  give  a  relative  assent  to  his 
rules;  sometimes,  as  in  the  matter  of  feasting,  the  change  of 
manners  makes  his  rules  grotesque,  and  his  sincere  anxiety 
to  hold  fast  the  restraints  and  comforts  of  piety  in  every  de- 
partment of  life  but  one  must  always  have  been  amusing. 

In  the  next  book  Ovid  treats  how  love  is  to  be  held  fast 
when  won,  and  it  is  curious  that  he  should  have  thought  it 


50 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


worth  writing,  as  he  treats  fidehty  as  out  of  the  question  on 
either  side.  One  can  hardly  suppose  he  recommended  liai- 
sons to  be  kept  up  from  interested  motives,  as  he  regrets  the 
way  that  various /^///i"  soins  had  been  proHmed  by  legacy-hunt- 
ers though  his  encomium  on  Ladies  of  a  certain  age  is,  to  say 
the  least,  suspicious.  He  has  little  to  recommend  but  bound- 
less patience  and  good  temper.  Philters  are  criminal  and  use- 
less •  and  it  is  clear  from  the  case  of  Ulysses,  who  fascinated 
two  ^oddesses,  that  beauty  is  not  indispensable.  For  a  poet, 
he  has  a  very  poor  opinion  of  the  value  of  poetry ;  no  mistress, 
under  the  most  favorable  circumstances,  will  rate  the  most 
beautiful  verses  higher  than  a  present  of  game.  It  is  surpris- 
ing to  find  that  all  were  vain  and  good-natured  enough  to  be 
much  pleased  when  the  lover  gave  their  influence  credit  for  a 
favor  which  it  suited  him  to  show  his  slaves.  Not  that  he  re- 
lies exclusively  on  this  form  of  flattery;  the  really  important 
thinf^  is  to  persuade  your  mistress  that  you  believe  in  her 

beauty. 

After  an  ironical  burst  of  self-laudation  on  his  own  prowess 
as  a  lover,  which  ranks  him  with  half  a  dozen  of  the  most  fa- 
mous heroes  of  the  Trojan  war  (beginning  with  Podalirius  the 
sure-eon,  and  endinsr  with  Automedon  the  charioteer),  Ovid 
passes,  in  his  third  book,  to  give  advice  to  the  ladies.  The 
book  has* something  of  the  character  of  a  palinode:  after 
warning  young  men  of  the  wiles  of  the  fair,  he  has  to  turn 
round  and  admit  that  most  women  are  good ;  constancy  is  a 
feminine  virtue,  and  many  have  been  victims  to  it.  The  rea- 
son was,  they  did  not  know  how  to  love  ;  if  all  the  forlorn  her- 
oines who  died  of  broken  hearts  had  only  had  Ovid  for  their 
master,  they  would  have  lived  in  peace.  Here  much  more  is 
promised  than  is  ever  performed.  Ovid's  study  of  the  rela- 
tions of  his  world  was  one-sided:  he  knew  just  enough  of 
women  to  know  how  they  were  to  be  won,  but  not  enough  to 
teach  them  new  arts  of  conquest,  or  to  appreciate  the  feelings 
and  the  skill  with  which  they  used  the  arts  they  knew.  Hor- 
ace, who  says  far  less  of  his  mistresses,  comes  much  nearer  to 
showing  us'their  inner  life  than  Ovid,  or  even  such  true  lovers 
as  Catullus  and  Tibullus.     What  Ovid  has  to  tell  his  class  of 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID. 


351 


ladies  is  simply  how  to  dress  well,  and  make  the  most  of  their 
advantages.     And  even  here  he  is  something  less  than  mas- 
terly; he  has  observed  very  attentively,  but  we  cannot  see 
that  he  has  reflected  much,  or  digested  his  observations.     His 
two  profoundest  counsels  are,  not  to  begin  to  make  a  gain  of  a 
lover  too  soon,  and  to  affect  jealousy  a  propos  without  feeling 
it  too  much.     There  is  always  the 'chance  that  the  jealousy 
may  be  unfounded;  and,  besides,  there  is  no  use  in  trying  to 
monopolize  love,  which  is  not  diminished  by  being  divided. 
He  is  decidedly  opposed  to  too  much  expense  in  dress,  partly* 
no  doubt,  in  the  interests  of  the  lover,  and  partly  in  those  of 
the   mistress;  we  learn  that  the  two  most  expensive  toilets 
were  double-dyed  purple  and  strips  of  brocade  {scgmentd)  used 
to  border  dresses.     The  title  of  the  last  is  curious  :  it  proves 
that  women  prized  the  rich  stuffs. of  Eastern  courts  without 
daring   to   covet   a   whole   dress   of  them.     There   is   choice 
enough,  he  adds,  among  other  colors  from  air  color  to  ame- 
thyst; and  there  is  good  mythological   precedent  for  each. 
The  general  rule  is  contrast :  brunettes  should  wear  white  and 
blondes  dark  colors.     This  itself  implies  that  the  majority  of 
Ovid's  clients  were  not  exactly  beautiful,  and  needed  to  be 
made  up  for  exhibition;  accordingly,  we  find  directions  for  all 
kinds   of  toilet   observances/  from   cleaning  the   teeth   up- 
wards, which  have  to  be  practised  extensively;  false  hair  is 
very  likely  an  inevitable  misfortune,  but  there  is  no  need  to 
court  it  by  dyeing  one's  own.     Other  cautions  are  no  more 
complimentary:  ladies  have  to  learn  how  to  laugh  and  cry 
becomingly,  how  to  clip  their  words  prettily  in  talking,  and 
how  to  beat  their  bosom  and  tear  their  hair  with  a  grace  so  as 
to  be  laying  snares  for  a  new  lover  while  mourning  an  old 
husband. 

But  the  most  attractive  morsel  of  the  third  book  is  the 
story  of  the  jealousy  of  Procris,\and  the  death  which  came  to 
her  just  as  she  was  undeceived  :  there  is  more  feeling  than  in 

'  For  further  instructions  on  the  great  art  of  cosmetics  Ovid  refers  to  his 
short  but  labored  treatise  on  the  subject ;  of  which  we  have  only  a  frag- 
ment, treating  of  the  most  harmless  kind  of  face-powders. 

=  "Ars  Am."iii.  6S5-746. 


352 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


most  of  the  legends  of  the  "  Art  of  Love,"  if  less  than  in  the 
"  Heroines/'  and  the  half-humorous  tenderness  shows  that  the 
poet  is  not  yet  callous. 

Mythology  almost  disappears  from  the  *'  Remedies  of  Love," 
which  is  not  altogether  a  loss,  for  most  of  the  legends  in  the 
*' Art  of  Love  "  are  rather  too  palpable  digressions.  .  It  is  cer- 
tainly relevant  enough  that  Agamemnon  cured  himself  of  his 
love  for  Chryseis  by  sending  for  Briseis.  The  longer  digres- 
sion upon  the  poet's  ill-wishers  is  not  exactly  misplaced.  Ovid 
never  suppresses  his  own  personality,  and  has  a  right  to 
argue  against  those  who  already  proclaimed  that  the  "  Art  of 
Love"  was  an  immoral  work,  and  to  illustrate  with  com- 
placent prolixity  the  familiar  thesis  that  the  envy  provoked 
by  his  success  will  not  survive  his  day,  and  the  reasonable 
boast  that  his  elegies  would  always  rank  with  the  classics  of 
the  Augustan  age.  He  has  to  vindicate  himself  against  other 
critics,  who  thought  it  inconsistent  to  write  against  love.  Ovid 
answers,"  His  remedies  are  only  to  be  applied  to  get  rid  of 
passions  that  cannot  possibly  turn  out  happily." 

There  are  two  stages  at  which  such  love  may  be  conquered, 
at  its  beginning  and  in  its  decline.  Before  love  has  taken 
firm  hold,  a  little  resolution  will  be  effectual ;  afterwards  the 
lover  had  better  make  no  efforts,  but  yield  to  his  folly  and 
watch  its  effects.  Ovid  knows  all  the  ways  in  which  a  man 
can  learn  to  depreciate  a  woman,  and  warns  his  pupils  not  to 
test  their  disgust  too  early  :  it  is  better  to  go  on  cultivating  a 
woman  when  she  begins  to  be  a  weariness,  to  bear  a  good  deal 
from  her  caprice,  and  only  decline  her  favors  when  she  is  very 
pressing.  Of  course  all  the  processes  by  which  an  artificial  ad- 
miration can  be  worked  up  may  be  reversed  ;  with  a  little  aver- 
sion to  begin  with,  real  defects  may  be  exaggerated,  doubtful 
qualities  may  be  turned  into  defects,  just  as  with  a  little  good- 
will it  is  easy  to  turn  questionable  or  even  unquestionable  de- 
fects into  admirable  qualities.  Besides,  a  lover  has  in  most 
cases  only  to  read  or  to  employ  himself:  it  is  a  favorite  thought 
w^ith  Ovid  that  love  is  a  labor  or  a  warfare,  and  that  it  is  the 
labor  of  those  who  live  at  ease,  and,  therefore,  whoever  can  re- 
nounce ease  will  soon  be  cured  of  love.     Only  the  cure  will  re- 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID. 


353 


quire  care  to  maintain  it.  The  lover  on  the  way  to  emancipation 
must  not  boast  of  his  indifference  :  he  may  criticise  his  mis- 
tress as  much  as  he  can  to  himself,  but  it  is  dangerous  to  rail 
at  her  in  company,  and  still  more  dangerous  to  enter  the  com- 
pany of  lovers.     Solitude  is  dangerous  too :  until  the  cure  is 
confirmed,  the  patient  is  safest  in  the  hands  of  an  affectionate 
inseparable  comrade,  who  will  sympathize  with  him  in  every- 
thing but  his  folly;  and  Ovid  observes  that  this  was  the  chief 
value  of  Pylades  to  Orestes.     All  the  description  of  the  care 
the  lover  must  take  to  see  his  mistress  at  her  worst  is  fijll  of 
ingenious  though  coarse  detail,  and  as  usual  Ovid  puts  for- 
ward one  or  two  suggestions  which  he  thinks  too  trivial  or  too 
shocking  to  be  practical.     One  suggestion  which  he  develops 
with   great   complacency  is  open   to  the   criticism   that  the 
remedy  is  worse  than  the  disease.     No  doubt  a  man  who 
worries  about  his  cash,  or  his  crops,  or  the  stinginess  of  his 
father,  or  the  bad  terms  that  he  is  on  with  his  wife,  or  the  dis- 
honesty and  carelessness  of  his  slaves,  will  be  less  likely  than 
another  to  worry  over  the  unkindness  or  infidelity  of  a  mis- 
tress ;  but,  if  it  is  positively  necessary  to  worry,  it  might  be 
thought  that  a  mistress  was  the  least  humiliating  subject  to 
worry  about.     The  great  difficulty  in  emancipation  is,  that  we 
cannot  get  rid  of  the  belief  that  we  are  beloved,  and  the  self^ 
complacency  of  each  makes   us  all   a  pack  of  dupes.     The 
only  way  is  to  trust  no  words,  which  are  but  false  breath,  and 
rate  the  everlasting  gods  as  light  as  air.     A  woman's  tears 
should  never  move  the  wise,  who  know  a  woman's  eyes  have 
been  schooled  to  weep.     The  mind  of  a  lover  is  assailed  by 
arts  without  number,  as  the  waves  of  the  sea  that  beat  against 
a  rock.     It  is  better  not  to  go  into  the  reasons  which  make 
you  prefer  to  part,  and  not  to  say  what  vexes  you,  though  you 
must  remember  to  nurse  your  vexation  privately.     Do  not  re- 
mind her  of  her  faults ;  she  will  explain  them  away.     You  will 
favor  her  pleading  against  yourself,  and  wish  her  case  better 
than  yours.     Silence  is  a  sign  of  firmness,  and  whoever  says 
much  to  a  lady  is  too  interested  in  her  by  half:  if  he  scolds 
her,  it  is  only  to  give  her  a  chance  to  satisfy  him.     Another 
point,  more  important  than  it  looks,  is  to  burn  all  the  lady's 


354 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


love-letters:  there  is  great  danger  of  relapse  m  loolang  them 
over  and  remembering  how  kind  she  used  to  be.  t)'  P«  'y 
of  reasoning,  the  natural  dislike  to  your  successor  ,s  to  be  sub- 
dued by  an  affectation  of  cordiality,  which  may  be  trusted  to 

nroduce  the  reality. 

'  Although  the  "Art  of  Love  "  and  the  ''  Cure  of  Love     are 
properly  placed  at  the  close  of  a  series,  yet  the  audacity  ^^'Ih 
which  they  are  written  throughout  confirms  tlie  boast  of  the 
poet  that  they  are,  after  all,  an  early  work.     Ovid  s  manhood 
is  represented  by  the  "  Metamorphoses     and  the      tasti  ; 
and   apparently   the   " Fasti"   were   completed  (in   whatever 
sense)  first  of  the  two,  for  he  is  always  apologizing  ^orU.e  im- 
perfect state  in  which  the  "  Metamorphoses     were  left  a   hi. 
exile,  while  he  only  once  alludes  to  '*  The  Imperfect    \  oik  of 
Days  "     Apparently  the  "  Fasti  "  were  never  carried  beyond 
the  first  six  months  of  the  year,  for  there  are  no  perceptible 
sic^ns  of  want  of  finish  in  what  we  have  (it  is  true  that  he  con- 
tinued to  work  at  them  in  his  exile,  iv.  281-284).     1  ossibly 
when  Ovid  wrote  Sex  ego  Fastorum  scripsi  totidcmqiu  libclos  he 
was  past  his  prime,  and  the  dupe  of  his  own  penphrasUc 
facility.      If  so,  he  might  conceivably  have  failed    o  notice 
that  his  words  would  naturally  be  taken  to  mean-    I  wrote 
six  books  of  Fasti,  and  as  many  more,''  not  ;'I  wrote  ripon 
the  calendar,  and  got  through  six  months  in  six  books, 
not,  it  would  be  natural  to  guess  that  in  July,  the  first  month 
of  the  second  half  of  the  year,  the  poet  had  sung    he  praise 
of  one  or  other  Julia,  and  that  when  (as  seems  most  probab  t 
he  was  involved  in  the  catastrophe  of  the  younger  Jula,  this 
may  have  led  to  the  destruction  of  half  his  book.     But  he  pio- 
tests  more  than  once  that  all  his  works,  with  the  one  exception 
of  the  "Art  of  Love,"  were   innocent  and  inoftensive;  ana 
therefore  the  last  half  of  the  "Fasti,"  if  ever  ^vritten,  must 
have  been  lost  by  accident,  very  early,  for  there  is  no  trace 
of  its  existence  in  antiquity. 

The   "  Metamorphoses  "  themselves  are   a  most  brilliant 
and  interesting  work.     In  one  sense  it  is  the  most  "  romantic 
work  in  Latin  literature:  there  is  the  same  perception  of  the 
picturesque,  tl>e  same  quick  appetite  for  what  is  strange  and 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;  OVID.  3^5 

horrible,  only  there  is  not  the  same  ready  sympathy  with  all 
kinds  of  emotion.     It  might  almost  be  said  that  Ovid  always 
begins  where  Victor  Hugo  leaves  off,  and  the  inexhaustible 
ingenuity  of  detail  reminds  us  of  the  "  Botanic  Garden  "  and 
the  "  Loves  of  the  Plants."     To  take  one  specimen  among 
many  :  when  Perseus  has  slain  the  sea-monster  (one  is  glad 
tiiat  in  Ovid  he  does  not  even  use  a  magic  wand,  muchless 
turn  the  brute  into  stone  with  the  Gorgon's  head),  he  draws 
water  from  the  sea  to  wash  his  victorious  hands  ;  and  then,  not 
to  mar  the  snaky  head,  he  spreads  leaves  and  wands  of  tangle 
of  tiic  sea  upon  the  ground  below,  and   lays  the  visage  of 
Medusa,  child  of  Phorcis,  thereupon.     The  fresh  wand,  whose 
pith  was  quick  yet  with  its  draught  of  brine,  caught  the  powers 
of  the  portent  and  hardened  at  its  touch,  and  put  on  strange 
stiffness  in  leaf  and  bough.     Anon,  the  sea-nymphs  put  the 
wondrous  fact  to  proof  in  many  wands,  and  take  pleasure  to 
^w^Ci  the  same  come  to  pass  upon  all,  and  double -sow  the 
waves  with  seeds  culled  from  the  stony  plants.     The  same 
nature  abides  in  corals;  still  they  harden  at  the  touch  of  air, 
and  what  was  pliant  as  osiers  under  the  sea,  above  the  sea 
turns  to  stone  ! '     How  like  the  angel  of  the  flowers  who  gave 
(he  rose  a  veil  of  moss,  although  there  the  sentiment  disguises 
the  real  coldness  of  the  invention  ! 

What  is  characteristic  of  Ovid  is  the  zeal  with  which  he 
elaborates  the  parts  of  the  story  to  which  legend  had  paid 
least  attention.  For  instance,  the  rock  into  which  Perseus 
had  turned  the  monster  was  shown  near  Joppa ;  but  this,  the 
most  interesting  feature  of  the  legend,  is  dismissed  very 
briefly,  and  all  the  pathos  of  the  virgin  doomed  to  die  for  an 
idle  word  of  her  mother's  is  hurried  over,  not  for  want  of  ap- 
preciation. Perseus  would  have  thought  her  a  statue  of  mar- 
ble but  for  her  hair  that  moved  in  the  light  breeze,  and  her 
eyes  that  were  trickling  with  tears.  She  is  a  maiden,  and 
hardly  dares  to  speak  to  a  man.  She  would  have  covered 
her  eyes,  if  her  hands  were  free  :  she  only  speaks  at  last  lest 
It  should  seem  she  has  guilt  of  her  own  she  is  loath  to  confess.^' 
Short  as  this  part  of  the  story  is,  the  fight  between  Perseus 

•  "  Met."  iv.  740-52.  2  lb.  672  sqq. 


356 


LA  ThV  LITER  A  TURE. 
i  told  comparatively  fully  ;  that  is  to  say 


r;:cmp  risen    viu/vergil   or   any  oiher  writer  who   is  not 
p  o  ix  ^B^Twhen  it  co.^es  to  describing  the  conflict  between 
Phineus  and  his  Cephenes  and  Perseus,  Ov,d  pu  s       th  al 
his  strength.     One  cannot  tell  in  each  spec.al  case  vyhether 
a  y  1  ng\as  been  taken  from  Callimachus  or  N.cander,  bu 
"n  leneTal  it  is  clear  that  Ovid  must  have  gone  to  say  the 
a^t,  as  far  beyond  his  Greek  models  as  Valenus  F laccus 
does  beyond  Apollonius  Rhodius ;    and  the  ongmahty  (to 
.ive  it  that  name)  of  Valerius  Flaccus,  though  always  con- 
scientious, frequently  ingenious,  and  "^^^^^'""^"y  f';°'J"*;..;fi 
almost  always  a  little  tedious  ;  whereas  the  or,gn,ahty  of  O    d 
is  always  st!perbly  vigorous,  even  when  U  seems  grata  tous 
There  is  no  single  trait  that  is  to  be  called  admirable  m  the 
contention  of  Phineus  and  Perseus  ;  but  ,t  >s  all  sp.rUed  and 
entertaining,  and  just  a  little  exaggerated,  and  it  is  amazing 
'hat  any  writer  should  have  been  capable  of  supplying  so 
much  matter  of  such  remarkable  quality.     Here  is  an  average 
sample.     After  telling  of  the  death  of  the  da.n^-,  innocent 
Ath  s,  whose  mother  was  one  of  the  nymphs  of  Ganges,  the 
poet  goes  on  :  "  Lycabas  saw  him  fall  with  his  fair  face  quivei- 
L  in  gore  -  Lycabas,  the  Assyrian,  his  close  companion, 
who  took  no  shame  of  his  true  love:  and  when  he  had  made 
his  moan  for  Athis,  breathing  out  his  young  life  under  t  e 
wound,  he  caught  the  bow  that  Athis  strung  and    \Vith  me 
be  thy  strife,'  quoth  he,  '  nor  shalt  thou  delight  thee  long  in 
a  bov's  death,  which  brings  thee  more  c^rse  than  praise. 
Befo;e  he  had  ended  his  words  "  (the  bus.ness-like  Ovid  feels 
that  there  is  little  time  for  a  scolding-match  in  serious  fight^ 
ing)  "  the  piercing  weapon  flashed  from  the  string,  and,  shun 
it  as  he  would,  hung  in  the  folds  of  Perseus's  vesture.  J  he 
child  of  Acrisius's  house  turned  Harpe,  proved  by  the     augh 
ter  of  Medusa,  against  him,  and  drove  it  home  on  his  breast^ 
He  with  death  upon  him,  and  his  eyes  swimming  under  b  ack 
"ght,  looked  round  for  Athis,  and  bowed  himself  upon  h.m 
and  bare  to  the  world  below  the  comfort  that  m  deatl.  they 
were  not  parted.'"     Then  two  more  slip  m  the  blood,  and 

•  "Met."  V.  59-73- 


i-f  T  T  r>  T? 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 


357 


the  sword  withstood  their  rising,  driven  home  to  the  side  of 
one   and  the  throat  of  the  other;  against  the  next  Perseus 
"reared  in  both  hands  a  mighty  bowl,  raised  high  with  graven 
figures,  and  of  massy  weight,  and  crashed  it  on  the  wight.'* 
The  aged  and  pious   Emathion  is  slain,  like  Priam,  at  the 
altar,  fighting  against  the  impiety  of  Phineus  with  his  tongue, 
and  cursing  his  guilty  arms:  his  head  "falls  upon  the  altar, 
and  there  uttered  the  sentence  of  wrath  with  failing:  tongue, 
and  breathed  out  the  soul  into  the  midst  of  the  fire.     So  the 
battle  rages,  till  at  last  Perseus  is  compelled  by  odds  to  bare 
the  Gorgon's  head."     Thescelus  bids  him  carry  his  conjuring 
tricks  elsewhere,  and,  as  he  made  ready  to  hurl  his  deadly 
dart,  in  the  very  gesture  he  stood  fast,  a  marble  statue.     Am- 
pyx  "aimed  at  the  breast  of  Lyncides  with  his  sword:   his 
hand  stiffened  as  he  aimed,  and  would  not  move  to  or  fro." 
Eryx  "  was  ready  to  charge;  earth  held  him  on  his  track,  and 
he  abode  stiff  stone,  a  statue   in   armor."      One   soldier  of 
Perseus  saw  the  Gorgon,  and  stone  mounted  up  his  limbs. 
Astyages  assaulted  him,  and  "his  sword  rang  shrill  on  the 
marble:  before  his  wonder  was  past  he  was  marble  too,  with 
the  gape  of  astonishment  upon  his  features."  * 

And  here  even  Ovid  draws  the  line  :  he  declines  to  invent 
dying  attitudes  for  two  hundred  nobodies  more,  whom  up  to 
this  point  he  has  decided  to  leave  alive,  and  gives  five-and- 
twenty  lines  to  the  fate  of  Phineus.  He  calls  in  vain  to  his 
men  for  help ;  he  cannot  believe  there  is  none  to  hear  him  ;  he 
feels  all  who  are  in  reach,  and  finds  them  stone,  and  turns 
with  abject  words  and  gestures  to  the  conqueror  whom  he 
dares  not  face.  He  has  nothing  to  plead  but  that  he  spoke 
first,  and  is  ashamed  of  not  having  given  way  to  his  rival's 
better  right,  nothing  to  ask  for  but  bare  life.  Perseus's  reply 
is  superb  :  "  *  Poor  coward  Phineus,  what  I  can  give  (it  is  a 
great  gift  to  a  dastard)  I  will  give.  No  steel  shall  scathe 
thee ;  nay,  I  will  give  thee  a  memorial  that  shall  endure  for- 
ever, and  thou  shalt  always  be  for  a  sign  in  the  house  of  the 
sire  of  my  wife,  that  she  may  comfort  herself  with  the  image 
of  the  betrothed  of  her  youth.'     Then  he  turned  the  Gorgon 

»  "  Met."  V.  74-206. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS  -  OJzrn 


358 


LA  TLV  I.ITERA  TURE. 


rS  ^^:^::^l^^^£o..r.^.^  han^.  ana 

'"urthis  r 'iate  of  Polydcc.es  is  an  anticlimax,  and  is 
dism  sseU;  a  sentence;  and  in  another  sentence"  vve  lea  n 
ITl^Zrvi  Darted  from  her  brother  at  Senphos,  and  went 
o  He  i  on  V:  S  the  Muses  if  the  report  about  Hippocrene 
vartrue  (it  will  be  remembered  that  Pegasus  sprang  from 
he  Go  "O  's  blood).     AS  they  are  telling  her  of  th.s,  she 
hears  pes  in  the  trees,  and  then  finds  that  they  are  ..ne  s.s- 
?eTs  (the  Fierides,  would-be  rivals  of  the  Muses),  who  gave 
h Jr  a    hort  /'uas  of  the  wars  of  the  giants  as  sung  by  the 
Pilride    ancf  then,  after  due  bashfulness,  the  song  of  Calhope, 
vho  tod   of  how   Ceres  sought  for   Proserpme,  and   more 
Isnecia  ly  the  transformation  of  Cyane,  Stell.o,  Ascalaphus, 
nnd  Lvncu        As  an  episode  we  have  the  flight  of  Arethusa, 
vho  e  Sns  how  she  got  to  Sicily  in  time  to  give  Ceres  her 
firs°  news  of  her  daughter.      When  the   Nymphs  dcc.de  m 
?avor  o    the  Muses,  the  Pierides  protest  and  wa.x  abus.ve, 
whereupon  they  are  turned  into  birds.     Oddly  enough,  Mmcr- 
TS  it  will  be  to  her  glory  to  tell'  '-she  turned  1^ 
rival  Arachne  into  a  spider :  the  poet  thinks  .    w.U  be  to  h  s 
Xry  to  tell  the  story  himself,  as  two  narratives  at  second- 
hand dose  to<^etherv4uld  be  wearisome.     Unfortunately  he 
r  ottr    lo^l  to  the  goddess,  or  rather  his  l-dent.a   P-ety 
is  too  sincere  to  let  him   see  that  it  is  ignoble      Miner\a 
Uustrates  the  contests  of  the  gods  among  themselves  by  her 
icto  y  over  Neptune,  and  the  contests  of  the  gods  with  mo. 
ab  by  the  fate  of  Rhodope  and  Hxmus  turned  to  stone,  and 
the  Queen  of  the  Phrvgians  turned  to  a  crane,  and  the  daugh- 
ter of  Laomedon  to  a  rtork,  and  Cinyras  waiting  to  be  turned 
no  a  swan  and  mourning  for  the  fate  of  his  daughter^ 
A  achne  illustrates  the  humiliating  disguises  -Inch  the  gocb 
assumed  for  love.     Her  work  is  quite  as  good  ^^  Minerva  s 
X  loses  her  temper,  tears  up  Arachne's  work,  and  beats  her 
.  •■  Met."  V.  224-35.  '  II'-  ^50  sqq.  '  lb.  v..  I-I45- 


TIBULLUS;  PKOPERT/US ;  OFID. 

with  the  shuttle;  and,  when  the  poor  girl  hangs  herself,  saves 
her  life,  with  an  odd  mixture  of  spite  and  pity,  by  turning  her 
into  a  spider.  Niobe,  it  is  decided,  knew  Arachne  before  she 
married  Amphion  and  went  to  Thebes;  and  this  serves  to  in- 
troduce the  story  of  her  woes. 

Here,  as  in  the  case  of  Phineus,  the  poet  seems  to  be  writ- 
ing largely  from  works  of  art,  and  perhaps  the  framework  of 
his  poem  might  be  taken  from  a  play  on  the  model  of  Eurip- 
ides, with  a  haughty  speech  of  Niobe  at  the  beginning,  and 
the  long  r/tesis  of  a  messenger  describing  her  calamity  at  the 
close.     Then  we  learn'  that  the  honor  of  Latona  reminds 
some  spectators  of  the  fate  of  the  Lycians  who  had  driven 
her  from  a  spring  and  been  transformed  to  frogs  ;  and  their 
f^ite  in  turn  brings  up  the  story  of  Marsyas.''     But  Ovid  has 
not  done  with  Niobe  :  the  crowd,  we  learn,  were  sorry  for  her 
husband  and  her  children,  but   no  one  except  Pelops  was 
sorry  for  her;  which  makes  it  stranger  that  every  city  within 
reach  should  have  sent  its  king  to  condole  with  him.     Ovid 
however,  wanted  an  occasion  to  mention  the  ivory  shoulder 
he  bared  ni  his  sorrow,  and  thought  that  the  deputation  of 
kmgs  was  as  good  an  opportunity  as  any  to  introduce  the 
story  of  Procne  and  Philomela,  by  the  observation  that  the 
Athenians  would  have  sent  to  console  Pelops  too  if  they  had 
not  unfortunately  been  engaged  in  a  war,  in  which  they  sup- 
posed Tereus  would  be  a  usefbl  ally.^    Ovid  is  never  cleverer 
than  m  describing  the  infatuation  of  Philomela  and  the  dia- 
bolical cunning  of  Tereus,  who  pleads  a  commission   fVom 
Irocne  fbr  whatever  is  to  ibrther  the  passion  that  will  break 
her  heart.     Perhaps  the  horrors  culminate  when  Pandion  in- 
trusts Philomela  to  the  escort  of  Tereus.     " '  I  give  her  thee 
dear  son,  since  a  tender  cause  constrains  me,  as'' she  and  her 
s.ster  both  desire,  and  you,  Tereus,  desire  too  ;  and  pray  you 
by  your  faith,  and  by  the  hearts  akin  to  both,  and  by  the  -ods 
above,  that  you  will  protect  her  with  a  love  like  minc'^and 
send  me  back  the  solace  of  my  anxious  age  as  soon  as  may 
be.    Every  delay  will  seem  so  long.    And  you,  too,  Philomela, 
'"  Met."  vi.  316-81.  .,,     o 

,      TT  -     ^t).    382-OQ. 

He  gets  this  from  Thuc.  II.  xxix.  4. 


360 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIVS ;  OVID. 


361 


rome  back  at  your  best  speed  if  you  have  any  duty  :  it  is 
enoulh  to  havVyour  sister  far  away.'    He  kissed  h.s.daughter 
a   everv  word  of  the  charge,  and  asked  the  hand  of  each  as  a 
pedge'of  their  faith,  and  joined  them  each  to  each  as    hey 
Lid  them  in  his,  and  bade  them  not  to  forget  to  gue  h>s  greet- 
n<^  to  his  daughter  and  her  children  far  away,  and  hardly  sa.d 
the  last  goodbve  for  the  sobs  that  choked  his  voice,  as  he 
trembled  at  the  presage  of  his  own  mind.'  ■     We  know  all 
that  is  coming  after  this,  but  Ovid  does  not  spare  us  any- 
hincr .  and  if  tve  could  read  the  story  for  the  first  tmie,   here 
is  hardly  a  line  that  would  seem  wasted,  except  two  or  three 
i ,  which  Procne  boasts  to  her  sister  of  all  the  crmies  she 
feels  ready  to  commit.     In  the  midst  of  her  boasts  she  sees 
he    so     and  sees  her  way  :  her  first  thought  is  "  How  hke  h>s 
fother . -  as  she  seethes  with  silent  wrath.     "  But  when  her 
son  came  near  and  greeted  his  mother,  and  drew  her  neck 
down  with  his  little  arms,  and  kissed  her  close,  and  fondled 
her  as  children  can,  then  her  mother's  heart  was  moved,  her 
anger  was  broken  and  came  to  a  stand,  tears  found  the>r  way 
to  her  eyes,  which  grew  moist-  against  their  will.    -   So  far   he 
picture  is  simply  elaborate,  or,  if  you  will,  overwrought ;  but 
presently  we  have  the  characteristic  ingenuity  of  Ovid,  who  is 
never  far  out  of  sight  of  the  borders  of  the  burlesque,  and 
seldom  fairly  over  them.   "  As  soon  as  she  felt  she  was  giving 
way,  because   the   mother's   tenderness   in   her  was   all   too 
stron-  she  turned  from  him  again  to  eye  her  sister  s  face ; 
and  looked  by  turns  on  both,  and  asked, '  Why  does  one  press 
his  fondness  on  me,  and  why  is  one  tongueless  and  mute  .^ 
When  he  calls  me  mother,  why  does  not  she  call  me  sister 
See   child  of  Pandion,  what  a  husband  you  have   married . 
Yoil  are  falling  below  your  rank :  piety  is  guilt  in  the  spouse 
of  a  Tereus."   She  stayed  no  more,  she  caught  Itys,  and  drew 
him  as  a  tigress  by  Ganges  draws  the  suckling  fawn  through 

the  dense  thickets."  * 

The  transition  from  poetry  about  Tereus  to  poetry  abou 
the  Argonauts  is  furnished  by  some  score  or  two  of  clever 


lines  about  Boreas  and  Orithyia,  whose  sons  sailed  with  Ar^^o. 
There  is  not  a  word  to  explain  what  relation,  if  any,  there'^is 
between  the  Phineus  whom  Perseus  turned  to  stone  and  the 
Phineus  whom  the  sons  of  Boreas  delivered  from  the  Harpies. 
The  "  Metamorphoses  "  are  a  tolerably  complete  manual  of 
mythology;  every  legend  is  at  least  alluded  to,  and  the  poet 
has  been  at  the  pains  to  construct  a  chronological  framework 
into  which  they  are  to  be  fitted.    But  his  diligence  stops  short 
at  these  mechanical  arrangements.     He  does  not,  indeed,  al- 
low his  ostensible  subject  to  hamper  him.     For  instance'  lie 
does  not  give  any  conspicuous  transformation  in  connection 
with  the  story  of  the  Argonauts,  and  what  he  tells  is  subor- 
dinated entirely  to  the  love  of  Medea.     All  in  the  legend  that 
is  like  a  fairy  tale  is  sacrificed:  the  golden  fieece^and  the 
fire-breathing  bulls,  and  the  warriors   who  spring  from  the 
dragon's  teeth  are  just  not  omitted.    As  for  the  crusliing  rocks 
and  the  battle  with  Amycus,  and  the  fate  of  Absyrt'Iis,  and 
the  romance  of  the  northern   seas,  they  disappear  entirely 
The  struggles  of  Medea  between  love  and  honor  are  perhaps 
the  most  interesting  part  of  the  picture  to  a  modern  reader  • 
but  what  Ovid  finds  most  interesting  is  the  mere  witchcraft 
by  which  yEson  and  then  a  ram  are  restored  to  youth  and  the 
shocking  butchery  of  Pelias  by  his  daughters.     All  through, 
this  magical  interest  is  the  chief  one ;  we  may  forget,  if  we 
please,  that  Pelias  has  wronged  ^son  and  deserved'^bis  fate 
Ail  the  tragedy  of  Corinth  is  hurried  over,  simply  that  the 
author  may  get  Medea  to  Athens,  where  she  vainly  attempts 
the  hfb  of  Theseus.     With  the  mention  of  Iheseus  we  pass 
into  a  new  cycle  of  legends,  connected  chiefly  with  Minos 
and  ^:gina.     Here  we  have  a  glaring  instance  of  Ovid's  in- 
consequence,    ^geus  is  glad  to  get  his  son  back  to  defend 
him  against  Minos,  yet  we  hear  of  no  fighting.     Athens  is 
conquered  in  spite  of  the  return  of  Theseus,  and  the  tribute 
Of  victims  for  the  Minotaur  imposed  and  paid  twice  befbre 
he  put  an   end  to  it  by  the  help  of  Ariadne.     Apparently 
Ovid  did  not  care  to  tell  the  history  of  Ariadne  over  again, 
tiiough  he  had  no  objection  to  repeat  the  less  hackneyed  story 
4  Cephalus  and  Procris.     Cephalus  tells  it  to  the  house  of 

I.— 16 


T'TDiT  r  I  rc- 


n  li  /~\  r^  IT  rt  rr»  r  t  ■•  r^         ^-^  ■.  ,  ■,  ■ 


362 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURK. 


^acus,  while  he  is  wailing  for  a  fair  wind  to  sail  with  them 
to  the  aid  of  Athens,  and  has  aheady  heard  from  ^acus  the 
oricrin  of  the  Myrmidons,  probably  introduced  for  the  sake  of 
the'^splendid  description  of  the  pestilence,  composed  in  rivalry 
with  Lucretius  and  Vergil.     The  most  original  trait  is  the 
vain  appeals  to  heaven,     ^acus  stood  between  the  corpses 
of  his  people  strewn  in  the  way,^  like  to  the  apples  fallen  from 
the  bough,  or  acorns  shaken  by  the  wind,  and  the  lofty  temple 
of  his  father,  where  so  many  brought  their  vam  oblations; 
and  often  a  wife  praying  for  her  husband-a  father  for  a  son 
-with  words  of  supplication  on  their  lips,  breathed  out  their 
soul  on  the  altar  which  was  deaf  to  their  prayers,  with  some 
unburnt  frankincense  clasped  in  their  stiffening  hands.    Bod- 
ies were  cast  down  before  the  holy  gates  ;  yea,  before  the  very 
altar,  to  reproach  the  gods  the  better  with  their  death.     Ot 
course  we  have  the  familiar  trait  that  the  bearers  of  the  dead 
fought  for  funereal  pyres  ;  but  Ovid  is  not  content  with  this : 
the  plague  leaves  no  room  for  graves,  and  no  trees  to  burn 
the  dead,  which,  to  be  sure,  matters  less,  for  none  are  left  alive 
to  mourn.     The  story  of  Cephalus  is  very  pretty ;  the  moral 
standard  is  low,  and  the  hero  and  heroine  make  a  touching 
effort  to  be  above  it.     The  way  that  Cephalus  lingers  over  the 
years  that  they  led  a  happy  life  together  is  an  advance  upon 
the  treatment  of  the  legend  in  the  "Art  of  Love,"  though  it 
may  be  doubtful  whether  the  tragi-comedy  of  the  jealousy 
of  Procris  is  so  well  handled  as  in  the  earlier  poem :  when 
Cephalus  becomes  sentimental  and  explanatory  over  it,  there 
is  more  difficulty  in  forgetting  that  the  legend  is,  after  all,  ab- 
surd.    AVhile  the  house  of  .^:acus  were  listening  to  the  his- 
tory of  Cephalus,  Minos  was  besieging  Nisus  in  Megara.'     It 
cannot  be  said  that  the  fall  of  Scylla  is  an  improvement  in 
any  way  on  the  fall  of  Tarpeia  in  Propertius.     In  fact,  1  atius 
was  better  fitted  for  a  hero  of  romance,  just  because  less  was 
known  about  him.     He  was  simply  a  barbarian  or  a  tyrant ; 
while  Minos  was  a  solemn  figure,  one  of  the  judges  of  the 
under-world,  who  could  only  be  made  ridiculous  if  represent- 
ed as  the  object  of  a  girlish  passion.     To  Ovid  he  is  chiefly 
^  -  Met."  vii.  583  sqq.  '  "Ib."viii.6-i:;i. 


•  ^-r*  w^  »»    M  T^r  T  n  r? 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 


Z^l 


the  taskmaster  of  Daedalus;  and  the  trite  legend  of  Icarus* 
is  narrated  with  the  same  amplification  as  the  trite  legend  of 
Phaethon,  which  shows  that  the  lesson  of  moderation  was 
dear  to  Ovid's  heart.     The  partridge  who  was  once  a  pupil  of 
Daedalus  appears  rather  mechanically,'  to  exult  over  the  mis- 
fortune of  his  master ;  and  then  we  are  carried  back  to  The- 
seus and  the  Calydonian  boar,'  who,  strictly  speaking,  has  no 
business  in  the  "Metamorphoses,"  except  that  Meleager  died 
in  consequence  of  the  hunt,  and  that  his  sisters  were  turned 
into  birds—we  do  not  know  what  birds.     The  hesitation  of 
Althaea  is  much  labored  and   rather  frigid  :  she  rings  the 
changes  through  fifty  lines*  in  the  conflict  between  h^r  feel- 
ings as  a  sister  and  a  mother.     On  his  way  home'  Theseus 
is  stopped  by  Achelous,  who  afifably  explains  that  he  and  all 
the  rivers  round  are  flooded,  and  that  it  will  be  better  to  wait 
till  they  are  gone  down  again.     While  feasting  in  Achelous's 
cave,  Theseus  and  his  friends  notice  an  island  (one  of  the 
Echinades)  and  learn  that  she  and  her  companions  were 
nymphs,  all  of  whom  Achelous  carried  out  to  sea;  after  which 
he  fell  in  love  with  one,  and  she  was  changed  into  an  island 
to  save  her  life,  and  the  others  followed  suit.     The  profane 
Pirithous,  the   son    of  the   godless  Ixion,  ventures  to  throw 
doubt  on  this,  but  the  venerable  Lelex  reminds  the  company 
of  the  omnipotence  of  heaven,  and  enforces  his  doctrine  by 
the  story  of  Philemon  and  Baucis,  whose  piety  preserved  them 
from  the  destruction  of  their  country,  changed   their  house 
into  a  temple,  and  merited  that  when  the  end  of  their  life 
came  they  should  be  changed  to  trees  together.     The  end  of 
the  story ^  is  very  quaint  and  pretty.     "They  were  standing 
by  the  steps  of  the  temple,  and  talking  of  the  hap  of  the  land^ 
when  on  a  sudden  Baucis  espied  leaves  upon  Philemon,  and 
Philemon,  the  elder,  espied  leaves  upon  Baucis  ;  and  now  as 
the  crest  of  the   trees  outshot  their  faces,  they  exchanged 
greetings   while   they  might,  and   each   said    'Farewell,  my 
spouse!'  at  once,  as  the  shoots  grew  over  their  faces."     The 
hero  and  the  poet  are  perfectly  serious,  for  Lelex  goes  on  : 


1  (( 
3 


Met."  viii.  195-235. 
lb.  236-59. 


^  lb.  270  sqq. 
*  lb.  461-51 1. 


lb.  548  sqq. 
lb.  713-25. 


TIRUILUS :   PROPRRTfrrs  -   ctvin 


^  /t  Pi* 


3^4 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


"The  natives  of  Tyana  still  show  two  twin  trunks  that  en- 
twine their  bull<,  and  I  heard  the  tale  from  elders  who  were 
not  light-minded,  and  had  no  cause  to  mock  me.  I  saw  fes- 
toons^ipon  the  boughs ;  and  as  I  laid  fresh  garlands  for  my 
part  I  said/ The  gods  care  for  the  righteous,  and  give  wor- 
ship to  their  worshippers.' " 

Achelous  caps  the  story  with  the  fate  of  Erisichthon,'  who 
brought  upon  himself  the  curse  of  endless  hunger  by  cutting 
down  a  sacred  tree  in  the  grove  of  Ceres,  and,  having  sold 
everything  else,  sold  his  daughter,  who,  thanks  to  Neptune, 
was  able  to  change  her  shape  when  she  pleased,  so  that  as 
often  as  she  was  sold  she  came  home  to  be  sold  again,  untd 
at  last  her  ravenous  father  set  her  free  by  devouring  his  own 
limbs."     He  afterwards  tells  the  story  of  his  unsuccessful  bat- 
tle for  Deianira,  which,  after  all,  left  him  little  the  worse,  while 
Nessus  was  slain,  and  caused  the  death  of  Hercules,  which  is 
described  with  more  wit  than  sublimity.     Juno  does  not  mind 
his  deification,  but  is  angry  that  Jupiter  should  hint  that  she 
would  object  if  she  could.     Alcmena  meanwhile  has  nothing 
to  do  but  to  talk  over  the  anxieties  of  the  present  and  the 
wonders  of  the  past  with  lole.'     So  we  hear  how  Galanthis 
delivered  Alcmena  and  was  turned  into  a  weasel,*  and  Dry- 
ope  into  a  lotos,  and  how  her  son  embraced  her  face  as  it 
was  just  disappearing-^"     While  the  two  women  were  crying 
over  this  tragical  history,"  lolaus  appears  with  his  youth  re- 
newed, and  then,  after  a  sharp  burst  of  condensed  mythology, 
we  learn  that  Minos  in  his  old-age  was  harassed  by  fear  of 

Miletus.' 

And  the  mention  of  Miletus  brings  us  to  the  first  of  a  series 
of  studies  in  voluptuous  psychology,  where  Ovid  shows  more 
poetical  power  than  in  most  of  the  "  Metamorphoses."  Per- 
haps he  is  strongest  of  all  in  the  horrible  legends  of  Byblis« 
and  Myrrha,'  the  latter  of  which  from  the  days  of  Catullus 
had  attracted  special  attention  from  poets.  There  is  nothing 
in  his  treatment  of  it  to  discredit  the  proposition  that  at  bot- 


TIBULLUS;    PROPERTIUS ;    OVID. 


365 


»  "Met."  viii.  739-879. 
^  lb.  ix.  4  sqq. 
^  lb.  275  sqq. 


♦  lb.  285-323. 
5  lb.  329-93. 
<^  lb.  397  sqq. 


'  lb.  441  sqq. 
8  lb.  454-664. 
'  lb.  X.  300-502. 


tom  Ovid  was  a  right-thinking  man.  He  has  the  same  for- 
mula for  the  repentance  of  Myrrha  as  for  the  repentance  of 
Midas.'  Both  have  gone  far  astray,  and  there  is  a  kind  of 
mercy  for  both.  Midas  is  delivered  from  the  curse  of  turn- 
ing all  he  touches  to  gold,  and  Myrrha  is  delivered  from 
earthly  life  and  from  facing  the  dead  by  the  doom  which 
changes  her  into  a  tree  always  weeping;  while  her  child,  the 
child  of  sin,  has  a  charming  life  as  Adonis  and  is  beloved  by 
the  Queen  of  Love.  There  is  plenty  of  subtlety,  though  less 
strength,  in  the  picture  of  the  love  of  Hippomenes  and  Ata- 
lanta.^  When  Hippomenes  enters  himself  for  the  match,  At- 
alanta  wonders  what  god  can  bear  such  a  grudge  to  beauty 
as  to  wish  to  undo  him,  and  bid  him  stake  his  dear  life  upon 
such  a  bride.  She  judges  herself  that  she  is  not  worth  such 
a  price.  Not  that  she  cares  about  his  beauty,  and  yet  he  has 
enough  to  touch  any  woman  ;  but  he  is  a  mere  boy  still.  It 
is  the  age,  not  the  person,  that  interests  her.  "And  then," 
she  adds,  "his  courage  and  the  spirit  unabashed  by  death, 
and  his  descent  in  the  fourth  degree  from  the  god  of  the  sea : 
and  then  his  love  for  me ;  his  counting  a  marriage  with  me 
so  precious  as  to  be  willing  to  perish  if  hard  fortune  will  not 
let  him  win  me.  Ah,  friend,  depart  in  time!  leave  the  bloody 
bower  behind !  My  wedlock  is  cruel !  There  is  none  but 
will  be  willing  to  wed  with  thee  ;  a  wiser  maiden  might  well 
desire  thee.  And  yet  why  care  for  thee  when  I  have  so  many 
slain  before  1  It  is  for  him  to  look.  Let  him  perish,  since 
the  slaughter  of  so  many  wooers  leaves  him  unwarned,  and 
he  is  driven  on  to  cast  away  his  life.  And  so  he  is  to  die  for 
wishing  to  live  with  me,  and  bear  to  be  paid  for  his  love  with 
a  shameful  death.  The  indignation  at  his  death  will  be  more 
than  my  victory  will  sustain  :  it  is  no  fault  of  mine.  Ah  !  if 
you  would  but  draw  back;  or,  if  you  will  be  mad,  that  you 
were  swifter!  And  what  a  maidenly  look  on  the  poor  boy's 
fiice !  Ah!  unlucky  Hippomenes,  I  wish  you  had  never  set 
eyes  upon  me!  You  deserved  to  live.  If  only  I  were  hap- 
pier, and  my  hard  fate  did  not  forbid  me  to  wed,  you  were  the 
only  one  I  could  ever  have  borne  for  a  bedfellow."     After 

»  "  Met."  xi.  134,  cf.  X.  488.  ^  lb.  x.  61 1-35. 


ffi 


TTK TIT  T  TJ^  •    PPOPFR  TTUS:  •    H  VTH 


366 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS;  OVID. 


367 


this  it  is  not  surprising  that  Atalanta  picked  up  all  the  three 
apples,  nor  is  it  surprising  that  she  allowed  Hippomenes  to 
scandalize  Cybele,  who  avenged  Venus  for  the  ingratitude  of 
the  lovers  by  turning  them  into  lions.  Naturally,  too,  Venus 
dislikes  lions  ever  after,  and  tells  Adonis  the  story  to  explain 
her  disgust,  and  enforce  her  advice  never  to  hunt  anything 
braver  than  deer.  Venus  herself  comes  in  at  second-hand: 
Orpheus  tells  her  story  and  Myrrha's,  while  he  is  bereaved 
of  Eurydice ;  and,  as  soon  as  he  has  told  it,  the  Maenads  come 
and  tear  him  into  pieces.  Apollo  turns  the  snake  which 
^vould  have  devoured  his  head  into  a  stone,  and  Bacchus 
turns  the  Bacchanals  into  trees.  First  their  feet  are  caught 
in  the  ground  ;  and  the  more  they  pull,  like  birds  in  a  snare, 
the  f^ister  they  are  caught.  When  they  want  to  slap  their 
thighs  for  their  sorrow,  they  find  them  as  hard  as  boards  ; 
when  they  stretch  their  arms,  you  would  think  them  as  stiff 
as  bare  boughs,  and  be  quite  right.'  Meanwhile  Silenus 
was  missing,  and  was  restored  to  Bacchus  by  the  hospitality 
of  Midas.  His  double  blindness  brings  us  to  Phoebus,  and 
Phoebus  brings  us  to  Laomedon  and  Telamon.  The  latter 
brings  us  to  Peleus;  for,  if  he  had  not  been  married  to  a  god- 
dess already,  the  rescued  Hesione  would  have  been  given  to 
him  rather  than  to  Telamon.  All  the  history  is  told  at  length, 
and  there  are  a  great  many  episodes  about  Daedalus  and 
Ceyx,  Alcyone  and  Psamathe,  and  ^sacus  and  Hesperia. 
And  here  we  come  to  the  Trojan  times,  and,  one  way  or  an- 
other, these  fill  two  books  and  a  half. 

The  remainder  of  the  work  deals  with  purely  Italian  leg- 
ends, and  their  poverty  does  nothing  to  remove  the  impres- 
sion that  Ovid  was  wearying  of  a  task  in  which  he  succeeded 
best  when  he  had  the  stimulus  of  emulation  to  sustain  him. 
All  Greek  legends,  even  the  obscurest,  had  been  turned  every 
possible  way  by  the  tragedians,  the  Alexandrines,  and  the  ar- 
tists ;  for  these  did  not  confine  themselves  to  the  poets  by 
any  means,  and  a  writer  like  Ovid  could  inspire  himself  quite 
as  well  among  Greek  painters  and  sculptors  as  among  Greek 
poets.     When  he  came  to  Latin  ground,  he  had  everything  to 

'  ♦♦  Met."  xi.  71-84. 


invent  afresh,  and  was  reduced  to  a  long  Pythagorean  dis- 
course '  upon  the  nature  of  things,  with  especial  reference  to 
the  transformations  which  the  world  has  undergone.  Numa 
is  the  pretext  for  this  treatise,  which  a  great  epic  poem  could 
hardly  afford  to  omit.  Vergil  gives  it  us  in  the  "^^neid," 
Lucan  makes  Caesar  listen  to  it  in  the  "  Pharsalia." 

Ovid  was  probably  quite  sincere  in  his  vegetarianism  ;  he 
was  a  water-drinker  even  in  his  hot  youth,  and  might  perhaps 
have  been  very  thoroughly  tamed  if  he  had  fallen  upon  a  pe- 
riod when  strict  moral  discipline  was  enforced  by  society. 
He  had  an  immense  curiosity,  which  liked  to  amuse  itself 
upon  dangerous  ground ;  but  few  poets  have  had  less  of  the 
spirit  of  rebellion.  The  Centaurs  and  Ajax  fill  him  with  a 
feeling  that  comes  as  near  moral  repulsion  as  he  is  capable 
of  knowing,  while  the  cool  ingenuity  of  Ulysses  fills  him  with 
complacency.  Probably  there  is  nothing  more  dramatic,  in 
our  sense  of  the  word,  in  all  ancient  literature,  than  the  great 
speech  of  Ulysses  in  the  judgment  of  the  arms.^  All  the  or- 
atorical skill  of  the  forum  is  combined  with  a  complete  reali- 
zation of  a  mythical  personality.  There  is  the  affectation  of 
modesty;  the  letie  submissumque priiicipium  was  never  carried 
further.  Ulysses  is  quite  free  from  the  animosity  against  his 
rival  to  which  Ajax  gives  way.  Ajax  is  admirably  abrupt  and 
stormy ;  any  one  of  his  indignant  little  outbursts  is  quite 
credible,  but  the  whole  is  incurably  ingenious.  Ajax  will  not 
boast  of  his  descent  from  Jove,  except  because  he  shares  it 
with  his  cousin  Achilles.'  After  this,  Ulysses  may  well  claim 
to  have  done  all  the  deeds  of  Achilles,  inasmuch  as  he  brought 
Achilles  from  Scyros  to  the  camp.  He  is  still  more  success- 
ful in  clearing  himself  of  the  charges  of  treachery  to  Pala- 
medes,  and  of  cruelty  to  Philoctetes.  Ajax  has  to  accuse 
Ulysses  of  having  misled  the  Greeks,  and  Ulysses  can  appeal 
to  the  Greeks  to  acquit  themselves  and  him. 

The  "Metamorphoses"  close  with  a  panegyric  upon  Au- 
gustus and  the  whole  Julian  house,  as  if  the  poet  were  still  in 
the  height  of  court  favor.  The  "  Fasti  "  are  the  most  decor- 
ous, if  not  the   most  loyal,  of  all  his  writings.     Except  the 

'  ♦'  Met."  XV.  60-478.  '  lb.  xiii.  128-380.  ^  lb.  xiii.  29  sqq. 


A 


368 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


TIBULLUS;  PROPERTIUS ;   OVID. 


369 


later  epistles  from  Pontus,  they  are  least  interesting.  There 
is  an  endless  limpid  stream  of  colorless  and  tasteless  anti- 
quarianism,  without  even  the  merit  of  accuracy  or  naivete. 
What  Ovid  gives  is  not  so  much  the  crude  tradition  as  the 
crude  conjectures  of  Varro  or  somebody  else.  Perhaps  one 
might  make  an  exception  in  f^ivor  of  the  description  of  the 
Sementiva,  the  holiday  kept  when  the  seed  was  in  the  ground.' 
Even  here  the  feeling  is  neither  so  fresh  nor  so  warm  as  in 
Tibullus,  and  there  is  a  little  pedantry  in  the  half-dozen  lines 
where  he  starts  and  solves  the  objection  that  it  is  a  movable 
feast.  The  legend  of  Evander'  is  told  very  smoothly,  which 
is  all  that  can  be  said  for  most  of  the  others.  Lucretia's  fate 
is  told  really  well,'  though  a  little  too  rationalistically.  The 
poet  is  over-anxious  to  account  for  the  success  of  the  ravisher, 
althou'^h  here  he  is  entitled  to  divide  the  blame  with  his  prede- 
cessors.  Many  dull  facts  are  told  about  the  calendar  itself,  as, 
for  instance,  that  March  was  the  third  month  of  the  year  at 
Alba  and  the  fifth  at  Falerii,  and  that  Aricia  and  Tibur  reck- 
oned like  Alba,  and  that  the  early  Italians  were  not  learned 
enough  to  reckon  the  year  by  the  course  of  the  stars.*  In 
the  account  of  the  Matronalia'  there  are  a  few  pale  flashes 
of  the  humor  of  the  "  Art  of  Love,"  and  one  may  smile  a 
little  with  the  poet  at  the  scenes  between  Numa  and  the 
deities,"  especially  at  the  dialogue  between  him  and  Ju- 
piter, which  would  have  been  racier  if  it  had  been  bolder, 
and  if  the  dutiful  poet  had  not  shrunk  from  implying  that 
Jupiter  wished  for  human  sacrifices  and  was  cheated  out  of 
them. 

There  is  little  but  mythology  in  the  fourth  book  :  the  legend 
of  Cybele  and  Claudia'  is  neat;  one  may  admire  the  skill 
with  which  Ovid  goes  over  the  old  ground  of  the  rape  of  Pros- 
erpine, and  the  sorrow  of  Ceres,  without  repeating  himself;' 
and  he  is  more  entertaining  than  often  on  the  Palilia,  the 
classic  holiday  which  exercised  the  pen  of  every  fledgling 
poetaster.'     There  is  also  a  lively  description  of  the  Floralia, 

»  "  Fast."  i.  568  sqq.  *  lb.  iii.  89  sqq.  '  lb.  iv.  305-44. 

«  lb.  i.  471.  sqq.  =*  lb.  169  sqq.  '  lb.  41 7  sqq. 

3  lb.  ii.  721  sqq.  ^  lb.  295-348;  cf.v.621  sqq.         '  lb.  721  sqq. 


and  of  the  origin  of  the  feast,  put,  as  usual,  into  the  mouth  of 
the  iroddess  to  whom  it  was  held.*  \\\  Mav,  each  of  the  nine 
Muses  gives  one  of  the  current  theories  of  the  origin  of  the 
month  ;'■'  in  June,  Juno  and  Hebe  and  Concord  give  one  of 
the  current  etymologies  from  Juno,  juvenis,  and  jungo,  as  if 
the  month  was  named  in  honor  of  the  union  between  the  Ro- 
mans and  Quirites.^  The  poem  ends  abruptly,  but  it  seems 
to  end.  The  poet  asks  the  Muses*  why  the  last  day  of  the 
month  is  sacred  to  them  and  to  Hercules;  and  they  answer 
that  Philippus,  the  husband  of  IMarcia,  the  aunt  of  Caisar,  had 
dedicated  a  temple  jointly  to  both.  "  Alcides  nodded  assent 
and  hushed  the  lyre."  Before  the  lyre  is  hushed  we  learn 
that  Marcia  was  not  only  noble,  but  fair;  and  it  is  no  shame 
to  praise  beauty,  which  is  an  ornament  to  the  greatest  of  god- 
desses ;  and  Marcia  was  worthy  of  the  holy  house  which  she 
adorned. 

Perhaps  the  eulogy  on  beauty  may  be  a  compliment  to  the 
younger  Julia,  whose  ruin  appears  to  have  involved  that  of 
Ovid.  He  is  always  talking  of  his  misfortune  in  a  way  that 
must  have  been  intelligible  to  those  of  his  contemporaries 
who  were  in  any  sense  behind  the  scenes,  but  it  is  very  per- 
plexing to  us.  He  seems  to  admit  that  he  had  been  guilty  of 
something  which  gave  Augustus  a  right  to  be  very  seriously 
displeased,  and  that  it  would  pain  him  to  have  the  oflence, 
whatever  it  was,  precisely  described.  Yet  Ovid  will  have  it 
that  his  guilt  was  purely  involuntary;  that  he  was  ruined  by  an 
error,  not  by  a  crime.  He  asks  once,^  "  Why  did  he  see  any- 
thing? why  did  he  bring  guilt  upon  his  eyes?"  He  compares 
his  fate  with  Actaeon's.  It  would  fit  all  this  to  suppose  that 
accident  or  curiosity  or  indiscretion  had  acquainted  him  with 
the  secrets  of  a  princess  who  was  then  able  to  compel  him  to 
accept  the  position  of  a  confidant,  perhaps  an  accomplice,  in 
intrigues  of  love  or  state,  which,  hazardous  as  it  was,  need  not 
have  been  unattractive  to  the  author  of  the  "Art  of  Love." 
It  is  clear  that,  so  far  as  Augustus  condescended  to  explain 
himself,  the  publication  of  that  work  was  the  justification  of 

Fast."  V.  195  sqq.  '  lb.  vi.  13-100.  *  •'  Tiist."  II.  i.  103-5, 

lb.  9  sqq.  ♦  lb.  798  sqq. 

L— 16* 


I     u 


\\\ 


370 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


TIBULLUS;  PROFERTIUS ;  OVID. 


Ovid's  banishment.     He  always  says  himself  that  two  things, 
"song"  and  "error,"  were  his  undoing. 

The  mere  fact  that  he  had  written  a  loose  book  many  years 
ago  could  hardly  have  injured  him  under  any  government, 
still  less  have  been  treated  as  an  unpardonable  offence.  We 
have  our  choice  of  supposing  that  the  Julias,  one  or  both,  had 
been  distinctly  the  worse  for  reading  it,  and  supposing  that  it 
justified  in  the  mind  of  Augustus  the  severest  view  of  Ovid's 
conduct.  In  the  later  poems  of  his  exile,  Ovid  abandons  the 
attempt  to  vindicate  himself,  even  to  the  extent  that  has  been 
hinted.  Augustus  had  resolved  to  allow  no  extenuating  cir- 
cumstances, and  unless  Ovid  were  resolved  to  tell  everything 
and  to  brave  everything,  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  plead  guilty 
without  reserve,  "it  is  hard  to  see  why,  as  he  still  had  friends, 
his  endless  and  abject  supplications  to  be  allowed  to  live 
nearer  Italy  and  out  of  reach  of  war  were  so  pertinaciously 
rejected ;  especially  as  they  were  coupled  with  the  most  ear- 
nest protestations  that  a  complete  pardon  was  beyond  his 
hopes.  It  may  have  been  wished  that  he  should  die,  and  it 
was  known  that  at  Tomi  everybody  who  saw  him  could  be 
counted,  and  that  he  could  be  killed  without  remark  if  he 

proved  indiscreet. 

One  of  the  earliest  poems  after  his  ruin  was  a  stiff  and  tire- 
some elegy  entitled  "  Ibis,"  which  is  probably  the  cipher  of 
some  enemy  whom  he  threatens  to  name  if  further  provoked. 
Its  only  interest  is,  that  he  wishes  his  enemy,  with  every  ap- 
pearance of  sincerity,  all  the  plagues  of  mythology,  generally 
omitting  to  name  the  mythical  prototypes  who  first  endured 
the  curses  he  invokes;  and  that  he  admits'  having  been 
piqued  into  imitating  a  style  which  he  disapproved  as  a  mat- 
ter of  taste— perhaps  as  a  matter  of  reason  too.  The  admis- 
sion is  interesting,  as  a  proof  that  Ovid  could  not  quite  forgive 
himself  for  sinking  to  the  level  of  Callimachus.  There  are 
five  books  of  "  Tristia,"  and  four  of  "  Letters  from  Pontus," 
and  they  are  all  about  Ovid  and  his  misfortunes.  Taken  alto- 
gether, they  are  decidedly  wearisome ;  almost  any  letter  from 
The  "Tristia"  is  interesting  by  itself.     The  earlier  are  even 

»  ♦*  Ibis"  ad  init. 


371 


pathetic,  and  for  a  long  time  even  the  second  series,  taken 
separately,  are  ingenious,  though  the  growing  disappearance 
of  mythological  illustration  may  be  taken  as  a  sign  of  failing 
powers.     He  complains  himself  that  his  old  fluency  was  dis- 
appearing, and  that,  though  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  write,  he 
had  less  and  less  satisfaction  in  writing.     He  actually  learned 
the  Getic  language,  and  wrote  in  it  in  praise  of  Augustus  and 
Tiberius.'     His  contemporaries  did  not  know  that  the  poem 
would  have  been  a  more  precious  linguistic  monument  than 
the  translation  of  the  Bible  by  Ulphilas.     It  is  not  quite  clear 
whether  he  wrote  on  the  same  subject  in  Latin ;  we  have  a 
fragment  of  a  poem,  which  was  dull  enough,  on  the  fisheries 
of  the  Black  Sea.     Although  he  was  over  fifty  when  banished, 
he  had  the  courage  to  exert  himself  in  the  defence  of  Tomi, 
which  was  almost  always  in  a  state  of  siege,  so  that  the  na- 
tives gave  him  the  freedom  of  their  city,  for  what  it  might  be 
worth. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  Ovid  allowed  his  misfortunes  to  un- 
man him.     In  the  early  days  he  was  energetic  enough  in  as- 
serting that  he  wms  only  relegated,  not  banished:  he  retained 
all  his  rights  as  a  Roman  citizen,  though  commanded  by  com- 
petent authority  to  reside  at  Tomi.     To  the  last  he  kept  up 
and  made  the  most  of  all  the  friendships  that  could  by  any 
chance  be  of  any  service  to  him ;  for,  apart  from  the  great 
question  of  his  return,  his  property,  never  very  large,  was  ex- 
posed to  dilapidation;  and,  even  if  his  wife  had  been  more 
successful  than  she  w^as  in  keeping  his  property  together,  there 
was  no  bank  at  Tomi  with  a  Roman  correspondent,  so  that 
he  needed  a  good  deal  of  help  in  money  matters.     Perhaps 
this  is  why  he  is  so  profuse  in  his  acknowledgments  to  Sextus 
Pompeius.      His  other  chief  friends  were  Fabius  Maximus 
and  Cotta  Messallinus,  of  whom  Juvenal  speaks  highly  and 
Tacitus  severely;  but  there  are  signs,  even  before  the  end, 
that  he  had  worn  out  his  friends'  patience.     He  lived  to  write 
a  congratulatory  letter'  to  a  mere  centurion,  and  in  the  last 
book  but  one  he  asks  the  forgiveness  of  his  friends  for  having 
had  good  hopes  from  them,  and  promises  not  to  offend  again. 
*  "  Epp.  ex  Pont."  IV.  xiif.  21-28.  "^  lb.  IV.  vii. 


\ 


r'  f 


1 


k 


372 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


LATE  AUGUSTAN  POETRY. 


373 


He  will  not  trouble  his  wife  :  she  is  true  to  him,  no  doubt ;  and 
if  she  is  a  little  cowardlv,  and  afraid  to  try  what  can  be  done, 
like  everybody  else,  it  is  not  her  f^iult.     His  comfort  must  be 
to  think  that  Augustus  has  never  refused  to  pardon  hmi  (be- 
cause he  has  never  been  asked),  and  thereupon  to  make  up 
his  own  mind  to  end  his  days  at  Tomi.     He  was,  as  he  was 
meant  to  be,  very  uncomfortable;  and  he  did  not  make  a  sud- 
den chan-e  from  volubility  to  silence,  which  would  simply 
have  stupefied  him  ;  besides,  his  case  was  a  very  hard  one, 
and  it  was  a  natural  relief  to  write  about  it,  especially  as  he 
was  more  or  less  (if  we  are  to  believe  him)  betrayed  by  his 
own  household  and  his  own  set,  whom  he  ought  to  have  been 
able  to  trust.     One  curious  effect  of  his  misfortune  was,  that 
as  soon  as  Caesar  had  ruined  him  he  began  to  be  as  much 
afraid,  in  a  disinterested  way,  of  Caesar  as  of  the  thunderbolt 
(which,  in  the  literal  sense,  had  never  struck  him) ;  the  less 
he  hopes  and  the  longer  he  suffers,  the  more  he  worships ;  he 
is  the  earliest  authority  for  the  idea  of  -piety,"^  of  which  we 
get  so  much  in  Martial.     He  is  always  practising  it  himself, 
and  congratulating  Cotta,  and  everybody  else  who,  he  hopes, 
may  be  an  intercessor,  on  his  proficiency  in  it,  and  with  every 
appearance  of  sincerity.     He  anticipates  that  Augustus  will 
be  deified,  and  he  is  constantly  humbling  himself  and  putting 
himself  into  the  attitude  of  a  mortal  before  a  god;  and  his 
feeling  seems  to  be  as  genuine  as  a  conscientiously  cultivated 

feeling  can  be. 

»  The  loyalty  of  a  citizen  to  his  country  is  the  foundation  of  the  feeling, 
and  so  far  Ovid  is  anticipated  by  Cicero  ;  but  it  is  new  to  find  this  feehng 
so  completely  transferred  to  the  head  of  the  state  (though  Cicero  speaks 
of  his  A-A;.  binding  him  to  Pompeius,  as  also  to  Lentulus),  st.ll  newer  to 
find  this  feeling  so  completely  fused  with  the  feehng  of  religious  revei- 
ence. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    LAST  POETS   OF    THE    AGE    OF   AUGUSTUS,    AND 

THEIR  SUCCESSORS. 

^  I    The  banishment  of  Ovid  rather  than  the  death  of  Au- 


§  I. 


<r 
fc> 


ustus  may  be  said  to  mark  the  close  of  the  most  flourishing 
period  of  Roman  poetry  :  it  marks  the  time  when  the  society 
which  encouraged  poets  got  discontented  and  cautious.  Au- 
gustus himself  had  the  misfortune  to  overlive  the  best  of  his 
prosperity;  and  after  the  defeat  of  Varus  there  was  very  little 
enthusiasm  anywhere,  although  the  busybodies  still  fluttered 
about,  praising  and  criticising,  according  as  they  were  good- 
or  ill-natured.  The  activity  which  they  shared,  or  helped,  or 
hindered  was  for  the  most  part  restless,  aimless,  listless;  there 
was  very  little  in  the  state  of  affairs  under  Tiberius,  at  any 
rate  till  the  fall  of  Sejanus,  to  repress  literary  activit}',  if  there 
had  been  a  strong  spontaneous  tendency  thereto  in  any  vigor- 
ous section  of  the  community.  Tacitus  mentions  literary  men, 
especially  philosophers,  who  got  into  trouble  by  writings  with 
a  flavor  —  commonly  a  very  faint  flavor  —  of  sedition  about 
them ;  but  those  who  took  offence  at  the  course  of  the  literary 
movement  during  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
France  possessed  much  more  vigorous  means  of  repression, 
and  used  them  with  more  steadiness,  if  with  less  extreme  se- 
verity. But  the  literary  movement  was  not  impeded  in  the 
least,  because  the  authors  cared  seriously  for  expressing  their 
ideas,  and  the  public  really  wished  to  assimilate  them.  It  is 
clear  that  clandestine  circulation  of  literature  judged  to  be 
scandalous  encountered  no  practical  difficulties;  but  authors 
were  not  content  to  disavow  some  of  their  most  brilliant 
works,  like  Voltaire,  and  could  not  sacrifice  the  pleasure  of 
reading  their  books  to  a  numerous  and  distinguished  circle  as 
soon  as  they  were  finished  ;  it  was  their  vanity  which  compelled 


ii 


374 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


most  of  them  to  be  prudent,  if  not  absolutely  safe.  Anony- 
mous writing  as  an  instrument  of  literary  warfare  was  con- 
fined to  pasquinade ;  and  if  large  sections  of  the  literary  class 
were  discontented  and  silent,  this  would  be  rather  a  relief 
than  otherwise  to  a  public  which,  alike  in  the  good  times  of 
Trajan  and  in  the  bad  times  of  Domitian,  found  it  one  of  the 
most  wearisome  of  social  duties  to  attend  to  the  praelections 
of  friends. 

When  Ovid,  in  his  last  letter  from  Pontus,  enumerates  the 
contemporaries  among  whom  he  was  distinguished,  it  is  no- 
ticeable that  almost  all  passed  away  without  leaving  enduring 
works  behind  them.  It  is  not  merely  that  their  works  did  not 
reach  us,  but  that  they  had  almost  all  been  practically  forgot- 
ten in  Quinctilian's  time,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  gram- 
marians did  not  think  it  worth  while  to  use  them  as  reading- 
books,  because  they  were  frequently  careless  and  unequal. 
Quinctilian'  tells  us  this  himself  of  A.  Cornelius  Severus, 
whose  six  books  on  the  wars  of  Sicily  were  illustrated  by  a 
brilliant  little  threnody  on  the  death  of  Cicero,  which  is  re- 
markable both  for  the  vague  exaggeration  of  the  language 
and  for  the  disconnected  character  of  the  thought.  Marsus, 
who  was  probably  the  most  celebrated,  was  the  most  com- 
pletely forgotten,  because  he  was  the  most  fluent.  According 
to  Martial,  the  one  book  of  Persius  was  oftener  quoted  than 
the  twentv-four  which  Marsus  had  devoted  to  the  wars  and 
lives  of  the  Amazons;  while  his  namesake,  who  had  devoted 
himself  to  epigrams,  left  a  reputation  which  it  was  decorous 
for  Martial  to  rate  above  his  own.  A  great  deal  of  the  poetry 
of  the  period  was  of  the  kind  expected  from  poets  laureate; 
court  festivities,  and  still  more  court  calamities,  gave  great 
opportunities  for  writers  with  more  ingenuity  than  inspiration. 
There  was  a  Roman  knight,  C.  Lutorius  Priscus,  who  made  a 
reputation  by  a  poem  on  the  death  of  Germanicus,  and  com- 
posed another  poem  on  the  death  of  Drusus,  the  son  of  Ti- 
berius, w^ho  was  only  ill.  Unfortunately,  he  read  the  poem 
aloud,  and  was  put  to  death  by  the  vote  of  the  senate,  and 
of  course  both  poems  were  lost.'* 

»  X.  I.  89.  '  Tac.  "  Ann."  iii.  49. 


LATE  AUGUSTAN  POETRY. 


375 


§  2.  Accident  has  preserved  a  favorable  specimen  of  the 
mechanical  skill  of  an  earlier  generation,  in  the  "Consolation 
to  Livia  "  on  the  death  of  the  elder  Drusus,  the  brother  of 
Tiberius,  which  is  generally  printed  as  an  appendix  to  Ovid. 
The  author  is  inexhaustible  in  varying  and  amplifying  the  ob- 
vious points  of  his  subject — the  grief  of  a  mother  who  has  lost 
one  out  of  two  very  distinguished  and  exemplary  sons.  This 
note  is  struck  at  starting :  "  When  they  say  *  Your  son,'  you 
will  never  ask  which. "  Further  on  Livia  herself  says,  "  When 
1  hear  that  Nero  has  come  home  in  triumph,  I  shall  not  ask, 
*  The  elder  or  the  younger  ? '  "  Of  course  Livia,  with  two  such 
sons,  is  the  most  fruitful  of  mothers  ;  of  course  she  looked  for- 
ward vainly  to  seeing  Drusus  come  back  in  triumph  ;  almost  of 
course,  she  is  pitied  in  one  place  for  not  having  been  there  to 
close  her  son's  eyes,  and  half  congratulated  in  another  on  hav- 
ing only  heard  of  his  last  agonies,  and  been  prepared  for  the 
worst  by  anxiety — which  does  not  exactly  contradict  the 
opening  passage  on  the  proud  hopes  with  which  she  awaited 
his  triumphant  return.  Augustus  is  completely  deified  :  he 
can  only  leave  earth  for  heaven,  and  the  tears  of  a  deity  are 
the  greatest  honor  of  the  funeral  of  Drusus.  Less  is  made 
than  v;e  might  have  expected  of  the  funeral  march  of  Tiberius 
through  the  Alps  in  winter  beside  his  brother's  bier.  There 
is  one  fine  line — 

Dissimilemque  sui  vultu  profitente  dolorem ' 

— on  the  way  his  grief  broke  through  his  habitual  self-com- 
mand. But  there  is  decidedly  more  pains  spent  on  the 
reluctance  of  the  army  to  part  with  the  body  of  their  com- 
mander. The  public  mourning  is  described  with  a  good 
deal  of  ingenuity;  and,  as  the  temples  were  shut,  the  poet 
conjectures  that  the  gods,  who  could  not  save  Drusus,  were 
ashamed  to  be  seen  ;  a  pious  plebeian  who  was  going  to 
make  a  vow  for  the  life  of  his  son  resolves  to  give  up  hope, 
since  the  gods  did  not  hear  the  prayers  of  Livia  for  Drusus. 
Oddly  enough,  the  poet,  who  belonged  to  the  equestrian  order, 
says  nothing  of  the  senate  taking  part  in  the  mourning.     The 

'  V.  %^, 


37^ 


LA  riiV  LITER  A  TURE. 


LA  TE  A UGUSTAIV  FOE TR  Y. 


377 


army,  of  course,  does  homage  to  the  dead  general.  Tiber 
does  homage  too ;  he  is  so  swollen  with  tears  that  he  could 
put  out  the'^funeral  pile,  and  thinks  of  doing  so  with  the  laud- 
able purpose  of  carrying  off  the  body  uninjured  by  the  flames. 
Of  course  the  funeral  was  in  the  Campus  Martins,  and  there- 
fore it  was  quite  suitable  for  Mars  to  interfere,  and  persuade 
the  river  god  to  resign  himself  to  the  decrees  of  Fate.  Mars 
has  resigned  himself.  He  entreated  the  Fates  for  his  race, 
and  was'^told  that  he  could  be  heard  only  for  Romulus  and 
the  two  Ccesars:  these  alone  out  of  so  many  heroes  were  the 
gods  whom  Rome  was  to  send  to  heaven.  There  is  a  touch 
of  pathos  in  the  limitation,  in  which,  perhaps,  we  ought  to  see 
a  homage  to  Tiberius's  modesty ;  as  the  instinct  of  a  court 
poet  would  be  to  treat  the  heir-apparent  as  an  embryo  deity. 
After  this  rather  frigid  episode,  the  corpse  is  permitted  to 
burn,  and  the  poet  consoles  himself  with  the  prospect  of  the 
execution  of  the  German  leader  who  dared  to  exult  at  the 
death  of  Drusus.  This  will  be  the  great  grace  of  the  triumph 
of  Tiberius,  and  the  poet  takes  care  that  the  picture  shall 
lose  nothing  in  his  hands.  He  will  behold  the  necks  of  kings 
livid  with  chains,  and  the  hard  bonds  knotted  on  their  cruel 
hands,  and  their  visages  pale  with  fear,  as  tears  fall,  against 
their  will,  on  the  proud  rebels'  cheeks.  Their  haughty  souls, 
the  prouder  for  the  death  of  Drusus,  will  have  to  be  yielded 
to  the  executioner  in  prison  gloom  ;  and  the  poet  will  stand 
and  feed  his  eyes  at  leisure,  on  their  naked  bodies,  cast  in  the 
filth  of  the  streets.' 

From  this  burst  of  Roman  ferocity  we  are  carried  back,  with 
a  little  confusion,  to  the  grief  of  Tiberius  and  the  army,  and  the 
wife  of  Drusus,  who  was  like  Andromache  or  Evadne.  She 
is  consoled  with  a  vision  of  his  triumphal  entrance  to  Elysi- 
um, where  all  his  noble  ancestors  crowd  round  him:  the 
passage  is  imitated  partly  from  the  quasi-apotheosis  of  Cor- 
nelia in  Propertius,  partly  from  the  Elysium  of  Vergil.  Then 
we  return  to  Livia,  and  the  style  of  the  poet  rises.  She  too 
ought  to  have  found  comfort  in  the  glory  of  her  son.  Let  her 
think  what  becomes  the  m.other  of  a  Drusus,  the  mother  of  a 

»  vv.  273-80. 


Nero;  let  her  think  from  whose  bed  she  rises  in  the  mornino-. 
Fortune  has  set  her  on  high,  and  bidden  her  keep  a  station 
of  honor ;  let  her  bear  the  load  to  the  end.     Every  eye  and 
ear  is  upon  her,  all  note  her  deeds,  and  no  word  can  be  hid- 
den that  comes  from  the  mouth  of  a  princess ;  let  her  abide 
on  high,  rise  above  her  woe,  and  hold  her  spirit— for  this  she 
can— unbroken  to  the  last.     Fate  is  above  all,  and  deaf  to 
prayer.     The  threefold  world — earth,  sky,  and  sea— is  doomed 
to  death:  and  can  a  mortal  complain?     Fortune  may  punish 
complaints,  and,  after  all,  Livia  has,  upon  the  whole,  more 
reason  for  thanksgiving,  since  both  her  sons  have  often  been 
victorious;  as  we  learn  in  some  ringing  lines,  almost  strong 
enough  for  Propertius,  and   smoother.     Besides,  there  were 
signs  in  heaven  which  foretold  the  coming  sorrow ;  and  this 
sorrow  will  be  the  last  (a  thought  to  which  the  poet  recurs  as 
emhiently  comfortable).'     It  occurs  to  him  that  Livia  found  a 
comforter  in  Tiberius,  and  the  picture  of  him  and  Augustus 
exerting  themselves  to  keep  the  bereaved  mother  from  starv- 
ing herself  to  death  is  not  quite  conventional;  nor  is  the  clos- 
ing address,'  in  which  Drusus  speaks  from  the  shades,  want- 
ing in  manly  dignity.     The  poem    professes  to  have  been 
written  and  read  during  a  period  of  general  and  deep  emo- 
tion ;  and,  if  it  leaves  a  modern  unsympathetic  reader  cold,  it 
need  not  have  left  an  ancient  reader  cold  too  :  there  are  many 
lines  which,  when  recited  first,  must  have  seemed  to  quiver 
with  the  true  sob  of  elegy.     The  author  is  generally  taken  to 
be  C.  Pedo  Albinovanus,  whose  work   on  astronomy  earned 
the  title  of  "  starry  ''  from  Ovid  ;  but  the  MSS.,  all  of  the  latter 
part  of  the  fifteenth  century,  give  no  author's  name,  and  give 
the  work  as  an  appendix  to  Ovid,  like  the  three  letters  of 
"Sabinus''  which  appear  in  no  MS.,  and  are  probably  the 
work  of  the  scholar  of  the  Renaissance  who  saw  the  editio 
prmceps  of  Ovid  through  the  press. 

§  3-  Like  Pedo  and  several  other  authors  Ovid  mentions, 
Gratius  Faliscus  devoted  himself  to  didactic  poetry.  He 
wrote  a  treatise  on  hunting,  of  which  only  six  hundred  lines 
have  reached  us.     He  imitates  Vergil  more  closely  than  hap- 

'  vv.  411  sqq.  '^  VV.447  sqq. 


378 


LA  T/.V  LITER  A  TURE. 


LA  TE  A  UGUSTAN  FOE TR  Y. 


379 


pily  he  is  involved  and  obscure,  and,  though  he  shows  that 
he  appreciates  Vergil's  charm  very  accurately,  he  fails  to  re- 
produce it  for  long,  because  he  has  no  inner  depth  or  fulness. 
His  one  merit  is  a  sort  of  sober,  serious  grace.     He  has  a  feel- 
in-  not  very  unlike  Vergil's  for  the  toil  that  makes  civilization 
of\ny  kind  possible ;  he  is  quite  honest  in  treating  even  the 
huntsman's  art  as  a  revelation,  for  the  hunter  is  far  above  his 
crame      There  is  the  same  feeling  that  the  play  of  human 
faculties  is  desirable  for  its  own  sake  ;  that  there  are  few  better 
things  in  the  world  than  exercise.     He  carries  the  reactionary 
tend'encies  of  the  Augustan  age  perhaps  to  an  extreme :  he 
does  not  think  that  the   art  has  made  much  real  progress 
since  the  days  of  Dercylos,  who  was  illuminated  because  of 
his  special  piety.     It  does  not  occur  to  Gratius  to  distinguish 
between   practical   improvements    and   the    pretentious   fop- 
peries of  rich   amateurs,  who  carried  out  all  their  caprices 
without  respect  to  experience,  and  had  monstrous  blades  to 
their  hunting  spears,  and  enclosed  the  ground  for  a  drive  with 
swords,  when  spikes  were  perfectly  sufficient.     In  the  same 
way  he  judges  horses  by  their  race  rather  than  their  looks, 
and  is  especially  enthusiastic  over  the  scrubby  ponies  of 
Ao-ricrentum,  and  is  inclined  to  recommend  British  dogs  in 
prefel-ence  to  the  bulkier  and  showier  Molossus,  which  was 
the  celebrated  dog  of  the  period.     He  speaks  rather  mythi- 
cally about  the  Hyrcanian  breed,  which  was  supposed  to  be  a 
mongrel  between  common  dogs  and  tigers ;  and  mentions  a 
rather  more  credible  breed,  which  are  mongrels  between  jack- 
als  and   dogs,  and  gives  some  curious   notions   about   the 
natural  history  of  jackals.     We  are  familiar  with  the  theory 
that  they  are  cunning  and  manage  to  make  themselves  of  use 
to  the  lion,  and  so  are  allowed  to  feed  upon  his  leavings : 
Gratius  takes  it  in  another  way— they  are  bold  enough  to 
snatch  the  prey  out  of  the  lion's  mouth. 

Long  as  the  treatise  is,  it  is  probably  only  a  fragment.  It 
begins\ith  a  discussion  of  weapons,  and  then  goes  to  dogs, 
their  breeds,  their  training,  and  their  diseases  (with  reference 
to  the  last,  one  thinks  Gratius  advocates  "stamping  out"  in 
the  kennel,  because  Vergil  had  advocated  it  in  the  fold) ; 


horses  come  last.     To  make  the  treatise  complete,  he  should 
have  treated  of  the  habits  of  different  kinds  of  game  and— a 

topic  on  which  a  Roman  would  have  very  likely  been  fuller 

the  times   and  the  places  and  the  arts  by  which  a  hunter 
might  make  iiis  advantage  of  each  kind  of  game. 

§  4.  A  writer  who  was  probably  a  contemporary  of  Gratius, 
since  he  wrote  under  both  Augustus  and  Tiberius,  escaped 
the  notice  of  Ovid,  because  very  likely  he  did  not  care  to 
publish;  he  survived  authors  who  published— with  applause 
in  their  day— because  his  subject  is  one  that  in  almost  every 
age  has  been  of  absorbing  interest  to  a  small  circle  of  read- 
ers who  hand  on  their  treasure  in  secret.     Manilius,  whose 
name  is  only  known  to  us  from  the  MSS.,  which,  as  often, 
leave  his  other  names  a  little  uncertain,  devoted  himself  to 
the  poetry  of  science,  the  only  concrete  science  which  existed 
then— the  science  of  the  stars.     It  would  be  unfair  to  say  that 
his  poem  is  on  astrology,  for  the  distinction  between  astrono- 
my and  astrology  did  not  yet  exist.     Those  who  studied  the 
stars  did  not  confine  themselves  to  the  positions  of  the  fixed 
stars,  or  the  orbits  of  the  stars  which  were  not  fixed.     Men  born 
in  a  certain  region  were  supposed  to  be  born  under  the  con- 
stellation which  served  to  mark  its  position  before  maps  and  a 
terrestrial  globe  were  possible ;  and  men  born  at  a  certain  sea- 
son were  supposed  to  be  born  under  the  constellations  which 
marked  the  season  of  their  birth  before  calendars  were  possi- 
ble.    It  was  a  natural  and  pardonable  confusion  to  imagine 
a  mysterious  power  in  the  stars  which  produced  all,  and  more 
than  all,  the  effects  which  we  now  attribute  to  climate  and  the 
seasons.     From  this  the  step  was  easy  to  giving  a  significance 
to  all  the  combinations  of  the  heavenly  bodies;  and  the  cal- 
culations founded  upon  these  served  to  give  a  pseudo-scien- 
tific prestige  to  predictions  about  the  future :  these  of  course 
owed  such  success  as  they  had  to  personal  shrewdness,  suf- 
ficient to  stimulate,  without  satisfying,  the  curiosity  of  the  in- 
creasing number  of  people  to  whom  luck,  in  some  form  or 
other,  seemed  the  most  important  element  in  life. 

It  is  not  clear  that  these  calculators  were  insincere.    Combe 
believed  in  phrenology,  though  he  had  a  considerable  power 


38o 


LA  TIN  LITE K A  TURE. 


of  making  it  mean  anything,  and  his  measurements  and  ma- 
nipulations simply  provided  him  with  an  articulate  method  of 
puttin<^  his  views' of  character  into  shape,  and  he  had  a  real 
oift  of^'reading  character.     Besides,  astrology,  like  phrenology, 
had  the  attraction  for  impatient  thinkers  of  bringing  just  what 
looked  most  complex  and  uncertain  and  important  in  life 
under  what  looked  like  immutable  laws;  and  astrology  had 
the  advantage  of  appealing  to    laws    which,  if  they  existed, 
were  more  primary  and  more  imposing  than  those  of  the  cere- 
bral centres.     Of  course  the  rise   of  astrology  implied  that 
people  no  longer  found  the  distribution  of  success  or  ill-suc- 
cess sufficiently  accounted  for  by  conduct  and  character,  so 
far  as  character  tinds  its  adequate  expression   in   conduct. 
When  it  appears  that  circumstances  which  could  not  have 
been  foreseen,  and    idiosyncrasies  which  in   themselves   are 
neither  blamable  nor  laudable,  count  for  quite   as  much  in 
determining  a  man's  lot  as  his  own  choice  for  good  and  evil, 
it  is  a  moral  and  intellectual  relief  to  refer  all  the  apparent 
disorder  to  the  steadfast  stars,  which  seem  at  first  sight  a  mere 
confused  splendor   themselves.      And   yet  there  is  nothmg 
whose  revolutions  are  so  sure;  nothing  convinces  Manilius' 
so  powerfully  that  Lucretius  must  have  erred  when  he  pro- 
nounced Chance  the  mistress  and  mother  of  the  world,  as  the 
stable  order  of  the  stars,  which  have  kept  their  courses  with- 
out haste  and  without  rest  ever  since  the  days  of  the  Trojan 
war.     How^  many  kingdoms  have  been  overthrown  since  Troy 
was  sacked  !  how  many  people  have  gone  into  captivity  !  how 
often  Fortune  has  gone  round  the  world  bringing  empire  or 
slavery  to  mortals !     She  has  put  away  the  memory  of  the 
ashes  of  Troy;  she  has  fanned  the  embers  to  a  mighty  em- 
pire, while  the  fate  Greece  brought  upon  Asia  has  overtaken 
Greece.     It  would  be  weariness  to  count  the  ages,  and  how 
often  the  fiery  sun  has  gone  his  round  and  surveyed  the  world 
since  then.     Change  comes  to  all  that  is  created  beneath  the 
law  of  mortality,  and  earth  does  not  know  herself  through  all 
the  rolling  years.     Nations  change :  they  cast  their  fashion 
through  age's  as  a  serpent  casts  its  skin;  but  the  world  abid- 

»  i.  481  sqq. 


LATE  AUGUSTAN  POETRY, 


381 


eth  fast  forever,  and  all  that  it  hath  is  safe ;  nought  therein 
is  increased  by  multitude  of  days  or  minished  by  old-a^-e. 
They  hurry  no  tittle  in  their  going,  and  are  not  weary  in  their 
course ;  but  it  shall  be  the  same  forever,  since  it  hath  been 
the  same  from  everlasting.  It  was  not  another  world  which 
our  fathers  have  seen,  or  another  world  that  our  children's 
children  shall  see  ;  it  is  a  god  who  changeth  not  forever. 
That  the  Bears  never  turn  round ;  that  the  sun  does  not  run 
down  to  meet  them,  nor  change  his  path  nor  turn  his  course 
to  his  rising  to  show  the  new-born  dawn  to  unfamiliar  lands; 
that  the  moon  never  transgresses  the  appointed  bounds  of  her 
light,  but  keeps  the  measure  given  of  old  for  her  WMXjng  and 
her  waning  ;  that  the  stars  which  hang  in  heaven  never  fall  to 
earth,  but  wear  out  the  seasons  meted  out  for  them  to  shine 
in — is  no  work  of  chance,  but  the  order  of  a  mighty  deity. 

And  here,  of  course,  we  see  the  weak  point  of  the  system. 
The  year  and  the  starry  sphere  keep  their  appointed  way  : 
how,  then,  do   the   changes    of  earth   originate   in   heaven.? 
And  here  comes  the  fantastical  conception  of  planetary  in- 
fluences.    Given  the  point  of  view,  observation  shows  that 
the  sun,  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  planets,  influences  the 
world  differently,  according  to  his  conjunction  with  different 
signs;  and  then  it  follows  that  other  planets  must  have  an 
influence  of  the  same  kind,  and  perhaps  even  a  more  exten- 
sive influence,  as  their  spheres  are  larger.    As  each  constella- 
tion is  appropriated  to  a  special  region  upon  earth,  it  follows 
that  the  characteristics  of  that  region  are  derived  from  the 
constellation,  and  that  the  characteristic  effects  of  the  con- 
stellation  must  modify  any  neighboring  planet.     Here  was 
ample  scope  for  calculation,  and  the  whole  science  of  judicial 
and  horary  astrology  in  its  later  developments  depends  upon 
these  ;  and  it  is  probable  that  the  Chalda2ans  whom  Tiberius 
had  consulted  and  banished  had  already  made  some  progress 
in  that  direction.     But,  to  judge  by  Manilius  and  his  contem- 
poraries, the  rudiments  of  the  quasi-science  which  stood  in 
some  relation  to  facts  still  occupied  most  attention.     Indeed, 
what  strikes  us  throughout  in  Manilius  is  that  all  is  rudimen- 
tary together.     When  one  compares  him  with  Lucretius,  the 


382 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


LATE  AUGUSTAN  POETRY. 


Z^l 


proportion  of  argument  is  very  much  less,  and  the  proportion 
of  description  is  very  much  larger ;  and  the  description  has 
always  the  character  of  laborious  explanation.  For  one  thing, 
the  Romans,  though  masters  of  compound  addition  and  sub- 
traction, were  not  familiar  with  other  ways  of  manipulating 
large  figures;  for  another,  maps  and  globes  were  not  fiimiliar 
objects  in  every  schoolroom,  and  therefore  the  zodiac  took  a 
great  deal  of  description.  The  division  of  the  sphere  into 
three  hundred  and  sixty  degrees,  the  relation  of  the  plane  of 
the  ecliptic  to  the  plane  of  the  equator,  and  the  fact  that  six 
signs  of  the  zodiac  are  above  the  horizon  together,  although  the 
sun  is  only  in  one,  are  all  rather  difficult  to  imagine,  especial- 
ly as  the  imagination  of  the  student  would  be  beset  by  the 
prejudice  that  births  in  a  particular  month  ought  to  be  con- 
fined to  the  influence  of  a  particular  sign.  Still,  after  all  al- 
lowances, Manilius  is  prolix,  being  perhaps  seduced  by  the 
example  of  Lucretius,  who  is  redundant  out  of  pure  vehe- 
mence of  conviction.  And,  after  all,  when  one  reads  the  de- 
scription of  the  Milky  Way,'  it  seems  as  if  writing  in  verse 
such  matters  as  we  are  accustomed  to  read  in  prose  tended 
in  itself  to  prolixity.  We  are  reminded  of  Lucretius  again  by 
the  style  of  his  speculations  on  the  different  causes  which 
might  have  produced  the  Milky  Way.  As  a  Stoic,  he  refuses 
to  rest  in  simple  curiosity  :  he  is  shocked  at  the  thought  that 
men  should  contemplate  a  catastrophe  of  the  world  without 
awe,  and  speculate  idly  on  the  chance  of  the  Milky  Way  be- 
ing a  crack  in  the  firmament  through  which  the  light  of  the 
empyrean  is  beginning  to  stream.  As  a  Stoic,  also,  he  is 
bound  to  treat  mythology  seriously.  The  fall  of  Phaethon 
may  conceal  a  genuine  tradition  of  a  cosmical  catastrophe  ; 
even  the  legend  of  Juno's  milk  has  to  be  gravely  told. 

Still  more  like  Lucretius  is  the  speculation  upon  the  origin 
of  comets  •?  he  does  not  really  care  whether  comets  and  shoot- 
ins:  stars  originate  on  earth  or  heaven  or  in  middle  air.  Per- 
haps  comets  rise  in  the  neighborhood  of  all  the  stars,  and  are 
attracted  by  the  burning  heat  of  the  sun ;  perhaps  they  are 
sparks  from  the  burning  furnaces  below,  "  which  threaten 
»  i.  675  sqq.  '  i.  831. 


Olympus  with  ^tna;"   at  any  rate,  they  are  proofs  of  the 
omnipotence  of  fire  throughout  the  universe.     With  the  usual 
inconsequence  of  a  fatalist,  he  is  willing  to  conjecture  that 
God  manifests  them  out  of  pity,  to  warn  mortals  of  impending- 
fate,  though  elsewhere'  he  proves  himself  more  consequent 
than  the  Pharisees.     Their  maxim  was,  ''All  things  of  God 
except  the  fear  of  God  ;"  but  IVLinilius  lays  down  that  to  know 
the  ways  of  fate  is  itself  a  gift  of  fate  ;  and  it  is  of  a  piece  with 
this  that  he  should  regard  insight  into  the  ways  of  the  uni- 
verse, which  makes  our  little  lives  what  they  are,  as  a  proof 
that  the  spirit  which  dwells  in  the  universe  dwells  also  in  us. 
When  he  comes  to  find  illustrations  of  the  truth  of  his  fatalism 
in  history,' he  turns  to  what  seems  to  him  unique  and  extraor- 
dinary :  the  common  facts  of  human  nature,  which  are  made 
the  main  argument  for  modern  determinism,  seem  to  him  to 
need  no  transcendental  explanation — they  have  their  expla- 
nation in  themselves;  and  the  attraction  of  fatalism  to  him  is 
that  it  presents  us  with  an  external  constraining  power  which 
should  account  for  what  exceeded  the  power  of  mere  mortals. 
That  nature  should  be  rational,  that  man  should  be  powerful, 
are  the  two  problems  which  Manilius  undertakes  to  solve  by 
the  help  of  the  stars.     His  spirit,  in  approaching  the  solution, 
is  truly  scientific;  his  enthusiasm  is  the  enthusiasm  of  knowl- 
edge; he  takes  a  solitary  path,  not  so  much  because  he  is 
weary  of  hackneyed  themes  as  because  he  wishes  to  turn  from 
fable  to  truth.     Of  all  didactic  poets  he  is  the  most  coura- 
geously didactic :  he  never  seeks  digressions  except  when  he 
generalizes,  and  manfully  confesses  that  his  subject  refuses 
all  ornament,  and  is  content  to  be  explanatory.     He  even 
makes  less  use  than  most  writers  of  the  metaphors  from  the 
course  of  a  ship  and  the  course  of  a  chariot.     He  seldom 
says  it  is  time  to  loose  his  horses  from  the  car  or  to  brin^  his 
ship  into  port.     He   is  conscientious  too:   he  explains^  at 
length  the  risk  of  mistake  through  forgetting  that  the  triangle 
of  constellations  is  often  only  approximate,  and  at  the  same 
time,  the  influence  of  the  triangle  is  much  more  powerful  than 
the  influence  of  the  square,  which  is  easier  to  establish  cor- 


:ii 


'  iv.  118. 


IV.  23  sqq. 


ii.  296  sqq. 


384 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


rcctly.  Then,  when  any  sign  or  star  is  powerful,  we  are  duly 
told'  in  what  part  of  the  body  to  look  for  its  effect  :  the  head 
and  neck,  for  instance,  are  affected  by  the  Ram  (about  whom 
Manilius  is  always  trying  to  be  poetical,  reminding  "s  of  h.s 
•rolden  fleece  and  his  passage  of  the  Hellespont) ;  vvhde  the 
Fishes  at  the  other  end  of  the  zodiac,  influence  the  feet. 

It   is  to  be   noticed  that  he  takes  the  constellations  for 
crranted  :  he  is  exercised  by  the  question  why  the  whole  pat- 
fern  of  the  figure  is  not  made  up  visibly  with  stars,  and  ex- 
plains that  the  world  would   not  boar   so  much  fire       lh,s 
shows  that  he  is  completely  under  the  dominion  of  Greek 
science  for  the  Chaldces  and  their  baser  followers  still  group- 
ed the  stars  fresh  from  one  month  to  another,  and  were  not 
averse  from  the  notion  of  seeing  the  whole  sky  turn  into  an 
ea-le  or  a  lion.     Of  course  the  purely  fanciful  element  has  a  1 
the  more  play  in  consequence.     One  fifth  of  the  whole  work 
is  devoted  to  observations  of  this  kind.    When  the  sun  is  half 
through  the  sign  of  the  Virgin,  or,  rather,  when  the  \  .rgin 
floats  alon^  with  thrice  five  of  her  parts  stretched  from    he 
sea  the  glorious  memorial  ofthe  Crown  once  set  upon  Ariadne 
will  be  .eared  above  the  waves,  and  grant  all  dainty  arts ;  for 
these  make  the  gifts  to  shine  which  are  given  to  a  maiden  : 
whence  it  follows  that  whoever  is  born  then  will  be  a  gardener 
or  a  perfumer,  or  something  ornamental.    But  w_^ioeyer  is  born 
under  the  Ear  of  Corn,  which  rises  soon  after  the  Crown,  w.U 
be  a  practical,  moncv-making  agriculturist,  or  miller,  or  archi- 
tect.    And  here  we  have  a  protest  against  luxury  :  the  only 
sold  we  ought  to  dig  from  earth  is  the  gold  of  harvest,  the 
onlv  use  of  architecture  (especially  fretted  roofs,  which  were 
the' fashionable  feature)  is  for  temples.'     This  protest  is  re- 
peated' apropos  of  the  Roman  f.uicy  for  eating  outlandish 
birds,  since  it  is  the  duty  of  a  writer  on  the  stars  to  explain 
the  business  to  which  a  bird-catcher  is  condemned  by  his  birth 
under  the  constellation  of  the  Swan  ;  and,  again,  when  Mani- 
lius has  to  spe.ik  of  the  adventurous  money-seekers  of  ditter- 
ent  kinds  born  under  the  Fishes.^     As  the  »/&  was  an 
instrument  of  torture,  it  follows  that  all  born  under  the  Lyre 


LATE  AUGUSTAN  POETRY. 


38; 


will  distinguish  themselves  as  inquisitors,  more  or  less  con- 
scientious and  public-spirited/  Terhaps  this  kind  of  thing 
reaches  its  climax  when  we  learn  that  whoever  is  born  under 
the  human  half  of  the  Centaur  will  be  muleteers  and  the  like, 
while  those   born   under  the   animal  half  will  be  veterinary 


surgeons. 


ii.  450  sqq. 


V.  251  sqq. 


»  V.  287.  '  V.  363. 


V.  396  sqq. 


§  5.  Phaidrus,  like  Manilius,  escaped  the  notice  of  Ovid, 
though  he  began  to  write  under  Augustus.  He  certainly 
wrote  under  Tiberius,  for  he  hints ^  that  he  was  persecuted  by 
Sejanus.  He  addressed  freedmen  of  Claudius,  but  the  freed- 
men  of  any  prince  of  the  imperial  house  may  have  been  great 
men  in  the  eyes  of  Phaedrus,  himself  originally  a  slave  of 
Macedonian  extraction. 

His  fables  are  short,  for  the  most  part,  nnd  thoroughly  faith- 
less. He  does  not  think  that  it  is  worth  people's  while  to 
take  good  advice.  He  seems  to  regard  the  fable  as  an  in- 
strument rather  of  criticism  than  of  correction.  His  favorite 
epilogue  is,  "This  complaint  will  do  for  any  one  who  has 
found  his  hope  betray  him,"  or,  "  This  example  will  serve  to 
make  so  and  so  ridiculous."  He  was  obviously  a  person  who 
expected  very  little  from  the  world  :  he  had  renounced  money- 
making  for  literature,  and  he  hardly  expected  to  be  read  even 
by  his  brother  freedmen.  When  we  consider  how  Ions:  he 
was  writing  his  thousand  or  so  of  lines,  it  is  curious  to  see 
how  solemn  he  is  upon  the  subject,  and  how  entirely  he  re- 
quires his  readers  to  give  themselves  up  to  him. 

The  imitation  of  "  ^sop"  is  never  very  close.  In  the  prol- 
ogue to  the  second  book  we  are  warned  that,  though  he  imi- 
tates the  style  of  the  old  gentleman  as  well  as  he  can,  he  does 
not  confine  himself  exclusively  to  his  matter.  In  fact,  one  of 
the  best  of  the  fables*  is  directed  against  busvbodies  at  Rome 
who  are,  strictly  speaking,  "officious,"  and  are  very  aptly  re- 
buked by  an  anecdote  of  Tiberius,  who  told  a  slave,  whom  he 
noticed  ostentatiously  laying  the  dust  before  him  at  Misenum, 
that  he  was  wasting  his  labor,  and  would  have  to  do  much 
more  than  that  to  earn  a  box  on  the  ear.  In  the  prologue  to 
the  fourth  book,  he  tells  us  that  henceforth  he  will  imitate 

'  V.  410  sqq.         2  ^.  ^-Q  ^^^  3  phaej,  Pj-qJ^  m  ^j  ^^^  «  ^^^  jj  ^ 

I.-17 


^86  ^^  TliV  LITER  A  TURE. 

rather  than  copy,  and  calls  his  fables  not  ^sop's,  but  ^so- 
pean.  It  is  generally  thought  that,  so  f^ir  as  he  was  a  copyist, 
his  principal  source  was  Babrius ;  but  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  Babrius  was  merely,  like  Socrates,'  a  versifier  of  tales 
which  were  already  floating  in  the  air;  and  as  he  was  not  the 
first  versifier,  so  he  was  not  the  last.  He  was  the  chief,  per- 
haps the  last,  of  the  Greek  fabulists  ;  but  the  Latins,  from  the 
days  of  Ennius  downward,  had  occupied  themselves  more  or 
less  with  the  mass  of  folk-lore  which  from  the  days  of  Herodo- 
tus onwards  had  been  associated  with  the  name  of  ^sop. 
^2sop  himself  is  associated  with  the  court  of  Croesus,  which 
is  close  to  the  home  of  the  Milesian  tales.  As  these  turned 
largely  upon  a  parody  of  human  life  among  animals,  it  may 
be  suspected  that  the  whole  literature  is  derived  from  the  pop- 
ular heritage  of  the  non-Aryan  population  of  Asia  Minor;  as 
a  great  deal  of  the  folk-lore  of  India  seems  non-Aryan,  since 
more  than  one  collection  is  stated  to  be  told  by  a  "devil,"  or 
translated  out  of  the  language  of  "devils;"  and  a  devil  in 
India  meant  a  non-Aryan,  as  an  embodiment  of  all  the  fears 
and  dislike  which  attached  themselves  to  the  unknown. 

However  this  may  be,  Phcedrus  has  been  the  chief  agent  in 
floating  down  the  fables  of  /I'^sop  to  posterity.  Much  of  his 
popularity  is  due  to  his  plebeian  temper  :  he  grumbles  and 
sneers,  without  aiming  at  elevation  or  refinement,  and  his  lan- 
guage is  thoroughly  plain  and  popular,  and  in  a  sense  more 
really  Latin  than  that  of  the  great  Augustan  poets.  He 
writes  the  language — if  not  of  Terence,  or  even  of  Laberius — 
of  the  composers  of  the  prologues  of  the  seventh  century  :  he 
is  terse  and  unaffected ;  and  whenever  he  is  a  little  antithetical 
in  structure,  there  is  always  a  finite  verb  in  each  member  of 
his  antithesis.  He  has  none  of  the  subtlety  of  Babrius,  little 
of  his  elegance  and  refinement,  and  his  pathos  is  different : 
one  might  take  the  fiible  of  the  swallow  and  the  nightingale 
as  a  specimen  of  the  pathos  of  Babrius,'  and  the  fable  of  the 
old  hound  whose  teeth  are  too  rotten  to  hold  the  boar,'  so 
well  known  through  the  wood-cut  of  Bewick,  as  a  specimen  of 
the  pathos  of  Phcedrus.  One  might  trace  the  contrast,  again, 
»  Plat.  "  rh«d."  p.  600.  =*  Bab.  12.  '  Phaed.  V.  x. 


I 


LA  TE  A  UGUSTAiV  FOE  TR  Y, 


3^7 


in  the  way  that  they  treat  the  fable  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb. 
In  Babrius,'  the  wolf  begins  with  the  possible  charges.  First, 
the  wolf  suspects  the  lamb  of  afifronling  him  (and  Babrius  has 
another  fable  in  his  collection  where  a  lamb  on  a  wall  does 
affront  a  wolf'-^),  then  of  trespassing  on  the  wolfs  ground, 
then,  at  last,  of  muddying  the  stream  at  which  the  wolf  is 
drinking,  and  the  lamb  is  simply  too  young  for  everything; 
the  wolf  eats  the  lamb  at  last  out  of  pique,  because  he  cannot 
let  the  lamb  have  the  last  word.  In  Phasdrus,'  the  wolf  is  de- 
termined to  eat  the  lamb,  and  begins  with  the  impossible 
charge  of  troubling  the  brook  where  the  lamb  was  drinking 
below  the  wolf,  and  the  wolf  tries  for  something  on  which  the 
lamb  cannot  contradict  him.  Of  course,  in  Pha^drus  the  in- 
iquity of  the  wolf  is  more  obvious;  in  Babrius  he  behaves 
more  like  an  oppressor  in  real  life. 

The  same  desire  to  force  such  moral  as  there  is  shows  it- 
self in  the  way  Phaedrus  varies  the  fable  of  the  frog  and  the 
ox.  In  Babrius,*  the  ox  treads  upon  one  of  the  froglings,  and 
the  survivors  tell  their  mother  that  the  victim  was  crushed  by 
a  great  beast.  She  swells  and  swells  to  try  and  reach  the 
size  of  the  ox :  they  tell  her  she  may  swell  till  she  bursts,  and 
never  be  as  big.  In  Phx^drus,  she  actually  bursts,'  and  asks 
after  her  first  effort  if  she  is  not  bigger  than  the  ox.  Again, 
when  the  frogs  lament  the  marriage  of  the  sun,  because  one 
scorches  them,  and  a  family  of  suns  would  make  life  impossi- 
ble, Phaedrus «  prefaces  the  story  with  the  remark  that  ^sop 
told  it  at  the  marriage  of  a  noted  thief,  while  Babrius'  does 
not  think  it  necessary  to  point  the  moral  at  all.  There  is 
more  political  interest  in  Babrius  :  the  mice,  when  they  go  to 
war,  ascribe  their  defeat  to  the  want  of  conspicuous  generals, 
and  so  we  get  an  explanation  of  why  the  generals  had  the 
high  crests  which  intercepted  their  retreat;*  while  Phasdrus  * 
does  not  care  to  go  beyond  the  fact  that  it  is  a  misfortune  to 
be  conspicuous  in  time  of  trouble.  In  general,  Phaedrus  gives 
us  the  impression  of  accepting  the  imperial  dispensation  very 


I » 


»  Bab.  89. 
-lb.  96. 
"  Phaed.  I.  i. 


*  Bab.  28. 

*  Phaed.  I.  xxiv 
«  lb.  I.  vi. 


"  Bab.  24. 

'  lb.  31. 

'  Phxd.  IV.  vi. 


f 


3^^ 


LA  TLV  LITER  A  TURK. 


heartily.  His  only  grievance  is  that  his  merits  do  not  meet 
clue  recognition,  or  rather  that  he  is  envied  for  his  talents.' 
This  envy  showed  itself  in  a  severe  criticism  of  his  fables, 
which  are  of  a  kind  that  it  is  easy  to  regard  as  childish;  and 
he  actually  tries  to  meet  this  charge  by  parodying  a  tragedy.^ 
The  prologue  to  the  *' Medea "  is  very  sensible,  because 
Medea  would  have  done  no  mischief  if  the  Argo  had  never 
found  its  way  to  her. 

He  succeeds  rather  better  with  contemporary  anecdotes. 
The  evergreen  story  of  the  vain  individual  who  appropriated 
to  himself  the  loyalty  displayed  by  a  whole  theatre  to  the 
head  of  the  state  has  seldom  been  better  told  than  by  Phae- 
drus,'  who  makes  the  mistake  just  plausible  enough. 
''  Prince  "  was  a  piper  who  used  to  play  for  Bathyllus,  and  so 
had  some  celebrity;  and,  owing  to  a  fidl  from  the  machin- 
ery at  some  game  or  other,  had  broken  the  "pipe"*  of  his 
left  leg,  though  he  would  have  been  better  pleased  to  break 
both  the  pipes  which  he  played  on  the  right.  He  was  car- 
ried home  groaning,  and  it  was  some  months  before  the  cure 
was  completed.  As. the  custom  of  play-goers  is  (they  are 
really  a  nice  sort),  they  began  to  miss  him  ;  his  breath  had 
kept  a  dancer  up  to  the  mark  so  often.  A  noble  was  just  go- 
ing to  exhibit  some  games,  and  Prince  was  getting  on  his  feet 
again  ;  the  noble  plied  him  w^ith  money  and  compliments  only 
just  to  show  himself  on  the  day  of  the  games.  As  he  arrived, 
there  was  a  buzz  in  the  theatre  about  the  piper:  some  were 
sure  he  was  dead,  some  that  he  would  come  on  at  once. 
Well,  when  the  curtain  fell  (for  the  show  to  begin),  and  the 
roll  of  the  thunder  was  over,  and  the  gods  had  spoken  in 
their  figurative  fashion,  then  the  chorus  set  up  a  song  (which 
the  absentee  had  never  heard)  to  this  effect :  ''  Rejoice, 
Rome,  for  thou  art  preserved— thy  Prince  is  safe."  Every- 
body stood  up  to  applaud  ;  the  piper  began  to  kiss  hands ; 
he  thought  his  friends  were  congratulating  him.  The  eques- 
trian order  understood  his  stupid  mistake,  laughed  heartily, 
and  encored  the  song.     Of  course  it  was  repeated ;  my  hero 

'  rii^cd.  Piol.lV.  15.  ^  lb.  V.  vii. 

'  lb.  IV.  vii.  *  The  thigh-bone. 


LATE  A UGUSTAN  FOE TR V. 


389 


prostrated  himself  at  full  length  on  the  stage,  and  the  knights 
jeered  and  applauded,  and  the  people  thought  he  was  asking 
for  a  crown.  But  as  soon  as  the  truth  of  the  matter  had  run 
up  all  the  benches,  Prince,  with  the  white  fillet  rolled  round 
his  leg,  and  his  white  tunic  and  white  boots  too,  as  he  plumed 
himself  on  the  honor  paid  to  the  Holy  House,  was  bundled 
out  by  everybody  head  foremost.  The  truth  is  that  Pha^drus 
is  more  preoccupied  with  his  own  private  anxieties  than  with 
public:  if  Particulo  would  keep  his  promise  to  give  him 
money  enough  to  make  him  easy  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  as 
Particulo*  did  at  last,  imperial  politics  did  not  concern  him 
much.  It  was  only  a  question  who  should  load  the  panniers, 
but  there  was  very  little  risk  that  the  ass  would  have  to  carry 
double.  It  is  curious  that  he  should  treat  fables  as  a  safety- 
valve  for  slaves,*'  for  a  head  of  a  household  in  our  time  would, 
if  affronted  by  comment  at  all,  be  more  affronted  by  comment 
disguised  because  known  to  be  offensive. 

§  6.  A  pretty  collection  of  bucolics,  which  has  come  to  us 
under  the  name  of  T.  Calpurnius  Siculus,  may  be  most  con- 
veniently described  as  a  sort  of  appendix  to  the  Augustan 
poetry;  for  there  is  a  general  consent  that  the  first  seven 
idyls  are  by  a  contemporary  of  the  first  five  years  of  Nero, 
and  probably  the  remaining  four  are  by  him  too  :  though  either 
the  blunder  of  an  ignorant  scribe,  or  the  conjecture  of  an  am- 
bitious scribe,  or  the  knowledge  of  a  learned  one,  has  imported 
some  uncertainty  into  the  MSS.;  and  there  are  sometimes 
peculiarities,  just  visible — like  the  avoidance  of  the  hiatus  after 
the  first  foot,  and  the  shortening  of  the  final  0  of  verbs  — 
which  have  been  quoted  in  support  of  the  distinction.^  But 
the  poems  are  an  echo  of  Vergil,  with  no  perceptible  trace  of 
later  influences.  Calpurnius  follows  Vergil  even  more  simply 
than  Gratius,  because  he  has  no  real  subject  of  his  own.  He 
is  undeniably  musical,  and  very  little  more.  The  only  original 
observation  which  his  shepherds  make  is  that  the  noise  of  a 
brook  over  gravel  rather  interferes  with  singing,  and  it  is  as 
well  to  get  away  from  it  into  the  shade.  The  allusions  to  real 
life  of  the  ^'Eclogues"  reappear,  though  with  a  great  loss  of 

*  Epil.  IV.  4,  5.        "  Piol.  III.  33  sqq.        =  See  also  note,  pp.  281,  282. 


390 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


truth  and  color.  There  is  a  patron  Meliboeus,  who,  the  swains 
hope,  may  bring  their  song  under  the  notice  of  Rome  and 
Caesar;'  Corydon  hopes  to  be  accepted  as  the  successor  of 
Tityrus,'*  altliough  he  knows  the  extent  of  his  ambition. 
There  is  another  patron,  Thyrsis,^  who  comes  round  the  folds 
and  awards  prizes  for  competitions  between  the  shepherds, 
which  Corydon  misses  when  he  "oes  to  see  some  irames  in 
Rome,  held  by  a  young  god  with  a  face  like  Mars  and  Apollo 
at  once,*  so  far  as  could  be  seen  from  the  back  seats  at  the 
top,  where  a  countryman  who  came  in  a  black  blanket  had  to 
stand,  for  all  the  lower  seats  were  reserved  for  citizens  who 
were  respectable  enough  to  come  in  togas,  all  of  whom  seem 
to  have  had  some  official  position.  This  same  emperor  is 
saluted  in  a  prophetic  poem,^  which  Ornitus  reads  to  Corydon 
after  ^o'xw'g  out  of  the  heat  for  a  singing  match.  He  is  to 
deliver  the  world  from  oppression  and  war,  and  bring  back 
the  Saturnian  age.  He  succeeds  a  prince  who  triumphed 
abroad,  and  brought  discord  home  with  him ;  he  threw  the 
senate  into  chains.  His  successor  is  accomplished,  and,  while 
yet  in  his  mother's  arms,  it  was  his  favorite  amusement  to 
play  at  pleading  causes. 

AFost  of  this  would  fit  Nero  well  enough,  and,  though  all  the 
other  notices  of  him  imply  that  he  was  given  rather  exclu- 
sively to  poetry,*  it  is  quite  possible  that  there  may  have  been 
a  little  early  taste  for  oratory,  which  Seneca  may  have  thought 
it  well  to  discourage,  as  he  took  a  very  severe  view  of  the 
juridical  ambition  of  Claudius.  It  is  tempting  to  identify 
Meliboeus  with  Seneca,  for  Meliboeus  is  a  very  important  per- 
son and  a  guardian  of  the  laws  ;  and  apparently  a  philosopher, 
for  the  lamentations  on  his  death  in  the  eighth  idyl  begin  with 
a  pompous  invocation  to  .-Ether,  father  of  all,  and  Fluids,  the 
cause  of  things,  and  Earth,  the  mother  of  the  body,  and 
Air,  whence  we  draw  the  breath  of  life — which  recalls  Veririrs 
Silenus,  as  the  first  idyl  recalls  his  Pollio.  But  there  is  a 
grave  difficulty  in  identifying  Meliboeus  and  Seneca.  Meli- 
boeus, whoever  he  was,  died  after  patronizing  Tityrus  through- 

^  lb.  vii.  6  sqq. 


'  Calp.  iv.  157  sqq. 
Mb.  64. 


lb.  8: 


lb.  i.  33. 


Tac.  "  Ann."xiii.3. 


LA  TE  A  UGUSTAJV  FOE  TR  Y. 


391 


out  the  life  of  both  (one  of  many  indications  that  Calpurnius 
was  past  his  youth),  and  apparently  his  friends  had  nothing  to 
deplore  but  the  death  of  a  good  old  man  in  a  good  old-age,  full 
of  days,  riches,  and  honor,  and  yet  were  inconsolable  because 
he  was  too  good  to  die.  Now  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  poet 
publishing  any  lamentation  on  Seneca's  death  at  the  time 
without  immortalizing  himself,  and  it  is  more  difficult  to  im- 
agine a  poet  with  so  much  constancy  as  to  lament  Seneca  ab- 
staining from  denunciations  of  Nero  ;  and  most  difficult  of  all 
to  imagine  how  any  poet  living  under  Nero  could  expect 
praise  and  promotion  for  praising  Seneca.  There  is  the 
same  procession  of  the  powers  of  nature  to  mourn  for  Meli- 
boeus as  come  in  Vergil  to  console  Gallus  and  mourn  for 
Daphnis. 

Calpurnius  gives  one  the  impression  of  knowing  country 
life  pretty  well  ;  and,  being  a  countryman,  the  "city"  is  al- 
ways something  distant  to  dream  of,  and  the  splendors  of  the 
sliow  make  rather  a  disproportionate  impression  on  his  mind. 
His  shepherd  must  have  visited  Rome  before  the  completion 
of  the  Coliseum,  for  the  seats  were  still  supported  on  wooden 
scaffolding.'  But  the  decorations  made  amends  for  the  mean- 
ness of  the  structure.  A  marble  wall  went  round  the  arena, 
protected  from  the  animals  by  a  strong  timber  fence  cased 
with  ivory,  which  had  the  double  advantage  of  being  too 
smooth  to  give  their  claws  a  hold,  and  of  looking  magnificent. 
There  were  bosses  of  precious  stones  (probably  jasper  and 
onyx  and  colored  spars)  round  the  front  of  the  lowest  row  of 
seats,  and  there  was  a  good  deal  of  gilding  on  the  covered 
arcade  assigned  to  women  and  the  commonalty  ;  and  this  was 
a  novelty  which  impressed  a  city  sight-seer  as  much  as  it  im- 
pressed a  countryman  who  had  never  seen  anything  before. 
We  get  a  good  deal  of  light  as  to  what  was  wealth  in  the 
country  parts  of  Italy.  Idas  ""  is  a  rustic,  but  not  a  barbarian  ; 
he  often  kills  both  he-lambs  and  she-lambs  ;  he  has  plenty 
of  milk  and  cheese.  Astacus'  has  potherbs  all  the  year 
round ;  he  makes  a  cake  for  Priapus  quite  as  often  as  Idas 
sacrifices  to  Pales,  and  cakes  and  honey  are  quite  as  accept- 
*  Calp.  vii.  23.  2  lb.  ii.  61  sqq.  ^  lb.  74. 


Z9' 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


able  to  gods  and  men  as  fresh  lamb.  Idas  promises  fleeces 
in  autumn,  and  Astacus  promises  chestnuts.  And  at  bottom 
both  lovers  are  very  practical :  as  soon  as  it  is  night  and  time 
to  go  home,  the  shepherd  orders  his  men  to  the  right  and  left 
to  bring  up  the  flocks,  and  the  gardener  orders  his  man  to 
open  the  sluice  of  the  canal.  It  is  true  another  pair  of  lovers 
are  less  reasonable;^  and  they  are  not  even  rivals,  for  their 
mistress  is  equally  well  inclined  to  both,  and  they  are  content 
to  divide  her.  But  her  parents  think  it  is  better  to  keep  the 
girl  at  home  ;  consequently  one  of  the  lovers  forgets  for  three 
days  to  take  the  heifers  out  for  grass  or  water,  and  forgets 
himself  to  make  baskets. 

There  is  more  of  a  story  in  the  fifth  idyl,  where  a  forlorn 
swain  has  lost  two  hours  and  got  badly  torn  in  looking  for  a 
stray  heifer;  and  gives  up  the  search  to  lament  his  love,  who 
has  left  him  for  a  worse  musician,  who  cannot  give  her  so 
many  presents.  After  telling  the  story  of  the  quarrel,  which 
was  much  aggravated  by  his  indiscretion  in  stripping  her  and 
beating  her,  when  her  interest  in  the  rival  had  not  gone  be- 
yond a  mere  caprice,  he  resolves  by  the  advice  of  his  friend  Xo 
attempt  a  reconciliation;  so  he  composes  a  poem,  which  his 
friend  promises  to  take  down  on  cherry  bark  and  carry  to  the 
oftended  beauty.  The  lover  offers  his  mistress  the  satisfac- 
tion of  tying  his  hands  behind  his  back  (which  we  have  seen 
was  part  of  Italian  etiquette) :  he,  of  course,  as  he  is  a  country- 
man, is  careful  to  give  her  alternative  of  osier  or  vine,  and  to 
remind  her  how  many  presents  she  has  had  from  his  hands, 
while  the  hands  of  his  rival  were  bound,  not  for  a  lover-like 
indiscretion,  but  because  he  was  detected  in  an  attempt  to  rob 
the  fold  at  night.  Perhaps  the  point  is  ingenious  enough  to 
deserve  some  of  the  praise  which  the  poet,  as  usual,  awards 
himself  by  the  mouth  of  the  friend  who  compliments  the  lover 
on  his  verses.  The  latter  promises  himself  a  happy  recon- 
ciliation, for  he  sees  one  of  his  men  on  the  right  with  the 
missing  heifer. 

In  most  of  the  poems  Calpurnius  aims  more  at  story  and 
dialogue  than  Vergil,  just  because  he  cannot  trust  himself  to 

'  Calp.  ix. 


LATE  AUGUSTAN  POETRY. 


393 


let  a  lover  fill  a  whole  poem  with  his  complaint.  When 
Myron  lectures  Canthus  on  the  art  of  goat-keeping,^  when  he 
is  going  to  turn  over  his  flock  to  him,  the  lecture  begins  when 
they  have  gone  out  of  the  heat  of  the  sun,  and  after  a  little 
more  than  a  hundred  lines  Mvron  observes  it  is  jrettinji  late, 
though  he  has  much  more  to  say.  Still,  he  manages  to  give 
rules  for  the  management  of  a  flock  from  one  year's  end  to 
another  in  the  space,  and  to  give  some  useful  hints  how  to 
cure  sores  caused  in  shearing,  how  to  keep  serpents  from  the 
fold,  and  how  to  mark  the  flocks  as  a  precaution  against  law- 
suits. The  language  is  f^iirly  good  throughout,  and  there  is 
an  attempt  at  the  simplicity  of  the  practical  parts  of  the 
"Georgics;"  elsewhere,  in  general,  Calpurnius  refines  upon 
Vergil,  and  is  vague  and  unreal  in  consequence.  When  a 
shepherd  wants  to  say  that  "  though  summer  is  nearly  over,  it 
is  as  hot  as  ever,"  he  begins,  "the  sun's  horses  are  no  gentler 
yet  as  summer  slopes  down.'"'  When  a  shepherd  wishes  to 
strike  a  loftier  strain,  he  tells  us  that  "  it  must  not  have  the 
echo  of  the  woods."'  Even  this  is  simpler  than  the  original, 
for,  since  the  sound  of  the  voice  rebounds  from  a  wood  some- 
times, Calpurnius  allows  himself  to  say  "rebounds"  for  the 
sake  of  the  metre,  without  intending  much  more  than 
"sounds,"  if,  indeed,  he  intends  anything.  "The  blessing  of 
Fame  has  paved  a  kindly  way  for  Tityrus  thus  far  from  the 
woods,  and  broken  the  full  clouds  of  envy."  But  here  praise 
has  to  stop:  "already  the  sun  is  sending  down  his  steeds 
from  the  summit  of  the  universe,  and  counsels  us  to  grant  the 
flocks  the  moisture  of  the  rivers."  * 


Note  on  the  Epicedioti  Dnisi. 

The  genuineness  of  this  work  has  ahvays  been  called  in  question  since 
1849,  when  Haupt  suggested  that  it  was  written  by  a  Renaissance  imitator 
of  Ovid.  In  1S78  E.  Hiibner,  in  an  elaborate  paper  in  Hermes,  while  es- 
tablishing the  imitative  character  of  the  work  by  an  exhaustive  array  of 
quotations  from  both  Ovid  and  Propertius,  combated  Haupt's  linguistic 
arguments  for  a  late  date,  and  maintained  that  the  imitation  was  too  per- 
fect for  the  young  scholarship  of  the  fifteenth  century.     None  of  his  quo- 

»  Calp.  V.  13  sqq.         '^  lb.  i.  i.         ^  lb.  iv.  5.        *  lb.  viii.  84-7. 

I.— 17* 


I 


394 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


talions  are  very  decisive,  for  Ovid  certainly  imitated  both  Propert.us  and 
himself.  Still,  it  is  startling  that  a  poet  who  wrote  745  l^'-C.  should  be  as 
familiar  with  the  turns  of  expression  which  we  find  in  the  "  Metamor- 
phoses "  and  the  "  Fasti,"  to  say  nothing  of  the  "  Tr.st.a  and  the  Letters 
from  Fontus,"  as  with  those  of  earlier  works.  Less  stress  can  be  laid  on 
the  coincidences  with  the  consolatory  works  of  Seneca,  and  upon  the  bare 
possibilitv  that  the  poet  may  have  taken  the  river  Isargus  from  1  acitus— 
from  all  which  Ilubner  infers  that  the  "  Epicedion"  is  a  work  of  the  sec- 
ond century,  in  which  case  it  must  be  a  school  exercise.  In  any  case,  the 
treatment  of  Tiberius  is  singular  if  the  poet  wrote  after  his  death  ;  while, 
if  it  was  written  at  the  time  by  a  member  of  Ovid's  school,  it  might  have 
been  elaborated  afterwards. 


LIVY. 


395 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LIVY. 

Livy's  position  was  less  dignified  than  that  of  many  of  his 
contemporaries  :  he  was  the  tutor  of  the  grandchildren  of  Au- 
gustus, a  position  which  might  have  been  filled  by  a  slave  or  a 
freedman.     It  is  probable  that  he  owed  his  selection  partly  to 
the  reputation  of  his  native  town  for  severity  of  manners — a  rep- 
utation which  was  not  impaired  by  its  wealth.     Livy  mentions 
that  in  his  day  there  were  five  hundred  citizens  of  equestrian 
census,  a  larger  number  than  was  to  be  found  in  any  other 
town  of  Italy,  except  Rome  and  Capua.     Patavium  had  grown, 
like  Venice,  because  it  was  in  the  way  of  trade  and  out  of  the 
way  of  war.     It  had  repelled  the  invasion  of  the  Etruscans 
and  of  the  Gauls  and  of  the  Spartan  Cleonymus,  but  it  had 
not  known  the  constant  harassing  warfare  through  which  col- 
onies like  Placentia  or  Cremona   struggled   into  greatness. 
The  colony  founded  there  by  the  Romans  was  in  no  sense  a 
protection  against  the  natives.     These  belonged  to  the  nation 
of  Heneti  or  Veneti,  who  had  expelled  the  Euganei.     It  was 
generally  admitted  that  the  Heneti  of  Venetia  were  descend- 
ants of  the  Heneti  of  Paphlagonia,  whose  king  Pyl^menes 
had  fallen  before  Troy,  and  that  they  had  settled  in  Italy  un- 
der the  conduct  of  Antenor.     Livy  himself  speaks  half  as  if 
he  believed  the  legend,  which  he  tells  in   its  baldest  form, 
^^neas  and  Antenor  were  spared  by  the  Greeks,  on  the  obvi- 
ous ground  that  they  had  been  on  the  Greek  side  throughout 
the  war:  they  naturally  left  a  ruined  country  to  settle  in  Italy. 
It  is  only  when  we  come  to  the  miraculous  that  Livy  is  scep- 
tical.    The  legend  of  the  white  sow  with  her  litter  of  thirty 
staggers  him  ;  as  for  the  wonderful  birth  and  nurture  of  Romu- 
lus, he  can  only  say  it  is  due  to  the  majesty  of  Rome  that 
the  world  should  refrain  from  questioning  what  is  incredible. 


396 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


LIVY, 


397 


But  he  has  no  doubt  whatever  of  the  tradition  which  links 
Kome  and  Patavium  together,  and  his  judgment  is  of  the 
more  weight  because  it  agrees  with  that  of  Vergil,  one  of  the 
most  learned  of  Italian  antiquaries.  Probably  the  tradition 
would  have  belonged  to  the  same  class  as  the  French  and 
Welsh  traditions  of  their  descent  from  Troy.  We  are  on 
surer  ground  when  we  remember  that  the  same  mixture  of 
races  flourished  at  Patavium  which  afterwards  flourished  at 
Venice. 

Livy  was  born  B.C.  59,  or  57,  according  to  the  reckoning  of 
St.  Jerome  ;  and  it  seems  that  he  was  about  thirty-two  when  he 
began  the  great  work  of  his  life,  for  the  indications  in  the  first 
decade  {e.g.,  the  mention  of  the  temples,  iv.  20)  point  between 
27  B.C.  and  20  B.C.  He  prosecuted  his  work  with  insatiable 
industry  till  his  death  in  a.d.  16;  though  long  before  he  left  off 
he  had  done  enough,  even  in  his  own  judgment,  for  fame. 
His  hundred  and  forty  books  carry  the  history  of  Rome  from 
its  foundation  to  the  death  of  Drusus,  the  brother  of  Tiberius 
—  an  event  which  might  have  served  for  the  terminus  of  a 
contemporary  history,  or  simply  have  marked  the  last  stage 
which  a  septuagenarian  historian  lived  to  reach. 

The  extent  of  his  work  is  a  marked  contrast  with  the  his- 
torical writincfs  of  Roman  aristocrats  like  Asinius  Pollio,  who 
took  the  Civil  Wars  for  his  subject,  or  L.  Arruntius,  who  wrote 
on  the  Punic  War  with  a  tiresome  imitation  of  Sallust.  But 
Livy  did  not  confine  himself  to  history;  he  wrote  to  his  son- 
in-law  on  rhetoric,  and  rebuked  the  obscurity  of  Sallust :  he 
wrote  dialogues  of  moral  edification,  which  were  praised  by 
Quinctilian,  and  have  gone  the  way  of  the  dialogues  of  Aris- 
totle, which  fascinated  and  inspired  Cicero. 

The  same  tendency  shows  itself  very  plainly  in  his  history  : 
like  Rollin  and  Fenelon,  he  never  forgets  that  he  is  a  school- 
master. Edification  in  one  shape  or  another  is  the  only  topic 
of  his  long  and  interesting  preface.  He  doubts  whether  his 
labors  in  such  a  gigantic  task  will  not  be  in  vain  ;  he  knows 
the  ancient  history  which  interests  him  will  seem  tame  to 
readers  in  a  hurry  to  get  to  the  Civil  Wars.  He  does  not 
write  for  fame ;  he  has  not  Sallust's  pretension  of  writing 


because  he  wishes  to  occupy  the  leisure  forced  upon  him,  nor 
does  he  aim,  like  Thucydides,  at  eliciting  principles  which 
will  be  a  guide  to  men  through  the  future  revolutions  of  hu- 
man affairs.  Rome  seems  to  him  a  fitting  subject  for  the  his- 
torian because  it  was  the  greatest  city  and  displayed  the  great- 
est examples  both  of  good  deeds  and  of  evil.  And  Rome 
was  not  only  the  greatest  city  in  the  world,  but  the  best;  it 
had  honored  poverty  and  withstood  luxury  longer  than  any 
other,  and  this  when  it  had  greater  temptations  to  luxury 
than  any. 

What  strikes  him  is  not  what  strikes  a  modern — the  won- 
derful organizing  power  so  often  displayed  by  the  ancient 
heroes  of  Rome,  or  the  political  talent  of  the  whole  people, 
which  we  are  apt  to  treat  as  an  ultimate  fact.  He  is  more 
impressed  by  the  turbulent  side  of  Roman  public  life  than  by 
its  stability;  he  looks  for  the  principle  of  Roman  greatness  in 
the  moral  qualities  which  made  discipline  possible.  And 
there  can  be  no  doubt  thrift  and  parsimony  are  simpler  than 
the  habit  of  military  and  political  discipline  :  they  are  among 
tlie  conditions  on  which  discipline  depends,  which  is  quite  in- 
compatible with  self-pleasing.     Livy  feels  like  Vergil, 

Moribiis  antiquis  stat  res  Romani  viiisquc, 

and  is  rather  indifferent  to  material  sublimity:  he  is  little  im- 
pressed by  the  greatness  of  such  works  as  the  Cloaca  Maxima 
or  the  Via  Appia;  the  tradition  that  the  Potitii  died  out  in  the 
consulship  of  Appius  because  they  agreed  to  his  proposal  to 
delegate  the  rites  of  the  great  altar  of  Hercules  to  public 
slaves  is  recounted  at  greater  length  than  the  censor's  engi- 
neering triumphs,  to  which  Livy  is  so  indifferent  that  he  never 
connects  them  either  with  his  obstinacy  in  retaining  office  for 
the  full  term  of  five  years,  or  with  his  innovation  of  admitting 
freedmen's  sons,  doubtless  including  his  own  contractors,  to 
the  senate.  The  portion  of  this  work  that  has  reached  us  is 
little  more  than  a  quarter  of  the  whole  in  bulk;  but  in  time 
the  proportion  is  different.  The  first  ten  books  cover  460 
years  (not  counting  the  period  between  ^neas  and  the  foun- 
dation of  the  city).     Out  of  this  the  first  covers  244,  the  four 


V\ 


398 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


that  follow  12  1,  and  the  next  five  95  ;  the  next  ten,  which  are 
lost,  covered  seventy  years;  then  came  ten  books  which  we 
still  possess,  which  covered  the  events  of  eighteen  years,  the 
terrible  second  Punic  war;  while  the  fifteen  books  which  fol- 
low cover  the  period  from  the  final  defeat  of  Hannibal  to  the 
final  overthrow  of  the  Macedonian  power:  leaving  ninety-five 
books  for  the  events  of  about  a  hundred  and  seventy  years — 
almost,  that  is,  at  tiie  rate  of  a  book  for  the  events  of  every 
two  years. 

The  disproportion  shows  that  the  author  has  only  an  imper- 
fect mastery  over  his  materials.     He  started  with  the  method 
of  using  and  amplifying  all  the  records  which  he  found  to  his 
hand,  in  order  to  make  them  at  once  intelligible  and  edifying. 
AVhen  the  records  are  meagre,  he  is  a  creative  artist;  when 
the  records  are  full  and  the  subject  trivial,  he  degenerates  into 
a  compiler  capable   of  incorporating  the  vulgarities  of  the 
original.     To  the  last,  the  final  characters  with  which  he  dis- 
misses a  great  man  upon  his  death  are  carefully  and  skilfully 
done,  with  a  general    intention  of  generosity,  which  rather 
breaks  down  in  the  case  of  Cicero.     One  might  very  well  ex- 
pect that  Cicero,  with  his  good   intentions   and   private  de- 
cency, would  have  been  treated  exceptionally  well;  but  Livy 
could  not  forgive  him  for  seeing  through  Pompeius.     If  Cic- 
ero had  been  a  partisan,  it  would  have  been  easier  for  the 
nobility  to  hold  their  own  :  his  pretensions  and  his  insight 
both  acted  as  solvents.     It  is  remarkable  that  Livy,  a  retainer 
of  the  imperial  house,  a  native  of  the  country  beyond  the  Po, 
which  owed  its  admission  to  full  Roman  citizenship  to  Coisar, 
should  have  written  the  history  of  the  civil  war  with  a  strong 
tendency  to  favor  Pompeius.     It  is  unfortunate  that  his  his"^ 
tory  has  not  reached  us,  for  none  of  the  histories  that  have 
come  down  give  the  case  for  Pompeius  with  force  enough  to 
counteract  the  growing  bias  in  favor  of  Caisar— due  partly  to 
his  amiability,  partly  to  the  perception  that  his  success  \vas 
^inevitable.     Probably  for  this  very  reason  the  latter  part  of 
Livy  was  not  so  much  read  after  the  reign  of  Domitian;  for, 
though  criticism  of  bad  emperors  was  free  to  the  last,  criticism 
of  the  imperial  system  was  forbidden  ;  and  it  is  doubtful  if 


LIVY. 


399 


criticism  of  the  events  under  which  it  originated  was  really 
free  after  the  reign  of  Augustus,  for  the  "  Pharsalia"  is  a  gi- 
gantic escapade,  and,  as  it  proved,  a  perilous  one.  Even  Ver- 
gil and  Horace  only  use  their  liberty  to  glorify  Cato,  against 
whom,  to  be  sure,  Caisar  had  written  a  monstrous  pamphlet. 
Labienus,  son  of  the  only  lieutenant  of  Caesar  who  made  the 
mistake  of  joining  Pompeius,  had  not  damaged  himself  so 
deeply  by  his  bad  life  but  that  he  damaged  himself  by  his  zeal 
for  Pompeius  in  his  histories.  Another  reason  for  the  neglect 
of  the  latter  part  of  Livy  doubtless  was  that  his  eloquence  was 
beginning  to  show  signs  of  the  garrulity  of  old-age.  The  fall- 
ing-off  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  decades  is  already  very  marked, 
and  cannot  be  wholly  accounted  for  by  the  deterioration  of 
the  sul)ject.  For  the  same  reasons,  it  is  probable  that  the 
second  decade,  which  dealt  with  the  dulness  of  the  first  Punic 
war  as  well  as  with  the  sensational  campaigns  of  Pyrrhus,  was 
neglected  by  readers  anxious  to  reach  the  thrilling  story  of  the 
campaigns  of  Hannibal. 

The  first  and  the  third  decades  of  Livy  are  two  of  the 
greatest  historical  books  of  the  world  :  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  of  the  two  the  first  is  not  the  greater.  It  is  quite  true, 
of  course,  that  Livy  believed  much  that  is  incredible  to  mod- 
ern scholars,  much  that  was  incredible  even  to  learned  con- 
temporaries; true  that  in  all  the  material  conditions  of  his- 
tory Livy  was  careless,  even  for  a  man  who  had  no  practical 
acquaintance  with  affairs  ;  true  also  that,  like  Hume,  he  pre- 
ferred to  write  from  chroniclers  wljen  he  might  have  made 
some  approach  to  writing  from  documents.  His  history  is 
full  of  stories  like  the  escape  of  Cloelia  and  the  rescue  of 
Rome  by  Camillus,  which  are  condemned  without  appeal  by 
the  casual  allusions  of  Tacitus  to  the  surrender  of  the  city  to 
Porsena,  and  to  the  ransom  paid  for  it  to  the  Gauls.  Again, 
antiquarian  research  would  have  made  constitutional  questions 
of  all  kinds  much  plainer  than  Livy  makes  them — much  plain- 
er than  antiquarian  speculation  can  make  them  now:  he  talks 
of  the  "people"  and  the  "commons,"  and  nowhere  states  any 
distinction  between  the  two  :  he  seems  to  imagine  that  the 
"fathers"  are  the  senators,  yet  he  is  not  quite  ignorant  of  the 


400 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TCRE. 


connection  between  them  and  the  patricians;  and  he  knows 
of  plebeian  senators  at  a  time  when  the  commons  were  still 
excluded  from  every  office  but  that  of  tribune.  One  never 
learns  the  relation  of  the  comitia  ciiriata  to  the  comitia  tribitta, 
or  of  the  comitia  centuriata  to  either.  To  sum  up  all  in  a 
word,  he  constantly  confuses  the  conflict  between  the  author- 
ities of  the  city  of  Rome  and  the  inhabitants  of  the  Roman 
territory  with  the  conflict  between  the  rich  and  poor,  the  high- 
born and  the  base-born  ;  between  which  it  is  possible  that 
Niebuhr  and  some  of  his  successors  have  drawn  too  sharp  a 
distinction. 

Hut,  with  all  this,  the  first  decade  of  Livy  gives  incompar- 
ably the  fullest  and  clearest  picture  of  national  life  as  a  whole 
which  any  ancient  historian  has  given  us.  The  incidents 
are  often  misconceived  and  misplaced,  but  the  atmosphere 
and  the  scenery  are  always  lifelike.  It  is  generally  recog- 
nized that  ''  Quentin  Durward  "  has  a  great  deal  of  historical 
truth,  although  (to  mention  nothing  else)  the  Bishop  of  Liege 
was  not  massacred,  nor  William  de  la  Marck  slain,  on  the 
occasion  of  that  revolt  of  Liege  which  Louis  XL  helped 
Charles  the  Bold  to  suppress.  Now,  very  few  of  Livy's  inac- 
curacies are  on  a  larger  scale  than  this,  and  he  has  always  the 
kind  of  truth  which  we  expect  in  an  historical  novel  — the 
kind  of  truth  which  we  accept  in  conjectural  reconstructions 
of  primitive  history,  especially  the  history  of  religious  institu- 
tions, where  our  interest  in  the  subject  disposes  us,  as  patri- 
otic pride  disposes  Livy,  to  make  the  utmost  of  imperfect  evi- 
dence. It  is  easy  to  exaggerate  the  imperfection  of  the 
materials:  for  instance,  the  discontinuity  of  family  as  distin- 
guished from  gentile  names  in  the  very  early  history  shows  the 
good  faith  of  the  annalists,  for  if  they  had  worked  simply  to 
flatter  the  vanity  of  great  houses,  every  family  name  would 
have  been  carried  back  to  the  beginning  of  the  Republic.  It 
was  a  less  serious  falsification  that  when  a  plebeian  of  the  same 
gentile  name  as  an  ancient  patrician  distinguished  himself 
after  the  days  of  Pyrrhus  or  Hannibal,  the  complaisant  annal- 
ist reckoned  him  a  direct  descendant  of  the  older  celebritv, 
one  of  whose  heirs  was  supposed  to  have  gone  over  to  the 


LIVY. 


401 


commons — probably  not  an  uncoinmon  process  when  a  coun- 
try gentleman  did  not  care  to  leave  the  district  where  his 
land  lay  often,  and  probably  had  no  objection  to  espouse  the 
quarrels  of  his  country  neighbors.  But  Livy  complains  that 
what  had  happened  sometimes  was  represented  as  having 
happened  often. 

This  is  a  fair  instance  of  the  sort  of  criticism  on  his  author- 
ities which  we  find  in  Livy.  He  has  been  called  credulous, 
like  Herodotus,  because  he  has  no  canons  of  what  is  abso- 
lutely incredible,  and  because  he  is  not  ashamed  of  a  rever- 
ent curiosity  about  omens  and  prodigies.  Even  about  this 
he  is  not  exactly  free  from  scepticism,  or  rather  he  has  a 
clear  perception  that  their  value  depends  rather  upon  human 
carefulness  than  any  efficacy  of  their  own,'  He  quite  ap- 
proves of  the  distinction  drawn  by  Papirius  between  the  re- 
sponsibility of  a  general  and  of  an  augur  on  the  occasion  of 
a  profane  pu/larius,  or  keeper  of  the  sacred  chickens,  which 
were  carried  about  with  Roman  armies,  as  it  was  supposed 
tliat  when  they  fed  heartily  the  soldiers  were  likely  to  be  in 
good  heart  to  fight.  When  moral  conditions  became  more 
important  than  physical,  the  soldiers  were  ready  to  fight  when 
the  chickens  were  not  ready  to  feed;  and  at  such  times  a 
pullarius  was  tempted  to  falsify  his  report.  The  general's 
nephew,  we  are  told,  was  careful  to  inform  his  uncle  of  the  real 
facts.  The  general  replied  that  he  was  justified  in  fighting, 
since  he  was  officially  informed  that  the  omens  were  favor- 
able, and  that  \\\q. pullarius  was  answerable  for  his  own  false- 
hood. Accordingly,  we  are  told  that  the  Romans  gained  a 
decisive  victory,  and  that  the  pullarius^  who  was  set  in  the 
front  of  the  battle,  was  killed.  There  is  the  same  quaint 
casuistical  tone  in  the  discussion  on  the  treaty  of  the  Caudine 
Forks.^  Livy  is  evidently  uncomfortable  that  an  unauthor- 
ized convention,  which  had  been  solemnly  sworn  to  in  the 
name  of  Rome,  had  been  repudiated.  It  comforts  him  a 
little,  to  be  sure,  that  there  was  no  regular  treaty,  which  would 
have  been  concluded  by  feiiales,  and  necessarily  been  sanc- 
tioned by  all  the  powers  of  the  state.  Probably,  while  two 
»  Liv.X.xl.  Mb.  IX.  V.  2. 


402 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


consular  armies  were  in  the  field,  it  was  impossible  to  Iiold  an 
assembly  whose  decision  would  be  binding.  Accordingly,  the 
Samnites  could  only  insist  that  the  consuls  should  pledge 
themselves  and  their  staff  that  they  would  carry  a  treaty  to 
the  mind  of  the  Samnites:  and,  according  to  Livy's  version 
(as  it  was  desirable  to  do  what  was  possible  to  bind  the  au- 
thorities at  home),  two  of  the  tribunes  of  the  commons  were 
made  to  pledge  themselves  also.*  Livy  dwells  at  great 
length,  and  with  great  unction,  on  the  contrast  between  the 
devotion  of  the  consuls  who  were  anxious  to  be  given  up  to 
the  Samnites,  that  the  convention  might  be  annulled,  and  the 
selfishness  of  the  tribunes,  who  insist  that  the  convention  is 
binding  because  they  fear  to  be  given  up  :  he  composes  a 
forcible  and  eloquent  speech,  in  which  the  consul  dilates  on 
the  infatuation  of  the  Samnites  in  thinking  that  the  army 
could  possibly  bind  the  state.  If  we  compare  his  account  of 
the  behavior  of  the  Romans  with  modern  usaiie,  it  almost 
seems  as  if  the  Romans  were  excessively  scrupulous.  In- 
stead of  punishing  the  consuls  themselves  for  exceeding  their 
powers,  they  gave  up  every  one  who  had  sworn  to  the  con- 
vention to  the  Samnites.  Yet  Livy  feels  as  if  they  had  not 
done  enougli  :  the  Samnites  refused  to  admit  that  the  Romans 
could  clear  themselves  at  the  expense  of  individuals,  and  so 
they  set  all  the  victims  who  were  offered  to  them  at  liberty. 
Livy's  last  word  is,  ''Perhaps  they  had  saved  the  public  faith 
by  their  surrender  ;  at  any  rate,  they  saved  their  own." 

Just  the  same  mixture  of  patriotic  pride  and  moral  scruple 
meets  us  in  the  story  of  M.  Scaptius.^  Ardea  and  Aricia  dis- 
puted, it  seems,  the  ownership  of  a  patch  of  land,  and  referred 
the  question  to  Rome  ;  and  Scaptius  informed  the  assembly 
that  he  had  served  in  the  campaign  in  which  the  Romans  had 
conquered  the  debatable  land  from  the  Volscians  at  the  time 
of  the  capture  of  Corioli.  Hereupon  the  assembly  voted  that 
the  land  was  the  property  of  the  Roman  people,  to  the  horri- 
ble scandal  of  the  "  fathers  "  and  the  historian,  who  yet  insists 
that  the  right  of  the  Roman  people  was  so  clear  that  a  dis- 
interested judge  could  not  fail  to  recognize  it.     The  sequel  of 

*  Liv.  IX.  viii.  sqq.  '^  lb.  III.  Ixxi.,  l.wii.;  iV.  ix.-xi. 


LIVY. 


403 


the  case  is  more  curious  :  Ardea  sends  an  embassy  to  com- 
plain at  Rome;  the  senate  say  that  they  will  watch  for  an 
opportunity  to  make  amends.  Soon  after  there  is  a  sedition 
at  Ardea,  arising  out  of  a  faction  fight  over  a  marriage,  in 
which  the  popular  party  call  in  the  Volscians.  The  Romans 
come  to  the  rescue,  and,  as  Ardea  is  depopulated,  a  colony  is 
sent  there ;  it  is  arranged  that  the  land  which  the  assembly 
voted  to  be  Roman  territory  shall  be  assigned  to  the  colonists, 
and  that  natives  shall  have  a  preference  over  Romans  in  the 
assignment.  When  it  is  too  late,  the  commons  detect  the 
plot,  and  the  tribunes  prosecute  the  commissioners  who  as- 
sign the  lands.  The  "fathers"  themselves  or  their  leaders 
are  inclined  to  abandon  the  commissioners,  who  take  refuse 
irom  the  storm  by  settling  in  their  colony.  It  is  plain  that  the 
story  is  made  a  great  deal  more  edifying  in  Livy  than  it  can 
have  been  in  reality  ;  it  suggests  that  the  aristocracy  of  Rome 
were  in  league  with  the  aristocracy  of  Ardea  to  manage  the 
open  land  to  their  joint  profit,  and  that  the  aristocracy  of 
Ardea  got  the  best  of  it.  The  further  question  that  arises  is, 
how  Livy  comes  to  have  such  minute  information  of  the  in- 
ternal afliirs  of  Ardea  long  before  the  Gallic  war;  for  we 
seem  to  be  in  the  presence  of  a  real,  though  a  perverted,  tra- 
dition. There  can  hardly  have  been  a  record  at  Rome  of  a 
kind  to  survive  the  capture  of  the  city,  and  therefore  Livy  or 
his  authorities  must  have  got  their  information  at  Ardea.  The 
quarrel  at  Ardea  has  too  many  parallels  from  mediceval  Ital- 
ian history  to  be  regarded  as  fictitious. 

Livy  always  succeeds  in  giving  a  great  look  of  probability 
to  his  narratives  of  internal  dissensions  :  he  has  the  keen- 
sightedness  of  hatred  in  describing  them;  he  has  a  far 
keener  sense  of  the  misery  and  criminality  of  sedition  than 
of  civic  right.  He  blames  the  "fathers"  whenever  they 
provoked  sedition  ;  but  he  blames  them  little,  if  at  all, 
for  their  exclusiveness,  or  for  their  monopoly  of  the  public 
lands,  or  for  their  harshness  to  their  debtors.  He  disapproves 
of  the  tribunes  by  instinct,  and  sees  only  the  anarchical  side 
of  their  office  ;  in  this  he  is  like  most  ancient  writers,  who  also 
dwell  exclusively  on  the  capricious  side  of  the  institution  of 


404 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


ostracism.  It  was  a  real  political  progress  to  appoint  officers 
to  do,  in  the  name  of  the  commons,  without  resistance,  every- 
thing that  the  commons  could  accomplish  by  the  force  of 
their  numbers.  It  is  a  consequence  of  this  that  Livy  does 
not  explain  why  the  multiplication  of  the  tribunes  was  always 
a  popular  measure.  They  had  two  functions:  one  was  to 
propose  laws,  which  Livy  treats  as  the  most  important;  the 
^other  was  to  protect  individuals  against  the  acts  of  the  au- 
thorities. Any  increase  in  the  numbers  of  the  tribunes  made 
it  possible  for  the  "  fiithers  "  to  get  one  out  of  many  to  im- 
pede legislation  which  they  disliked,  but  one  or  two  tribunes 
could  be  influenced  to  allow  a  levy  or  a  strict  application  of 
the  law  of  debt,  but  it  was  difficult  to  effect  this  with  ten  trib- 
unes, or  even  five. 

There  is  the  same  want  of  perception  of  the  growth  of  in- 
stitutions in  the  anecdotal  explanation  of  the  appointment  of 
curule  aediles :  ^  he  never  thinks  of  comparing  them  with  the 
public  prosecutors,  who  were  as  old  as  the  monarchy,  any 
more  than  he  thinks  of  comparing  the  prcetor  with  the  praj- 
fectus  urbi,  who  often  appears  ^  as  one  of  the  regular  magis- 
trates of  the  period  just  before  the  Licinian  laws.  Nor  does 
he  explain  why,  when  it  was  decided  that  the  censors  should 
not  hold  office  for  the  full  term  of  five  years,  the  term  of 
eighteen  months  was  fixed. 

These  questions  do  not  seem  to  have  perplexed  Livy ;  he 
is  more  puzzled  by  the  recurring  .^{quian  and  Volscian  cam- 
paigns. He  has  not  yet  arrived  at  serious  scepticism  as  to 
the  numbers  which  he  finds  in  his  authorities,  and  so  he 
makes  the  reflection  that  both  nations  must  have  been  ex- 
terminated many  times  over.^  He  gives  the  solution  himself 
in  an  earlier  chapter:  *  the  .4{quians  had  a  talent  for  brigand- 
age, and  the  Romans  were  not  able,  for  many  reasons,  to 
occupy  the  country  from  which  the  yEquians  descended. 
Now  and  then  there  was  something  like  a  pitched  battle,  and 
then  the  Romans  were  almost  always  victorious,  as  the  Eng- 
lish were  in  theii  battles  with  the  Scots.     If  further  explana- 

'  I.iv.  VI.  xlii.  9.  ^  lb.  VI.  xii.  2,  3. 

'  E.  g.  IV.  xxxi.  2  ;  VI.  vi.  9.  *  lb.  III.  ii.  14. 


LIVY. 


405 


tion  is  required,  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact,  which  Livy  men- 
tions, that  a  regular  levy  of  the  whole  force  of  the  ^quian 
nation  was  a  very  exceptional  thing,  only  to  be  accomplished 
by  the  employment  of  special  religious  rites :  while  year  by 
vear  the  Romans  were  accustomed  to  swear  to  their  com- 
manders  such  a  binding  oath  that  they  found  it  easier  to  kill 
the  commander  to  whom  they  had  sworn  than  to  desert  their 
colors  while  he  was  alive. 

Their  disappearance  after  the  capture  of  the  city  by  the 
Gauls  was  so  obvious  that  Livy  hardly  notices  it.  P^or  many 
years,  if  the  Campagna  was  plundered,  it  was  plundered  by 
Ciauls  ;  and  when  the  Gauls  were  driven  back,  the  same  meas- 
ures as  kept  them  out  would  serve  to  keep  out  the  degener- 
ate yLquians.  It  has  been  noticed  that  when  the  Valerii  are 
in  office  we  generally  find  not  only  an  ^quian,  but  a  Sabine 
war;  and  hence  it  has  been  inferred  that  Livy  follows  Vale- 
rius Anlias  in  a  rather  uncritical  combination.  The  Valerii 
were  in  the  habit  of  thinking  of  the  same  predatory  bands 
under  the  name  of  Sabines  that  the  Fabii  thought  of  under  the 
name  of  .^quians,  and  consequently  their  special  traditions 
always  recorded  a  Sabine  campaign;  while  the  general  tra- 
dition, which  was  the  only  guide  when  the  Valerii  were  not 
in  office,  only  records  an  .^quian  one.  Probably  the  combi- 
nation was  already  accomplished  in  the  "  Annales  Maximi ;" 
for  Livy  is  careful  in  noting  the  discrepancies  in  the  annalists 
whom  he  follows,  not  exactly  without  discrimination:  when 
they  differ,  he  asks  himself  which  is  the  oldest,  and  which  tells 
the  most  probable  story.  But  he  never  attempts  to  go  behind 
the  annalists.  Augustus  had  seen  a  linen  breastplate,  dedi- 
cated by  A.  Cornelius  Cossus,  at  the  Temple  of  Jupiter,  which 
stated  that  he  was  consul,  and  had  slain  Lars  Tolumnius  and 
had  dedicated  his  spoils.  The  other  authorities  all  agreed 
that  when  he  was  consul  there  w^as  no  important  war  with 
Etruria  or  elsewhere,  and  that  when  he  won  the  spoils  he  had 
no  higher  rank  than  tribune.'  It  never  occurs  to  Livy  to 
enter  the  shrine  and  inspect  the  inscription  himself:  it  is 
doubtful  if  he  could  have  done  so  without  special  permission. 

•  Liv.  IV.  XX.  4,  5. 


4o6 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


But  he  attaches  paramount  value  to  a  contemporary  docu- 
ment, especially  a  contemporary  document  attested  by  Au- 
gustus: he  declines  to  explain  how  the  mistake  in  the  Fasti 
arose,  and  takes  it  for  granted  there  must  be  one,  So  that  he 
does  not  hazard  the  easy  conjecture  that  Cossus  was  not  able 
to  put  up  a  permanent  record  of  the  dedication  of  his  spoils 
until  he  was  consul.  It  is  just  the  same  with  the  "Linen 
Books,"  which  contained  lists  of  magistrates,  and  were  kept 
in  the  Temple  of  Moneta.  Livy  carefully  notes  when  Licini- 
us  Macer  appeals  to  their  authority  against  other  authors,' 
but  he  never  dreams  of  consulting  them  himself,  not  even 
when  the  authors  who  appeal  to  them,  as  Macer  and  Tubero, 
differ  as  to  what  they  say. 

One  notices  that  Augustus  hardly  seems  to  have  entered 
the  Temple  of  Jupiter  P^eretrius  as  a  matter  of  course,  althougli 
he  was  Pontifex  Maximus:  the  temple,  like  many  others,  was 
out  of  repair,  and  he  entered  as  part  of  his  official  inspection. 
There  were  only  fifteen  men  in  Rome  who  had  the  right  of 
reading  what  the  Sibyl  was  supposed  to  have  written  ;  and 
though  the  number  of  officials  who  had  access  toother  public 
records  during  their  term  of  service  was  greater,  tiiere  is  no 
reason  to  think  that  they  were  open,  of  course,  to  every  his- 
torian. 

And  if  Livy's  opportunities  had  been  better,  he  is  too  much 
in  bondage  to  edifying  anecdotes  to  make  the  most  of  his 
materials.  For  instance,  all  the  treatment  of  the  second  Sam- 
nite  war,  up  to  and  including  the  convention  of  Caudium,  is 
colored  by  Livy's  view  of  the  purely  ethical  merits  of  the  case. 
It  is  an  axiom  with  him  that  every  state  which  renews  a  war 
with  Rome  after  a  treaty  is  perfidious,  and  disloyal  too  :  there 
is  a  sort  of  reflected  lustre  of  the  world-wide  empire  of  Rome 
thrown  back  upon  the  early  days,  as  if  every  state  which 
signed  a  treaty  with  Rome  ought  to  have  known  from  the 
first  that  it  was  signing  an  indenture  of  vassalage.  The  word 
'^ rebellare'"  has  from  the  first  a  good  deal  of  the  associations 
of  "  rebel."  It  is  the  guilt  of  rebellion  which  makes  the  Sam- 
nites  unsuccessful  at  the  outset  of  the  war;  it  is  a  conscious- 

'  E  g.  IV- vii.  13. 


LIVY. 


407 


ness  of  guilt  that  makes  them  resolve  to  surrender  Brutulus 
Papius,  the  leader  of  the  anti-Roman  party.  And  when  the 
Romans  refuse  to  renew  the  treaty  after  his  dead  body  has 
been  given  up.  Gains  Pontius  has  a  reasonable  expectation 
that  the  gods  will  change  sides;  and  the  final  victory  of  the 
Romans  is  due  to  the  arrogance  of  the  Samnites  in  sending 
the  Roman  army  under  the  yoke.  In  the  same  way,  the  bat"^ 
lie  of  Sentinum  is  decided  by  the  religious  effect  of  the  devo- 
tion of  the  younger  Decius,  quite  as  much  as  by  the  superior 
tactics  of  Q.  Fabius;  and  the  final  triumph  before  Aquilonia 
is  explained  by  the  displeasure  of  the  gods  at  the  human 
sacrifices  with  which  Ovius  Paccius  had  consecrated  the  last 
arm  v. 

As  a  work  of  art,'  the  picture  of  the  pompous  musters  of 
the  two  armies  which,  at  the  end  of  each  war,  were  over- 
thrown by  a  Papirius  is  decidedly  impressive,  even  after  the 
suspicion  has  occurred  to  us  that  the  family  legends  of  the 
Papirii  may  have  something  to  do  with  the  coincidence.  And 
the  Samnites  are  the  only  adversary  of  Rome  whom  Livy  can 
bring  himself  to  respect,  with  the  exception  of  the  Latins. 
The  Latin  war  fills  him  with  horror— partly  at  the  audacity 
of  the  Latins  in  demanding  incorporation  on  equal  terms  into 
the  Roman  state,  and  actually  claiming  to  have  one  consul 
permanently  allotted  to  them,  partly  at  the  fratricidal  char- 
acter of  the  war  (this  gives  him  an  opportunity  of  describing 
the  tactics  of  the  Romans  and  the  Latins  at  the  time  of  the 
decisive  conflict),  and  partly  also  at  the  great  risk  the  Ro- 
mans ran.  But  the  Latin  war  was  short  and  sharp;  the 
Samnite  wars  lasted  as  long  as  the  Punic,  almost  as  long  as 
the  tedious  and  desultory  conflict  with  the  ^qui  and  Vofsci : 
and  Livy  is  weary  of  the  long  war,  and  ashamed,  of  his  weari- 
ness.' The  Samnites  were  not  weary  of  being  conquered,  the 
Romans  were  not  weary  of  conquering,  and  Livy  has  no  right 
to  be  weary  of  writing,  or  we  to  be  weary  of  reading.  Per- 
haps he  idealizes  a  little  when  he  says  that  the  Samnites 
never  tired  of  an  unblest  battle  for  liberty,  and  chose  rather 
to  be  conquered  than  not  to  fight.  They  were  fighting,  not 
'  Liv.  IX.  xl.;  X.  xxxviii.  2.  Mb.  X.  xxxi.  6,  7. 


4o8 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


merely  for  liberty,  but  for  access  lo  the  sea;  the  treaties 
which  closed  the  first  and  second  Samnite  wars  both  left  the 
independence  of  Samnium  untouched,  but  the  first  cut  the 
Samnites  off  from  Campania,  and  the  second  cut  them  off 
from  Apulia  and  Lucania:  and  the  wars  were,  besides,  less  of 
an  unbroken  chronicle  of  Samnite  disaster  than  Livy  represents 
them.  Not  only  does  he  often  disguise  Roman  defeats  and 
embellish  drawn  battles  into  brilliant  victories,  but  he  does 
not  take  account  of  anything  but  pitched  battles  and  the  de- 
fence or  attack  of  fortified  towns.  The  likelihood  is  that  al- 
most to  the  last  the  Samnites  had  the  best  of  the  booty,  as 
the  Romans  had  the  best  of  the  battles.  There  are  incidental 
notices  of  plunder,  which  we  only  hear  of  when  it  was  re- 
covered from  the  Samnites:  while  it  is  always  matter  for  a 
triumph  by  itself  when  a  Roman  army  roams  about  the  open 
country  without  meeting  an  enemy,  especially  if  there  had 
been  a  bloody  battle  which  could  be  claimed  as  a  victory. 
The  political  situation  is  treated  like  the  military:  the  fact 
that  there  were  Samnite  and  Roman  parties  in  Apulia  and 
Lucania  is  not  affirmed  or  denied,  and,  instead,  we  have  a 
declamation  on  the  perfidy  or  levity  of  Apulia  and  Lucania, 
whenever  there  was  a  change  of  sides  in  those  nations  to  the 
disadvantage  of  Rome. 

Still  more  perplexing  is  the  account  of  the  relations  of  Rome 
to  Etruria  from  the  days  of  Porsena  and  the  Cremera  on- 
wards. The  family  legend  of  the  Fabii  doubtless  obscured 
the  fact  that  their  house  had  practically  been  banished  from 
Rome  because  it  was  always  involving  Rome  in  wars  for  the 
debatable  territory  between  Rome  and  Veii ;  but  it  is  strange 
that  Livy  should  not  have  understood  that  the  truces  con- 
cluded with  the  great  cities  beyond  the  Ciminian  wood  were 
for  so  many  years  of  ten  months.  Consequently  he  com- 
plains of  the  perfidy  of  the  Etrurians  in  so  constantly  resum- 
ing hostilities  before  the  time,  while  he  never  invents  a  speech 
to  express  the  indignation  which  the  Romans  must  have  felt 
at  the  time  if  the  case  had  been  as  he  puts  it.  The  decisive 
struggle  with  Etruria  coincided  with  the  decisive  struggles 
with  Samnium  ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  on  this  period 


LIVY, 


409 


the  traditions  of  the  Fabii,  embodied  in  the  oldest  annalist, 
Fabius  Pictor,  would  certainly  have  been  valuable  if  critically 
used.  As  it  is,  Livy  has  taken  little  from  Fabius  but  the 
lively  picture  of  the  dismay  of  the  common  people  at  Rome 
when  Q.  Fabius  l\Laximus  marched  through  the  Ciminian 
wood.  It  was  only  two  hours'  march,  and  it  must  constantly 
have  been  traversed  by  traders;  and  yet  to  the  average  idler 
of  the  forum  and  the  average  soldier  in  the  field  it  seemed  the 
boundary  of  another  world,  the  haunt  of  all  kinds  of  ghostly 
monsters.  It  must  be  remembered  that  narrow  mule-tracks 
were  quite  sufficient  for  all  the  wants  of  commerce,  and  that 
the  pioneers  who  entered  them  iox  the  first  time  would  feel 
none  of  the  security  against  the  terrors  of  the  forest  which  a 
wide  military  road  naturally  gives;  and  that  the  Romans 
were  always  very  sensitive  to  change  in  their  surroundings, 
and  prone  to  imagine  themselves  in  another  world  upon  all 
sorts  of  pretexts — because  they  were  on  the  shores  of  the  ocean 
instead  of  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  because  they  saw 
fresh  constellations  or  lost  sight  of  familiar  ones,  or  found 
the  shadows  fall  in  a  new  way. 

The  same  source,  no  doubt,  accounts  for  a  good  deal  of 
dramatic  and  doubtful  detail  about  the  campaign  of  Sentinum, 
where  Fabius  and  Decius  defeated  the  Gauls  and  Samnites. 
According  to  Livy,'  Fabius  first  asked  for  Decius  as  his  col- 
league, and  then  quarrelled  with  him  because  both  wanted  to 
go  to  Etruria  and  neither  wanted  to  go  to  Samnium.  In 
quite  a  different  connection,'  Livy  tells  us  that  the  service  in 
iSamnium  was  generally  unpopular,  and  a  change  to  Etruria  a 
welcome  relief^  because  the  cold  in  the  Abruzzi  was  so  severe. 
Historians  who  were  not  of  an  anecdotical  turn  simply  said 
Ihat  Fabius  and  Decius  fought  in  Etruria ;  but  Livy  has  a 
long  tale,  which  he  only  half  believes,  of  the  debate  between 
fabius  and  Decius  (he  is  careful  to  call  attention  to  the  curt 
archaic  character  of  the  speeches  of  men  who  were  better  in 
the  field  than  in  the  forum),  and  of  the  advance  of  Fabius  into 
Etruria  at  the  head  of  a  small  army  to  refute  the  false  alarms 
of  Appius  Claudius  (who  was  naturally  opposed  to  Fabius, 

*  Liv.  X.  xxii.  sqq.  ^  j^)  X.  xlv.  9. 

I.— 18 


4IO 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


since  it  was  in  the  censorship  of  Fabius  and  Decius  that  his 
demagogic  constitution  had  been  overthrown  by  the  restric- 
tion of  freedmen,  who  were  mostly  domiciled  at  Rome,  to  the 
four  city  tribes).  Then  Claudius  raises  the  alarm  at  Rome, 
and  at  last  Fabius  and  Decius  combine  their  forces  against 
the  Samnites  and  Gauls.  There  were  annals  that  went  fur- 
ther, and  gave  two  contentions  of  Fabius  and  Decius,  and  a 
heated  debate  between  Claudius  and  Fabius  at  Rome. 

This  is  too  long  a  story  for  Livy,  who  is  strongest  in  iso- 
lated episodes.  For  instance,  he  does  not  attempt  to  trace 
the  growth  of  the  demands  of  the  commons,  or  explain  why 
the  question  of  debt  seems  to  have  become  urgent  about  the 
time  of  the  Gallic  wars,  or  how  the  author  of  the  Licinian 
laws  had  become  a  senator  of  old  standing.  But  the  descrip- 
tion of  how  any  given  riot  passed  into  a  revolution  is  always 
masterly.  Perhaps  the  most  splendid  instances  are  the  ac- 
count of  the  laws  of  Publilius,  with  the  surprise  at  his  decision 
to  legislate  for  the  public  good  instead  of  prosecuting  for  his 
private  wrongs,'  and  the  restoration  of  the  old  constitution 
after  the  decemvirate."  It  is  true  that  Livy  has  not  taken  as 
much  pains  as  he  might  to  ascertain  all  the  special  features 
of  the  case.  He  knows  less  than  Dionysius  of  what  the  Icil- 
ian  laws  were  ;  but  his  description  of  the  reaction  in  favor  of 
the  senate,  and  of  the  enthusiasm  which  greeted  the  restora- 
tion of  the  consuls  and  tribunes,  is  infinitely  more  dramatic. 
He  succeeds  again  in  the  scene  of  the  rescue  of  Fabius  from 
the  wrath  of  the  dictator,'  who  wished  to  execute  him  for  hav- 
ing fought  a  successful  engagement  without  orders ;  and  the 
success  is  the  more  noteworthy,  as  he  has  encumbered  him- 
self with  the  assumption  that  before  Fabius  could  be  spared 
the  authority  of  the  dictator  must  have  been  vindicated,  and 
that  the  tribunes  and  senate  and  people  must  have  acknowl- 
edged that  they  could  do  nothing  but  entreat  humbly  for  the 
free  pardon  of  one  lawfully  condemned.  It  is  a  suitable  close 
to  the  episode  that  long  after,  when  P'abius  is  consul,  and  has 
won  his  great  victory  beyond  the  Ciminian  wood,  the  senate's 
anxiety  about  his  colleague  compelled  him  to  name  his  old 

'  Liv.  II.  Iv.-lvii.         ^  lb.  III.  xliv.-lv.         '  lb.  VIII.  xxxi.-xxxv. 


LIVY. 


411 


enemy  dictator  at  midnight  in  deep  silence.'  Another  epi- 
sode, which  is  decidedly  well  treated,  is  the  institution  of  a 
paid  army  in  connection  with  the  siege  of  Veii.'  First  we  have 
the  useless  opposition  of  the  tribunes  to  the  principle  of  pay, 
on  the  ground  that  the  commons  would  have  to  find  the 
money  to  keep  the  military  chest  full ;  and  then,  when  it  is 
resolved  to  keep  the  troops  before  Veii  all  the  winter,  we 
have  an  admirable  speech  of  a  consular  tribune  on  the  stage 
which  the  Romans  had  reached  in  their  progress  to  the  con- 
quest of  the  world.  It  had  become  possible  for  the  first  time 
to  give  a  practical  shape  to  the  principle  that  the  Romans 
would  never  end  a  war  without  a  victory:  Liiherto,  though 
wars  had  been  commenced  with  abundance  of  ceremony,  they 
commonly  languished  after  one  or  two  campaigns,  if  the  en- 
emy abandoned  the  offensive. 

In  general,  the  speeches  of  Livy  are  admirable;  they  al- 
ways comment  instructively  on  some  of  the  most  important 
elements  of  the  situation,  through  conventional  assumptions 
of  what  the  situation  must  have  been.  For  instance,  in  this 
speech  the  tribune  gravely  contrasts  the  constancy  of  the  Vei- 
entines,  who  bear  the  siege  and  even  the  burden  of  a  newly 
re-established  monarchy,  with  the  impatience  of  the  Romans. 
It  is  hardly  a  demerit  that  Livy,  who  writes  as  an  advocate  of 
authority,  masks  the  question  whether  the  pay  was  not  given 
because  otherwise  the  troops  would  have  refused  to  lose  their 
harvesting;  and  whether,  when  it  was  given,  they  found  that 
they  lost  their  chance  of  getting  the  next  year's  crops  as  well, 
as  they  were  not  home  in  time  to  plough  and  sow. 

But,  in  spite  of  unreality  and  reserve,  Livy's  speeches  have 
not  the  empty  scholastic  air  of  those  of  Sallust ;  and  he  has 
every  reason  to  boast  that  he  never  seeks  digressions  from  his 
main  subject,  though  he  makes  the  boast  ^  as  an  introduction 
to  his  curious  discussion  as  to  whether  Alexander  the  Great 
could  have  conquered  Italy :  no  doubt  it  was  an  old  school 
discussion  when  Livy  wrote,  and  he  could  hardly  have  passed 
it  over.  One  smiles  at  the  list  of  the  great  Roman  generals 
any  one  of  whom  would  have  been  a  match  for  Alexander; 

'  Liv.  IX.  xxxviii.  7,  8.      ^  lb.  IV.  lix.  Ix.;  V.  ii.-vii.      ^  lb.  IX.  xvii.-xix. 


412 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUKE. 


but  it  is  quite  true  that  the  worst  of  them  was  very  much  bet- 
ter than  any  general  whom  Alexander  met  in  his  Persian 
campaigns.  Alexander  was  a  very  great  tactician  ;  but  it 
would  have  required  a  very  great  tactician  indeed  to  bring 
a  million  of  men  into  effective  action  against  a  force  which 
never  numbered  fifty  thousand.  Livy  is  quite  right  in  in- 
sisting that  the  Roman  system  of  tactics  was  far  superior  to 
the  later  Macedonian,  and  that  it  would  have  been  much 
harder  to  conquer  a  Roman  consular  army  than  any  number 
of  Asiatics.  It  is  also  relevant  that  Alexander  could  not 
have  invaded  Italy  in  his  prime,  that  neither  he  nor  any  army 
that  he  could  have  raised  were  the  same  men  as  they  were 
when  they  invaded  Asia.  The  rhetorical  indignation  at  the 
measures  which  Alexander  took  to  commend  himself  to  his 
Oriental  subjects  may  seem  excessive  to  admirers  of  Alex- 
ander's genius,  but  it  is  true  that  the  adoption  of  Persian 
pomp  would  have  proved  a  very  bad  preparation  for  an  inva- 
sion of  Italy.  The  invasion  of  Pyrrhus  really  gives  a  toler- 
able measure  of  the  success  which  Alexander  might  have 
expected :  besides,  as  Livy  points  out,  Italy  at  that  time  had 
nothing  to  reward  an  invader  in  comparison  with  Carthage 
and  even  Sicily,  which  Alexander  would  certainly  have  con- 
quered first.  The  suggestion  that  Carthage  might  have  sup- 
ported Rome  if  Italy  had  been  attacked  first  is  not  exactly 
preposterous ;  and  perhaps  some  weight  is  due  to  the  reflec- 
tion with  which  Livy  characteristically  begins,  that  the  "  fort- 
une "  of  the  Roman  city  was  more  enduring  than  that  of  any 
individual,  and  that  Alexander  died  too  young  for  it  to  be 
seen  whether  a  reverse  of  fortune  such  as  overtook  Cvrus  and 
Pompeius  was  not  in  store  for  him.  There  are  some  gro- 
tesque exaggerations,  like  the  statement  that  the  terror  of  the 
name  of  Alexander  could  not  have  daunted  the  Roman  peo- 
ple, because  they  had  never  heard  of  him.  Considering  that 
the  senate  had,  long  before  the  death  of  Alexander,  been  en- 
gaged in  diplomatic  correspondence  with  Tarentum,  and  that 
the  rite  of  burying  Gauls  and  Greeks  in  the  forum  proves  the 
familiarity  of  Roman  superstition  with  Greeks,  it  is  unlikely 
that  Alexander's  name  was  unknown,  even  to  the  country  folk 


LIVY. 


413 


whose  children  called  elephants  Lucanian  oxen  when  they 
saw  them  for  the  first  time  in  Pyrrhus's  army. 

The  second  decade  contained  the  conclusion  of  the  Samnite 
wars  (which  shows  that  the  division  into  decades  was  not 
Livy's  own,  or  he  would  have  finished  the  subject  in  the  first 
decade),  and  their  renewal  on  the  invasion  of  Pyrrhus.  It  is 
clear  from  the  epitome  that  all  the  romantic  stories  were  told 
at  length,  and  there  were  a  great  many  observations  of  what 
happened  for  the  first  time.  It  was  left,  for  instance,  to  Curius 
Dentatus  to  invent  a  moderate  method  of  coercion  for  men 
who  declined  to  enrol  themselves  when  summoned.  Instead 
of  involving  his  lictors  in  the  risk  of  a  wrangle  with  the  trib- 
unes, he  simply  put  up  the  defaulter's  goods  for  sale.  The 
first  show  of  gladiators  came  considerably  later,  and  was,  per- 
haps, of  more  importance. 

The  history  of  the  first  Punic  war  was  prefaced  by  an  ac- 
count of  the  origin  of  the  Carthaginians,  and  the  early  days 
of  their  city ;  and  the  author  had  been  careful  beforehand  to 
provide  for  the  bad  impression  which  the  story  of  the  Mamer- 
tines  made.  The  Mamertines  had  been  called  in  to  garrison 
Messana,  just  as  a  Campanian  legion  had  been  called  in  to 
garrison  Rhegium  :  in  both  cases  the  garrison  appropriated 
the  town  to  themselves;  and  the  Romans,  with  a  severe  sense 
of  justice,  compelled  Rhegium  to  surrender,  and  put  the  Cam- 
panian legion  to  the  sword.  When  the  Mamertines  in  the 
same  circumstances  applied  to  Rome  for  help  against  Carthage 
and  Syracuse,  there  was  a  strong  effort  made  to  uphold  the 
strict  view;  but  in  the  assembly  regard  for  morality  and  the 
law  of  nations  was  finally  overborne,  partly  by  the  hunger  of 
the  commons  for  the  rich  corn-lands  of  Sicily,  and  partly  by  a 
fellow-feeling  for  Italians  who  were  fighting  for  their  lives 
against  Greeks  and  barbarians.  Livy  is  too  scrupulous  to 
approve  either  motive;  but  in  his  eyes  the  war  was  justified, 
because  Carthage,  which  doubtless  had  a  treaty  with  both 
Tarentum  and  Rome,  had  sent  a  fleet  to  the  aid  of  Tarentum 
when  the  two  were  at  war;  and  the  Romans,  who  took  treaties 
much  more  strictly  than  the  Greeks,  no  doubt  assumed  that 
their  own  treaty  was  violated  :  although  the  Athenians  and 


414 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


Spartans  would  have  thought  the  conduct  of  the  Carthagini- 
ans, in  defending  one  ally  when  invaded  by  another,  quite 
excusable,  if  slightly  irregular. 

The  incidents  of  the  long,  confused,  and  indecisive  war 
seem  to  have  been  left  in  their  native  obscurity,  and  in  some 
ways  the  difficulties  of  an  historian  were  greater  than  in  the 
earlier  period.  He  had  sources  independent  of  the  Roman 
annals,  but  none  of  them  were  so  decisively  superior  to  the 
Roman  as  Polybius  was  for  the  second  Punic  war.  The  prin- 
cipal Greek  authority  was  Philinus  of  Agrigentum,  whose  re- 
sentment of  the  sack  of  his  native  city  led  him  invariably  to 
color  his  narrative  in  the  interests  of  Carthage  to  an  extent 
which  scandalized  Polybius.  Polybius  himself  had  no  special 
sources  for  the  first  Punic  war,  such  as  his  friendship  with 
Scipio  supplied  him  with  for  the  second.  Consequently  Livy, 
who  even  when  Polybius  is  at  his  best  follows  him  capricious- 
ly, seems  to  have  treated  him  as  one  of  many  authorities  to 
choose  from  as  he  happened  to  think  their  stories  probable. 
The  most  interesting  part  of  the  war  was  Hamilcar's  occupa- 
tion of  Ercte  and  Eryx;  and  this  Polybius  found  too  intricate 
for  detailed  narration  ;  and,  to  judge  by  the  epitome,  Livy  was 
of  the  same  mind.  On  the  other  hand,  the  legend  of  Regulus 
and  his  martyrdom,  which  was  treated  as  uncertain  by  many 
writers,  and  finally  denied  by  Dio  Cassius,  was  told  at  length. 
The  Romans,  as  we  see  from  Cicero,  had  long  settled  that 
Regulus  was  a  hero  for  protesting  against  a  treaty  of  peace 
and  an  exchange  of  prisoners,  and  still  more  for  returning  to 
Carthage  afterwards.  There  seems  to  have  been  some  ground 
for  believing  that  Regulus  thought  himself  that  the  Cartha- 
ginians meant  to  murder  him,  and  had  actually  given  him 
slow  poison,  and  his  family  had  no  doubt  of  his  murder  after 
his  death.  As  the  Romans  had  a  legend  of  how  he  had  gone 
back  to  torture  with  his  eyes  open,  so  the  Carthaginians  had 
a  legend  of  the  cruelty  of  Regulus's  family  to  Hasdrubal  and 
Bostar,  who  were  certainly  handed  over  to  them  according  to 
Roman  authorities,  either  as  hostages  or  for  purposes  of  re- 
taliation. Probably  Livy  had  no  explanation  to  give  of  the 
fact  that,  a  few  years  after  he  dated  the  heroic  and  fruitless 


LIVY, 


415 


embassy  of  Regulus,  an  exchange  of  prisoners  was  carried 
out  as  a  matter  of  course.  All  tlie  Roman  anecdotes  of  the 
war  found  a  place  :  how  the  army  of  Regulus  were  frightened 
by  a  monstrous  snake  a  hundred  and  twenty  feet  long  on  the 
banks  of  the  Bagradas,  and  had  to  destroy  it  with  stones  from 
balistce;  how  C.  Duilius  won  the  first  sea-fight,  and  was  re- 
warded with  the  privilege  of  having  pipers  and  link-boys  to 
march  before  him  when  he  came  back  from  supper;'  how  the 
handsome  Claudius  lost  a  fleet  by  his  contempt  of  the  prophet- 
ic poultry,  and  his  sister  incurred  a  fine  by  regretting,  when 
she  was  hustled  by  a  crowd,  that  he  was  not  alive  to  command 
another  fleet. 

The  eventful  twenty  years  between  the  first  and  second 
Punic  wars  were  hurried  over  in  a  single  book,  though  they 
included  the  decisive  struggle  with  the  Gauls,  who  had  come 
over  the  Alps  at  the  invitation  of  their  kindred  in  Italy,  in 
which  C.  Flaminius,  who  fell  at  Trasimene,  acquired  his  repu- 
tation as  a  doughty  champion  of  the  commons,  by  not  only 
defeating  the  Gauls,  but  dividing  the  conquered  land  among 
the  poor  of  Rome.  The  event  which  the  epitomist  thought 
most  interesting  was,  that  M.  Claudius  Marcellus  won  the  last 
spolia  opitna  by  slaying  the  king  of  the  Insubrians.  The  cen- 
sors had  to  repeat  the  feat  of  Fabius  and  Decius  in  confining 
the  freedmen  to  the  city  tribes  (which  Livy,  when  he  first 
mentioned  it,  treated  as  a  final  settlement),  and  this  proves 
how  the  Punic  and  Gallic  wars  had  exhausted  Italy;  for  many 
farms  must  have  been  in  the  hands  of  bailifi's,  whom  the  wid- 
ows had  been  compelled  to  emancipate. 

It  is  true  that  the  eventful  history  of  the  conquest  of  Spain 
was  to  be  told  as  an  introduction  to  the  second  Punic  war; 
but  this  is  one  of  the  weakest  parts  of  Livy's  work  :  he  does 
not  enable  us  to  see  the  situation  at  all,  or  explain  why  the 
Carthaginians  got  on  so  much  better  with  the  Spaniards  than 
the  Romans.  It  is  a  minor  grievance  that  he  involves  the 
actual  casus  belli  in  hopeless  confusion.     There  seems  to  have 

»  This  proves  how  strict  the  police  of  the  Roman  streets  was,  for  in 
most  ancient  towns  a  man  who  could  keep  pipers  was  at  liberty  to  have 
them  play  in  the  streets. 


4i6 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


been  some  kind  of  understanding  that  Carthaginian  influence 
was  not  to  extend  to  the  north  of  the  Ebro,  and  Livy  mixes 
up  this  understanding  with  the  Roman  claims  to  support  the 
Sa2:untines,who  claimed  alliance  with  them,  whose  citv,  thou^^h 
Livy  did  not  always  remember  it,  lay  well  to  the  south  of  the 
Ebro.  The  siege  of  Saguntum  is  told  at  oppressive  length; 
although  Spanish  sieges  have  always  been  remarkable  for  dis- 
plays of  passive  heroism,  as  there  have  always  been  found  those 
who  could  force  the  impatient  to  suffer  in  silence.  Of  course 
the  final  scene  is  exaggerated  :  the  Roman  party  committed 
suicide,  and  burned  themselves  with  their  families  and  goods, 
and  they  are  treated  on  this  occasion  as  if  they  were  the  whole 
town  ;  while  afterwards  Saguntines  are  mentioned  as  if  the 
town  had  surrendered  in  ordinary  course.  The  changes  of 
fortune  in  the  Spanish  war,  which  began  soon  after  Hannibal's 
invasion  of  Italy,  are  not  more  inexplicable  in  Livy  than  in 
the  other  authors  who  have  treated  of  them.  Perhaps  the 
nearest  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  campaigns  of  Lord 
Peterborough.  The  capture  of  New  Carthage  by  the  younger 
Scipio  is  a  feat  exactly  in  the  manner  of  Lord  Peterborough; 
and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  admirable  marching  powers  of 
Spanish  irregulars  threw  the  offensive  now  on  one  side,  now 
on  another,  in  a  way  very  perplexing  to  the  reader.  It  is  also 
to  be  remembered  that  Scipio  wms  a  mystical  and  untrust- 
worthy person,  and  that  he  represented  himself  as  having 
driven  the  Carthaginians,  including  Hasdrubal,  out  of  Spain  ; 
although  it  is  certain  that  Hasdrubal  must  long  have  been 
anxious  to  leave  Spain  as  soon  as  he  safely  could,  in  order  to 
join  his  brother  in  Italy. 

jNIodern  readers  object,  perhaps  too  much,  to  the  compla- 
cency with  which  Livy  assumes  that  Hanno  the  Great  and  his 
party,  who  opposed  and  thwarted  the  war  in  every  way,  who 
would  have  been  delighted  to  surrender  Hannibal  to  the  Ro- 
mans if  they  could,  in  order  to  avert  the  war,  who  depreciated 
his  successes  and  refused  him  the  means  of  following  them 
up,  were  the  true  patriots,  the  best  and  wisest  of  the  Cartha- 
ginians. It  is  clear  from  Livy's  own  showing  (and  Polybius 
completely  bears  him  out)  that  the  ruling  class  at  Carthage 


T    ATTAT     T   TTT"  V  A  TTTJ?  rr 


LIVY. 


417 


was  very  corrupt ;  but  this  does  not  prove  that  its  interests 
were  at  variance  with  those  of  the  bulk  of  the  citizens.     Car- 
thage was  a  commercial  city,  whose  rich  men  had  extensive 
estates,  cultivated  by  serfs,  whose  condition  would  be  improved 
in  no  way  if  their  masters  were  heavily  taxed  to  recruit  a 
mercenary  army  in  Italy.     If  the  taxes  reached  a  point  at 
which  they  trenched  on  capital,  the  trade  of  the  city  and  the 
mass  of  poor  who  depended  upon  it  would  have   suffered. 
There  was  much  to  be  said  for  the  view  that  Carthage,  having 
once  been  defeated  by  Rome,  had  better  renounce  ambition, 
and  avoid  giving  provocation  for  the  future.     The  commercial 
aristocracy  of  Rhodes  actually  took  the  course  which  the  com- 
mercial aristocracy  of  Carthage  wished  to  take,  and  Livy  is 
consistent  in  approving  both.     Then,  too,  Livy  had  an  instinc- 
tive sympathy  with  the  sense  of  civic  independence,  which 
was  shocked  at  the  hereditary  predominance  of  a  single  i.\\w- 
ily.     First,  Hamilcar  had  ruled  the  south  of  Spain  on  his  own 
account,  then  his  son-in-law  had  taken  up  the  reins,  then  the 
son-in-law  sent  for  Hannibal  to  be  trained  to  take  up  the  suc- 
cession in  his  turn.     Barnevelde  and  the  De  Witts  were  very 
good  patriots,  though  they  were  strong  opponents  of  the  House 
of  Orange,  and  the  Grand  Pensionary  De  Witt  did  not  main- 
tain his  ground  without   abundant  bribery.     Of  course,  too, 
Livy  applied  to  Carthage  the  standing  assumption   that  the 
aristocratic  party,  which  was  also  the  Roman  party,  was  the 
prudent  and  respectable  party;  and  it  is  to  be  noticed  that 
this  assumption  rests  upon  the  most  ancient  experience.     It 
goes  back  beyond  the  days  when  the  Campanian  aristocracy 
appealed  to  Rome  to  protect  them  from  the  Samnites  :  even 
modern  writers  are  of  opinion  that  at  Corinth,  if  not  at  Car- 
thage, the  party  of  subservience  was  more   rational  and  re- 
spectable than  the  party  of  independence;  and  though  Car- 
thage was  more  powerful  than  Corinth,  it  was  more  vulnerable, 
because  even  before  the  existence  of  the  city  was  in  peril  it 
had  so  much  to  lose. 

The  ambition  of  Capua  to  displace  Rome  by  the  help  of 
Carthage  was  not  heroic;  and  Livy  does  not  admire  the  de- 
spair of  the  final  banquet,  when  those  who  had  been  most 

I.- 18* 


4i8 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


intimate  with  Hannibal  escaped  the  executioner  by  taking  poi- 
son. The  suicide  of  the  Saguntines  in  like  case  strikes  him 
as  sublime;  but  the  sublimity  is  not  so  much  that  they  died 
for  liberty  as  that  they  died  to  keep  their  faith  with  Rome; 
while  the  Campanians  died,  not  to  keep  their  faith  with  Han- 
nibal, but  because  they  had  broken  faith  with  Rome  through 
pride.  In  the  same  spirit,  Livy  makes  Hieronymus,  the  grand- 
son of  Hiero,  sink  from  a  king  to  a  tyrant  as  soon  as  he  broke 
away  from  the  Roman  alliance.  The  Romans  before  Livy's 
time  had  got  into  the  habit  of  feeling  that  a  king  was  not  a 
king  unless  it  pleased  the  Roman  senate  to  recognize  him  as 
one,  and  the  assumption  held  good  of  barbarian  chieftains 
from  Masinissa  to  Ariovistus  and  Maroboduus,  and  to  some 
extent  of  the  later  Ptolemies;  but,  as  applied  to  Hieronymus, 
it  is  certainly  an  anachronism,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  the 
folly  which  scandalizes  Livy  in  his  resolution  to  take  advan- 
tage of  the  distress  of  the  Romans  after  Cannae.  Hierony- 
mus's  downfall  is,  of  course,  an  admirable  text  for  a  moral  essay 
on  the  true  wisdom  of  uncalculating  fidelity;  but  that  is  the 
peculiarity  of  Livy  throughout :  he  assumes  the  standpoint  of 
a  moral  essayist,  though  he  does  not  interrupt  his  narrative 
nearly  so  often  as  Polybius  to  introduce  good  advice  to  the 
reader;  but  the  tone  of  edifying  assumption  is  far  more  per- 
vading-. There  was  not  a  commoner  theme  for  declamation 
than  the  mischief  done  to  Hannibal's  army  by  its  winter  in 
Capua;  but  Livy  shows  no  wish  to  be  especially  eloquent  or 
impressive  about  it,  though  it  is  one  of  the  points  upon  which 
he  has  been  most  severely  criticised.  It  is  quite  true  that  as 
Hannibal's  army  maintained  itself  for  many  years  in  Italy  after 
the  battle  of  Metaurus,  the  deterioration  of  which  the  ancients 
speak  cannot  have  gone  very  far.  But  it  is  quite  true  that  im- 
mediately after  the  army  of  Hannibal  moved  out  of  Capua  it 
had  lost  its  superiority.  The  armies  of  the  Romans  were  worse 
than  they  had  ever  been ;  for  Trasimene  and  Canna},  coming 
one  after  the  other,  had  gone  far  to  annihilate  the  able-bodied 
men  of  a  certain  age  :  and  yet  we  repeatedly  find  Hannibal 
outmarched  and  outmanoeuvred,  and  worsted  in  partial  en- 
counters, which  were  not  always  insignificant,  although  Livy 


LIVY. 


419 


exaggerates  them  as  much  as  Polybius  underrated  them;  for  he 
formally  laid  down,  no  doubt  on  Scipio's  authority,  that  Han- 
nibal, when  engaged  in  person,  had  never  been  worsted  till  he 
was  overthrown  by  Scipio  at  Zama. 

The  same  moralizing  tendency  makes  Livy  more  than  just 
to  the  caution,  which  was  partly  incompetence,  of  commanders 
like  Q.  Fabius  Maximus  Cunctator.     They  undoubtedly  had 
more  self-control  than  men  like  Varro,  who  thought  it  a  plain 
duty  to  fight  Hannibal  and  beat  him,  and  they  recognized  his 
greatness  as  a  general  sooner.     They  were  right  in  thinking 
that  the  commander  of  a  mercenary  army,  without  a  military 
train  or  a  military  chest,  could  do  nothing  in  the  long-run  in 
a  country  full  of  fortified  cities,  and  that  even  if  a  few  towns 
joined  him  he  would  not  be  able  to  defend  them  long  or  ef- 
fectually.    But  Livy's  admiration  of  their  self-control  carries 
him  far  when  he  assumes  that  it  was  the  only  right  and  virtu- 
ous course  to  let  Hannibal  burn  and  plunder  as  he  liked,  and 
only  follow  him  up  and  down  Italy  from  one  fortified  camp 
to  another.     According  to  Appian,  the  battle  of  Cannae  was 
fought,  not  only  to  please  the  hot-headed  Varro,  but  a  large 
body  of  senators  in  his  camp:  and  perhaps  it  was  a  proof  of 
consistency  as  well  as  magnanimity  that  Varro  was  officially 
thanked  for  coming  back  to  Rome  after  the  most  crushing  de- 
feat  that  a  Roman  general  had  ever  survived.     If  he  had 
stayed  to  be  killed  like  his  colleague,  who  did  not  want  to 
fight,  of  whom  Livy,  like  posterity,  makes  a  spotless  hero,  it 
would  have  been  clear  that  he  despaired  of  the  Republic.     It 
was  really  a  pusillanimous  resolution  never  to  fight  a  pitched 
battle  because  the  Romans  had  no  light  cavalry  and  were  dis- 
concerted by  a  general   who  systematically  made  his  main 
attack,  not  on  the  enemy's  front,  but  on  his  flanks.      Livy 
gravely  assures  us  that  when  C.  Claudius  Nero  had  marched 
with  a  picked  corps  to  reinforce  his  colleague,  who  was  op- 
posed to  Hasdrubal,  the  colleague  seriously  proposed  to  delay 
the  action,  and  give  Hasdrubal  time  to  discover  how  weak 
the  reinforcement  was,  as  then  the  Romans  would  not  run 
the  risk  of  engaging  unprepared  with  an  unfamiliar  enemy. 
One  cannot  say  that  such  imprudent  prudence  was  quite  im- 


ht 


i« 


ii 


420 


LA  TIX  LITER  A  TURK. 


LIVY, 


421 


possible,  for  Livy  is  not  alone  in  asserting  that  Fabius  and 
his  admirers  threw  every  difficulty  in  the  way  of  Scipio's  in- 
vasion   of  Africa,  because  Hannibal  was  still  encamped   in 
Italy,  and  might  have  resumed  the  offensive  if  another  Ro- 
man army  had  been  cut  to  pieces  in  Africa  like  that  of  Regu- 
lus.     Livy  gives  a  perfectly  impartial  account  of  the  dispute, 
for'both  Fabius  and  Scipio  were  accepted  heroes  of  Roman 
respectability  ;    and    Livy's    simple    piety,  which    his   critics 
handle  so  severely,  makes   him  very  penetrating  about  the 
mystical  pretensions  of  a  Scipio.     He  thinks  it  quite  proper 
that  solemn  supplications  should  be  made  to  Vesta  when  the 
priestess  on  duty  had  let  out  her  sacred  fire,  though  he  knows 
that  the  whole  blame  of  the  accident  lay  with  the  priestess, 
and  that  it  betokened  neither  the  guilt  of  the  city  nor  the 
wrath  of  the  gods;  but  that  a  private  individual  should  pre- 
sume to  hold  converse  with  Jupiter  on  the  Capitol,  and  medi- 
tate all  his  resolutions  in  his  presence,  and  countenance  ru- 
mors that  he  was  of  superhuman  birth,  was  evidently  not  quite 
compatible  with  good  faith  or  perfect  reverence.     Livy's  tone 
is  never  more  nearly  rationalistic  than  when  he  is  dealing 
with  a  pretentious  mystic.     He  does  not  presume  to  criticise 
the  mystical  temper  that  took  hold  of  the  public  generally; 
all  the  prodigies  which  accompanied  the  war  of  Hannibal  are 
related  quite''  simply  and  seriously,  though  he  is  aware  that 
he  is  writing  for  an  incredulous  generation.     In  the  same 
spirit,  and  \Wth  less  anxiety,  he  recounts  the  importation,  in 
the  most  literal  sense,  of  foreign  deities— the  Great  Mother 
from  Phrygia,  ^sculapius  from  Epidaurus— and  the  touching 
care  with  which  old  games  were  performed  and  new  games 
instituted,  at  the  height  of  public  distress. 

The  most  impressive  part  of  the  third  decade  is  certainly 
the  recurring  spectacle  of  Roman  constancy.  There  are  few 
scenes  in  history  like  the  census  when  the  censors  were  afraid, 
because  the  treasury  was  empty,  to  contract  for  ordinary  re- 
pairs, and  the  contractors  begged  them  to  let  the  contracts  as 
usual,  and  promised  to  wait  for  their  pay  till  better  times. 
Of  course  the  transaction  had  a  commercial  side  to  it,  and 
Livy  does  not  conceal  that  the  heroism  of  the  nation  had  to 


be  braced  by  the  government.  He  is  quite  as  proud  of  the 
severity  of  the  censors  to  young  men  of  rank  who  neglected 
to  serve  as  of  the  generosity  of  the  women  who  gave  up  their 
ornaments  to  the  treasury  when  they  were  forbidden  to  wear 
them,  and  dwells  with  satisfaction  on  the  police  measures  for 
limiting  the  period  of  mourning  and  prohibiting  crowding  in 
the  gates  after  Can  nee.  In  the  same  way,  when  Ti.  Sempro- 
nius  (the  grandfather  of  the  Gracchi)  raised  an  army  of  slaves 
under  the  promise  of  freedom,  Livy  not  only  gloats  over  their 
achievements  in  cutting  up  a  Carthaginian  army  under  the 
principal  lieutenant  of  Hannibal,  but  dilates  with  relish  upon 
the  strict  and  slow  degrees  by  which  Sempronius  doled  out 
the  fulfilment  of  his  promise.  This  contrasts  curiously  with 
the  indifference  to  the  death  of  Sempronius,  who  fell  in  an 
ambuscade,  whereupon  his  army  dispersed,  though  doubtless 
available  for  future  conscriptions.  Nor  does  Livy  ever  care 
to  trace  the  results  of  military  events,  except  in  the  case  of 
the  occupation  of  Capua  and  of  the  battle  of  Metaurus:  he 
mentions,  or  intends  to  mention,  everything  as  it  occurs,  but 
holds  that  if  he  explains  the  succession  of  events  the  connec- 
tion may  be  left  to  take  care  of  itself. 

This  uncritical  temper  has  some  advantages  :  we  learn  the 
more  of  what  was  believed  at  the  time  of  such  episodes  as  the 
passage  of  the  Alps  and  the  escape  from  Casilinum.  We  are 
not  told  where  Hannibal  crossed  the  Alps  ;  and,  consider- 
ing that  the  Gauls  had  often  crossed  them  with  women  and 
children,  it  seems  as  if  Livy  a  little  exaggerated  the  difficulty 
Hannibal  had  in  passing  them  with  elephants  and  baggage, 
just  as  he  exaggerated  the  passage  of  the  Ciminian  wood. 
But  the  exaggerated  rumors  of  the  camp  which  turned  every 
steep  slope  into  a  precipice,  and  seriously  persuaded  itself 
that  a  road  had  been  cut  in  a  day  through  rocks  first  heated 
by  fires  and  then  split  by  vinegar,  belong,  in  their  way,  to  his- 
tory in  the  same  sense  as  the  venerable  stratagem  of  oxen 
with  torches  tied  to  their  horns;  which  would  have  made  it 
impossible  to  drive  them  in  any  one  direction,  and  otherwise 
they  could  not  have  produced  the  effi^ct  of  an  army. 

The  transition  from  the  war  with  Carthage  to  the  wars  with 


H 


14 


422 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


the  successors  of  Alexander  is  managed  with  a  good  deal  of 
dignity,  and  the  reluctance  of  the  people  to  make  the  efforts 
which  the  senate  felt  to  be  necessary  is  a  familiar  subject  that 
suits  Livy  well;  but  the  dilatory  and  indecisive  campaigns, 
with  the  large  crop  of  rumors  which  floated  about  the  idle 
camps,  are  very  tedious,  and  Livy  is  obviously  overweighted 
by  his  materials.  He  breaks  down  into  short  sentences,  and 
tries  to  copy  the  baldness  of  older  annalists.  He  takes  no 
ethical  interest  in  the  politics  of  the  period  between  the  war 
of  Hannibal  and  the  visit  of  Prusias  to  Rome,  after  the  fall 
of  Perseus.  The  only  opponents  of  Rome  whom  he  can  cen- 
sure with  the  old  spirit  are  the  ^tolians,  who  overrated  their 
services  to  Rome,  while  the  Romans  were  always  ready  to 
sacrifice  them  either  to  Philip  or  to  the  Achaeans. 

The  majority  of  the  wars  of  that  period  were  undertaken 
without  an  intelligible  casus  bcUi^  and  Livy  himself  apologizes 
for  the  campaign  against  the  Gauls  who  had  settled  in  Asia 
Minor,  and  were  always  at  variance  with  the  state  of  Perga- 
mus,  which  had  early  attached  itself  to  the  fortunes  of  Rome, 
being  in  danger  both  from  the  power  of  Macedonia  and  from 
that  of  Syria.  It  is  characteristic  of  Livy  that  he  dwells 
upon  the  "  luxury  '^  which  followed  the  battle  of  Magnesia 
and  the  triumph  of  Lucius  Scipio,  and  never  explains  how 
Pergamus  and  Alexandria  came  to  be  committed  to  a  stand- 
ing opposition  to  Antioch  and  Philippi,  or  how  the  Romans 
came  to  be  so  undecided  in  their  dealings  with  Antiochus, 
and  so  vindictive  in  their  dealings  with  Carthage  (it  is  clear 
from  the  "  Epitome  "  that  the  final  demand  upon  the  Cartha- 
ginians to  remove  ten  miles  from  the  sea  scandalized  him). 
Again,  why  had  the  wars  with  Macedonia  such  a  peculiar 
character  —  always  beginning  with  a  long  series  of  marches 
and  countermarches  in  difficult  country,  which  continually 
brought  the  Roman  army  into  a  position  of  great  embarrass- 
ment, until  at  last  it  extricated  itself  by  a  decisive  battle, 
where  the  superiority  of  the  legion  to  the  phalanx  was  sure  to 
assert  itself.''  Livy  understands  the  superiority  of  Roman 
tactics  very  well,  but  the  degeneracy  of  Macedonian  tactics 
and  the  uncertainty  of  Roman  strategy  are  left  unexplained. 


LIVY. 


423 


!  ■ 


Naturally,  nothing  is  done  io  remove  the  confusion  of 
events  in  a  period  when  the  Romans  were  indiscriminately 
at  war  with  enemies  who  were  or  were  not  formidable,  and 
who  did  or  did  not  repay  the  cost  of  conquest.  The  annalis- 
tic  method  is  not  unsatisfactory,  when  the  Romans  had  only 
to  fight  in  Italy,  or  even  when  they  were  fighting  the  Cartha- 
ginians at  once  in  Sicily,  in  Spain,  and  in  Italy.  But  after  the 
Gauls  of  Italy  had  been  conquered  (which  it  was  necessary 
to  do  immediately  after  the  conclusion  of  peace  with  Hanni- 
bal), the  wars  with  the  barbarians  of  Piedmont,  the  Valley  of 
the  Rhone,  and  the  mountains  to  the  northeast  of  Italy,  and 
the  more  serious  combats  with  the  tribes  of  Western  and 
Northwestern  Spain,  had  no  connection  with  the  wars  against 
the  civilized  powers  of  the  Levant,*  although  they  were  prac- 
tically contemporary  with  them.  To  make  any  one  set  of 
these  transactions  intelligible,  it  would  have  been  necessary 
to  treat  it  continuously  ;  but  this  Livy  never  attempts.  When 
he  has  to  mention  a  state  or  a  nation  for  the  first  time,  he 
takes  pains  to  describe  it  to  the  reader,  unless  the  press  of 
greater  events  left  no  room,  as  was  the  case  with  the  first  con- 
flicts between  Rome  and  Philip  during  the  war  of  Hannibal. 

There  is  little  of  interest  in  the  internal  history.  Livy  is 
ashamed  of  the  way  in  which  the  state  compounded  with  its 
creditors  on  the  outbreak  of  the  Macedonian  war,  and  hurries 
the  matter  over.  It  is  part  of  the  supercilious  dignity  of  Latin 
history  to  be  brief,  too  brief  to  be  quite  intelligible,  in  describ- 
ing financial  arrangements;  but  the  grievance  of  the  creditors 
must  have  led  to  many  scenes  of  the  kind  that  Livy  is  fond 
of  dilating  upon  in  the  early  part  of  the  history.  Again,  the 
repeal  of  the  Oppian  law  would  have  been  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  episodes  of  the  first  decade,  if  it  had  happened  early 
enough.  As  it  is,  there  is  simply  the  stereotyped  formula  that 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  excitement  about  what  looked  a 
very  small  matter,  followed  by  a  tame  though  prolix  assertion 
that  the  women  descended  in  a  body  into  the  streets  to  sup- 
port the  repeal  of  the  law,  and  blockaded  the  houses  of  the 

'  The  affairs  of  Illyria  and  Macedonia  were  inextricably  entangled, 
though  Illyria  was  barbarous  and  Macedonia  was  not. 


iit 


\ 


I 


424 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK, 


tribunes  who  supported  Cato  in  his  desire  to  maintain  the 
law.  There  is  a  speech  on  each  side,  and  Cato's  is  very  racy 
and  peremptory:  it  turns  upon  tiie  mischief  which  would  fol- 
low the  emancipation  of  women  and  legislation  in  obedience 
to  street  demonstrations.  The  law  is  scarcely  defended  at  all 
upon  its  merits  apart  from  the  general  principles  of  frugality; 
and,  as  Livy  did  not  dwell  upon  the  reasons  for  the  enactment 
of  the  law  at  the  time  it  was  passed,  it  is  easy  for  Cato  to 
make  his  defence  of  the  law  quite  independent  of  the  distress 
which  was  over. 

The  elder  Cato  is  one  of  the  few  characters  that  stand  out 
sharply  after  the  Punic  wars  in  Livy,  and  it  is  only  one  side 
of  Cato  of  which  this  can  be  said.  Livy  does  not  show  at  all 
the  side  of  Cato  on  which  Cicero  dwells  with  predilection.  We 
should  not  learn  from  him  how  clever  and  inventive  Cato 
was;  and  that,  not  content  with  upholding  the  old-fashioned 
Roman  ways  against  the  license  and  contempt  of  the  Hellen- 
izing  party  in  the  nobility,  he  was  also  anxious  to  compete 
with  the  Greeks  in  such  of  their  accomplishments  as  he  rec- 
ognized ;  just  as  he  studied  the  methods  of  Carthaginian 
husbandry  and  introduced  them  to  his  countrymen,  while  he 
wound  up  every  speech  in  the  senate  with  "  Delenda  est 
Carthago."  Of  course  Livy  does  not  give  a  hint  that  his  ani- 
mosity to  Carthage  had  its  root  in  commercial  rivalry.  Car- 
thage had  long  ceased  to  be  formidable  to  the  supremacy  of 
Rome  in  any  part  of  Europe  ;  but,  so  long  as  any  part  of  the 
old  domain  of  the  city  was  protected  from  Masinissa  and  his 
horsemen,  Carthage  competed  formidably  in  Italian  and  neu- 
tral markets. 

Nor  does  Livy  notice  the  curious  contrast  between  Cato's 
interested  implacability  to  Carthage  and  his  disinterested 
patronage  of  Lusitanians  and  Rhodians,  and  his  general  de- 
sire to  limit  the  foreign  dominion  of  the  Roman  state,  which 
in  his  opinion  only  tended  to  foster  a  denationalized  class  of 
aristocrats,  with  pretensions  greatly  at  variance  with  abstract 
justice  and  with  the  convenience  of  the  hard-working  majority. 

When  Livy  has  to  deal  with  the  typical  specimen  of  this 
class,  the  younger  brother  of  Publius  Scipio  Africanus,  he 


LIVY, 


425 


takes  refuge  in  vague  phrases  about  "luxury"  and  "arro- 
gance," and  finds  the  climax  of  the  trial  of  Asiaticus  in  a 
dramatic  scene  of  popular  ingratitude;  though,  for  one  reason 
or  another,  he  omits  the  famous  legend  of  the  tearing  up  the 
accounts  which  would  have  secured  the  acquittal  of  Asiaticus 
if  only  they  had  been  read  in  court.  The  final  secession  of 
Scipio  to  Cumai  is  left  unexplained,  though  Livy  does  not  fall 
into  the  mistake  of  Seneca  and  Pliny,  who  make  Scipio  in  his 
retirement  a  model  of  antique  simplicity,  because  they  com- 
pare the  rudimentary  luxury  of  the  Republic  with  the  devel- 
oped luxury  of  the  Empire.  No  fragment  has  been  preserved 
which  bears  upon  the  story  of  the  Gracchi,  though  it  is  clear 
from  the  "  Epitome"  that  he  took  the  severest  view  of  their 
enterprise.  The  most  important  agitation  which  he  has  to 
chronicle  is  a  long  quarrel  between  one  Postumius  and  the 
senate,  who  refused  to  allow  him  to  triumph  for  his  perform- 
ances in  yEtolia ;  whereupon  Postumius  fell  into  a  constant 
state  of  accusation,  and  would  allow  no  one  else  to  triumph 
if  he  could  persuade  the  people  to  prevent  it. 

It  is  remarkable  how  very  little  Livy  was  quoted :  the  only 
considerable  fragments  which  have  reached  us  are  on  the 
assassination  of  Sertorius,  where  the  MS.  is  very  imperfect, 
and  the  narrative  of  the  death  of  Cicero,  preserved  by  the 
elder  Seneca.  The  latter  is  curiously  meagre  :  the  last  thing 
Livy  can  find  to  say  of  Cicero  is  that  he  was  "  Vir  magnus,  acer, 
memorabilis."  Even  here  one  word  is  characteristic;  to  say 
that  Cicero  was  ^zr^r,  "  sharp-set "  both  in  judgment  and  ac- 
tion, is  to  say  something  that  most  modern  critics  miss. 
They  see  nothing  in  Cicero  but  his  sensitiveness  and  vanity, 
his  good  intentions  and  his  perplexity — all  which  Livy  sees 
too,  except  the  last ;  and  it  is  something  to  be  reminded  that, 
of  all  the  politicians  of  the  day,  he  was  the  strictest  and 
keenest  except  Cato,  and  perhaps  Bibulus. 

The  language  of  Livy,  in  general,  rises  and  fiills  very  closely 
with  the  thought.  He  is  rather  copious  than  verbose  :  he 
does  not  spend  many  words  on  what  he  mentions,  but  he 
mentions  almost  everything  he  knows  and  believes.  When 
his  knowledge  is  meagre,  he  is  constantly  on  the  strain,  as 


IP 


M 


426 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


LIVY. 


427 


in  the  first  decade,  to  impose  some  unity  on  the  fragments  by 
compression,  and  to  fuse  conjecture  and  assertion  into  a 
sin^^le  sentence.  When  his  materials  are  more  abundant,  he 
is  content  simply  to  set  them  side  by  side.  Instead  of  the 
historical  infinitive  and  oratio  cbligua,  we  have  sentences  with 
no*  predicate  but  a  passive  participle  without  a  copula,  and  a 
decided  diminution  in  the  number  of  speeches;  while  such 
as  are  recorded  are  almost  all  in  oratio  recta.  There  is  an- 
other change  as  the  narrative  advances:  Livy  is  not  only 
more  matter-of-fact,  but  more  critical.  He  suspects  Valerius 
Maximus  and  Claudius  Quadrigarius  when  he  can  compare 
them  with  Polybius,  and  finds  that  they  record  battles  with 
enormous  slaughter  which  are  not  mentioned  by  Polybius  ;  he 
still  retains  the  battle  and  the  victory,  but  he  insists  that  the 
numbers  must  have  been  enormously  exaggerated. 

Livy  did  not  stand  alone  in  the  magnificent  scheme  of  his 
history.  The  Greeks  were  inexhaustible  when  the  Romans 
were  at  leisure  to  listen  to  them.  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus 
wrote  a  Roman  history  which  was  even  more  copious  than 
Livy's,  much  more  laborious,  and  not  much  more  trustworthy, 
for  his  antiquarian  curiosity  made  him  the  dupe  of  a  certain 
Cn.  Gellius,  who  had  accumulated  much  lumber.  Diodorus 
of  Sicily  wrote  without  pretension  to  style  and  without  much 
attention  to  accuracy.  Pompeius  Trogus,'  who  was  not  im- 
probably of  Greek  extraction,  though  connected  with  Gaul, 
wrote  in  Latin,  and  was  supposed  to  have  written  with  elo- 
quence and  dignity  the  history  of  the  world  in  the  compara- 
tively moderate  compass  of  forty-four  books,  from  the  founda- 
tion of  Nineveh  to  the  overthrow  of  Varus.  We  only  know 
the  work  from  the  "  Epitome  "  and  from  the  copious  extracts  of 
Justin,  a  writer  of  the  second  century,  who  made  it  his  busi- 
ness to  run  all  the  showy  episodes  together,  so  as  to  make  a 
brilliant  reading  book.     The  result  is  that  the  narrative  is 

1  His  third  name,  Trogus,  is  Greek,  and  is  of  the  nature  of  a  nickname. 
It  implies  that  he  or  some  ancestor  had  a  trick  of  nibbling  dainties.  Such 
nicknames  were  not  uncommon  among  native  Romans  of  the  highest 
rank,  at  a  somewhat  earlier  period  ;  but  a  Pompeius  with  a  Greek  cogno- 
men is  likely,  in  the  reign  of  Augustus,  to  have  owed  his  citizenship  to 
Pompeius. 


disproportioned  and  disjointed ;  but  perhaps  this  is  the  fault 
of  his  abbreviator :  perhaps  it  is  not  uncharacteristic  that  he 
is  by  the  accidents  of  history  one  of  our  chief  sources  for  the 
Sacred  War,  which  ended  in  bringing  Philip  to  the  frontiers 
of  Ba^otia.  His  notion  of  what  is  impressive  seems  to  depend 
rather  upon  quantity  than  quality.  He  dwells  upon  great 
calamities,  great  armies,  great  revolutions,  rather  than  upon 
great  personalities,  whom  he  does  not  understand.  His  re- 
flections are  trite,  and  he  is  at  bottom  a  pessimist,  regarding 
history  as  a  gloomy  though  splendid  spectacle. 


428 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


TECHNICAL   LITERATURE. 


429 


y 


w 


CHAPTER   VII. 

TECHNICAL   LITERATUl^E. 

Technical  literature  was  not  neglected.  Hyginus,  a  Greek 
grammarian  of  Spanish  extraction,  wrote  as  voluminously  as 
Varro,  though  time  has  spared  nothing  but  two  fragments. 
One  is  an  abridgment  of  his  work  on  genealogies,  which  Bur- 
sian  conjectures  was  made  in  the  Antonine  age ;  it  has  the 
title  of  "  Fabula^."  Probably  this  includes  most  of  the  stories 
which  had  been  used  in  literature,  while  the  antiquarian  learn- 
ing and  compliments  to  distinguished  families  which  one  looks 
for  in  genealogical  treatises,  ancient  or  modern,  were  omitted 
as  of  no  use  to  a  schoolmaster.  The  other  is  on  astronomy, 
and  extends,  even  as  abridged,  to  four  books,  which  are  largely 
concerned  with  the  constellations  and  their  history.  Fenes- 
tella,  a  native  of  high  position,  undertook  a  great  deal  of 
encyclopedic  writing  in  the  spirit  of  Varro,  but  apparently 
without  his  originality  and  humor.  M.  Verrius  Flaccus  was,  in 
the  opinion  of  Augustus,  the  first  grammarian  of  his  age  ;  he 
was  appointed  tutor  to  the  emperor's  grandchildren  about 
10  B.C.,  and  was  allowed  to  move  with  his  old  school  into  the 
palace  on  pledging  himself  to  take  no  fresh  pupils.  His  repu- 
tation seems  to  have  been  rather  burdensome  to  posterity,  for 
a  good  deal  of  the  little  we  know  of  him  comes  to  us  in  the 
form  of  quotations  from  other  grammarians  who  wrote  against 
him,  and  some  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  his  death  the 
meek  Aulus  Gellius  picks  a  quarrel  with  him,  and  is  wrong. 
He  endowed  his  native  town  of  Pra^neste  with  a  learned  mar- 
ble calendar,  of  which  the  first  four  months  have  been  recov- 
ered by  excavations,  and  the  town  repaid  the  compliment  by 
erecting  a  marble  statue  in  his  honor. 

His  work  on  the  meaning  of  words  must  have  been  enor- 
mously extensive,  for  Gellius  quotes  the  article  on  ater  dies  as 


from  the  fourth  book,  so  that  at  least  four  books  must  have 
been  devoted  to  the  letter  A.  Again,  Parasitus  came  in  the 
fifth  book  of  the  letter  P.  It  is  plausibly  maintained  that 
each  letter  had  a  first  and  second  part,  and  that  the  order  of 
the  first  part  was  fairly  alphabetical,  while  in  the  second  there 
was  an  arbitrary  grouping  by  subjects,  which  might  account 
for  Parasitus  coming  so  late.  He  began  with  Augustus, 
partly  in  compliment  to  his  patron,  and  partly  for  the  sake  of 
auspiciousness,  just  as  he  put  Jupiter  Lucetius  at  the  begin- 
ning of  L.  He  is  no  better  than  other  Romans  in  his  ety- 
mologies :  for  instance,  he  derives  adolescere  from  the  Greek 
n\c//<T(vw,  and  am(enus  from  a  privativiim  and  mcenus^  because 
a  place  was  arnxmim  when  it  owed  its  owner  no  profitable 
task  ;  and  aiigustus  is  derived  ab  avium  gcstti.  More  than 
once  he  contradicts  himself,  putting  down  one  author's  ex- 
planation in  one  place  and  another's  in  another,  when  his 
plan  brings  him  back  to  the  same  word.  And  he  accumu- 
lates the  views  of  different  authors  on  the  same  word  to  an 
extent  which  puzzled  Sex  Pompeius  Festus,  a  grammarian 
who  quotes  Martial,  and  otherwise  has  left  no  clew  to  his  date. 
He  objected,  too,  to  the  multitude  of  words  which  Flaccus  in- 
serted without  explanation  of  their  meaning  or  authority  for 
their  use,  simply  to  complete  the  list  of  all  the  old  words  he 
had  met  in  his  reading  of  old  books,  ritual,  formularies,  and 
other  grammarians.  All  that  Festus  cares  for  is  explanation 
of  obscure  words  and  etymologies,  and  such  antiquarian  in- 
formation as  was  easily  intelligible.  He  liked  to  give  himself 
an  air  of  independence  by  correcting  or  supplementing  his 
authority.  For  instance,  after  quoting  Verrius  for  the  fact 
that  Opscus  was  the  old  form  of  Oscus,  he  proves,  from  the 
use  of  obsccniis  in  Vergil,  that  Verrius  was  wrong  in  deriving 
obsccniis  from  opscus.  So,  too,  after  quoting  Verrius's  bad  ety- 
mology of  prodigium  from  prcedicere,^  supported  by  monsirum 
from  7fwneo,  portefitujji  from  portendo,  he  supplies  from  his 
own  invention  oste?ituiit  from  osteudo.  It  is  also  believed  that 
he  made  use  of  other  works  of  Verrius,  especially  those  on 
augury  and  the  obscurities  of  Cato,  to  supplement  the  work 
'  Elsewhere  Verrius  conntds prodi^inm  \s'\i\i  frodigo. 


430 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


TECHNICAL  LITERATURE. 


431 


on  the  meaning  of  words,  which  he  only  quotes  twice  because 
he  wishes  to  seem  an  independent  writer.     He  reduced  Ver- 
rius  to  twenty  books,  of  which  an  extremely  fragmentary  MS. 
existed  in  Illyricum  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
which  was  brought  to  Italy,  and  some   leaves  fell  into  the 
hands  of  Lsetus,  and  have  now  passed  out  of  sight,  while  the 
other  larger  portion  passed  from  the  hands  of  Manilius  Rullus 
through  several  others  to  a  safe  resting-place  in  the  Farnese 
Library.     In  the  ninth  century  Festus  in  his  turn  seemed  too 
cumbrous  to  be   used,  and   one    Paulus   Diaconus,  who   is 
thought  to  have  been  a  bishop,  since  he  calls  himself  "pon- 
tiff," reduced  the  work  to  a  simple  vocabulary,  leaving  out 
everything  he  did  not  care  for,  and  rewriting  what  he  did  not 
understand,  and  dedicating  the  result  to  Charles  the  Great 
under  the  name  of  David,  which  he  bore  in  the  school  of 
the  palace.     Both  the  Illyrian  MS.  and  the  oldest  MSS.  of 
Paulus  Diaconus  represent  the  same  corrupt  text.    And  those 
of  a  date  considerably  before  the  Renaissance   are  already 
emended  by  scribes  able  to  notice  one  or  two  gross  blun- 
ders, but  not  learned  enough  to  give  their  conjectures  real 

value. 

If  we  doubt  whether  a  grammarian  like  Verrius  belongs  to 
literature  merely  because  he  stood  at  the  head  of  his  profes- 
sion, and  had  continued  to  keep  his  own  Latinity  uncorrupted 
by  the  many  anomalies  which  he  had  met  with  in  the  course 
of  his  reading,  what  shall  we  say  of  a  would-be  architect  like 
Vitruvius  ?  He  had  been  employed  on  one  or  two  small  works, 
and  apparently  his  physical  defects  had  kept  him  back  from 
larger  work,  and  so  he  paraded  his  accomplishments  on  paper 
for  the  edification  of  Augustus,  with  a  sort  of  hope  of  getting 
recognized  as  the  highest  speculative  authority  upon  the  sub- 
ject. He  is  stiff  and  pretentious  in  his  prefaces,  the  only  part 
of  the  book  which  has  any  attempt  at  style,  and  the  technical 
rules  are  often  so  brief  as  to  be  obscure.  He  does  not  confine 
himself  strictly  to  his  subject,  but  digresses  from  the  rules  of 
architecture  (which  are  still  to  be  traced  pretty  strictly  to 
Greek  originals)  into  all  manner  of  sciences,  the  existence  of 
which  is  presupposed  by  architecture,  whether  an  architect 


need  personally  know  of  them  or  not.  He  even  goes  so 
far  as  to  connect  water  organs  with  the  chapter  on  aque- 
ducts, and  in  this  way  he  throws  a  good  deal  more  light  than 
more  interesting  authors  on  the  material  side  of  ancient 
civilization.  The  date  of  Vitruvius's  work  cannot  be  fixed 
more  precisely  than  by  the  facts  that  the  Portico  of  Octavia 
had  been  built,  and  that  there  was  only  one  stone  theatre 
in  Rome. 

The  date  of  Pompeius  Mela,  who  composed  a  gazetteer,  can 
be  fixed  a  little  more  precisely,  but  he  has  now  less  claim  upon 
attention  than  Vitruvius,  for  we  possess  Strabo  and  Eratos- 
thenes, writers  far  superior  to  him  both  in  scientific  spirit  and 
in  range  and  accuracy  of  knowledge. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  more  than  we  do  of  the 
speculative  movement  of  the  Sextii,  which  seems  to  have  struck 
both  the  elder  and  the  younger  Seneca  very  strongly.  The 
elder  speaks  of  it  as  a  Roman  school  of  thought,  started  very 
vigorously,  and  presently  dropped  in  connection  with  the  gen- 
eral intellectual  decline  which  he  seemed  to  himself  to  have 
witnessed.  The  younger  contrasts  their  Roman  spirit  with 
their  Greek  language.  The  father,  Q.  Sextius,  out  of  a  spirit 
of  independence,  refused  to  be  made  a  senator  by  Julius 
Ca3sar ;  the  son  seems  to  have  had  no  practical  experience. 
Their  doctrine  had  little  originality  ;  it  was  an  edifying  and 
somewhat  enigmatical  amalgam  of  Pythagoreanism  and  Stoi- 
cism, taking  up  the  Pythagorean  discipline  of  self-examination 
and  abstinence  without  the  fiction  of  transmigration,  and  the 
Stoic  ideal  of  the  godlike  and  blessed  life  without  the  depress- 
ing pedantry  of  Chrysippus's  dialectic.  The  contrast  between 
the  wise  man  with  all  possible  and  impossible  perfections  who 
was  nowhere,  and  the  fools  who  were  everywhere  and  all  alike, 
can  never  have  been  inspiriting.*  Seneca  says  Sextius  de- 
scribed the  blessed  life  so  that  every  one  might  feel  its  great- 
ness, and  no  one  need  despair  of  it,  as  we  might  praise  a 
Christian  preacher  who  praised  the  blessedness  of  the  ideal 
saint,  leaving  every  sincere  believer  to  appropriate  it  in  his 
measure.     He  claims  Sextius  as  a  true  Stoic,  contrary  to  the 

'  Sen.  "  Ep.  ad  Lucit."  Ixiv. 


432 


XA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


THE  DECLAIMERS, 


433 


common  opinion,  apparently  because  he  insisted  on  the  all- 
sufficiency  of  virtue  ;  the  only  extract  which  he  gives  that  is 
at  all  striking  is  a  saying  that  the  sage  should  go  through  life 
like  an  army  marching  in  a  hollow  square,  ready  to  fight  on 
any  front. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  DECLAIMERS. 

The  real  intellectual  activity  of  the  latter  part  of  the  reign 
of  Augustus  took  a  different  direction  ;  the  educated  class 
ceased  to  spend  themselves  upon  either  poetry  or  learning ; 
they  spent  themselves  upon  declamation.  Asinius  Pollio, 
who  was  still  an  orator,  liked  to  exercise  himself  upon  imagi- 
nary themes,  and  was  so  pleased  with  his  own  efforts  that  he 
invited  the  public  to  witness  them ;  but  he  was  soon  sur- 
passed. During  the  latter  half  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  there 
was  a  whole  crowd  of  famous  speakers,  few  of  whom  at- 
tempted to  speak  on  practical  subjects,  and  fewer  still  were 
fit.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  a  large  public  with  itching 
ears,  who  were  willing  to  be  entertained,  or  even  to  be  disap- 
pointed, by  a  speaker  clever  enough  to  raise  expectations  he 
was  not  serious  enough  to  satisfy. 

We  know  this  world  of  activity  from  a  fragmentary  book  of 
the  elder  Seneca's,  a  Spanish  professor  of  rhetoric,  who  in  his 
old  ase  amused  himself  and  his  children  with  recollections  of 
what  he  had  heard  in  his  youth.  The  book  itself  is  fragmen- 
tary, and  the  state  in  which  it  has  reached  us  more  fragmen- 
tary still.  The  author  tells  us  repeatedly  that  his  wonderful 
memory  had  failed  him  in  great  measure  ;  that  he  is  compelled 
to  put  things  down  as  they  come  ;  to  quote,  not  the  best  that 
there  was  to  quote  from  a  particular  speaker,  but  what  he  re- 
membered best,  and  the  like.  Out  of  his  ten  books,  half » 
have  reached  us,  not  unmutilated;  we  have  excerpts  from  the 
whole  ten.  The  collection  was  once  known  as  the  "  Ten 
Lesser  Orators"  (which  almost  suggests  that  the  "Lives  of 

'  The  first  and  second,  and  the  seventh,  eighth,  and  tenth  books.  The 
excerpts  from  the  third  and  fourth  books  have  the  introduction.  The  iu- 
troduction  to  the  eighth  is  grievously  incomplete. 

L — 19 


434 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


THE  DECLAIMERS. 


435 


the  Ten  Orators,"  which  have  reached  us  as  an  appendix  to 
Plutarch,  are  older  than  his  day).  The  scheme  of  the  book, 
so  far  as  it  has  a  scheme,  is  that  Seneca  describes  some  noted 
declaimer  to  his  children,  in  the  preface,  and  then  begins  by 
describing  some  controversy  in  which  his  hero  distinguished 
himself;  after  which  he  passes  to  others.  Before  he  has 
come  to  the  end  of  his  task,  he  is  much  ashamed  of  it.  He 
was  attracted  at  starting  by  the  prospect  of  being  carried 
back  to  the  days  of  his  prime,  but  he  found  out  before  he  left 
off  that  the  whole  subject  was  too  silly  to  occupy  the  time  and 
thoughts  of  an  old  man.  From  the  first  he  is  careful  to  clas- 
sify  those  declaimers,  especially  Greeks,  who  were  too  cgre- 
giously  absurd,  and  to  explain  the  difference  between  relative 
sobriety  and  good  sense,  and  the  licentious  pursuit  of  effect  at 
any  cost. 

The  soberest  of  all  was  M.  Porcius  Latro,  who  seems  also 
to  have  been  among  the  earliest ;  he  is  the  subject  of  the  bio- 
graphical part  of  the  introduction  to  the  first  book.  He  al- 
most belonged  to  the  age  of  Cicero.  He  died  in  the  194th 
Olympiad,  />.,  before  a.d.  19,  more  than  sixty  years  after 
Cicero  ;  but  the  life  of  Seneca  had  been  long  enough  to  have 
jriven  him  a  chance  to  hear  both,  if  the  war  of  Munda  had  not 
kept  him  at  home  when  Cicero  was  giving  private  lessons  in 
oratory  to  lads  hardly  older  than  Seneca.  The  art  of  decla- 
mation, as  Seneca  described  it,  did  not  yet  exist  at  Rome  in 
Cicero's  time  ;  he  tells  us  himself  that  when  he  was  young  it 
was  thought  safer  to  speak,  for  practice,  in  Greek.  It  was 
when  the  forum  became  dull,  because  all  speakers  were  com- 
pelled to  respect  the  government  and  abstain  from  appeals  to 
political  passions,  that  the  schoolman  drew  the  public,  who 
had  been  used  to  get  as  much  excitement  as  they  wanted  by 
frequenting  orators.  There  had  long  been  professors  of  rhet- 
oric, who  gave  their  pupils  not  only  rules  of  how  to  speak, 
and  subjects,  if  they  wished  it,  to  speak  upon,  but  examples  of 
their  own  skill  (which  was  still  a  novelty  in  the  time  of  the 
"Author  to  Herennius,"  whoever  he  was);  but  the  reputation 
of  such  professors  depended  rather  upon  their  judgment  than 
their  eloquence.     Even  when  we  make  full  allowance  for  the 


defects  of  Seneca's  memory,  it  seems  that  the  declaimers 
whose  feats  he  records  owed  their  reputation  chiefly,  though 
not  exclusively,  to  the  brilliant  things  they  said. 

A  course  of  declamation  was  a  school  of  impassioned  casu- 
istry; its  interest  lay  in  the  discussion  in  the  most  outre  form 
of  all  the  questions  suggested  by  family  and  political  life. 
The  standing  subjects  always  brought  up  the  relation  of 
father  to  son,  step-son  to  step-mother,  and  the  like  ;  the  com- 
monest type  of  question  is.  Was  a  father  in  a  given  case  justi- 
fied in  repudiating  and  disinheriting  his  son  ?  Nor  are  public 
affiirs  exactly  excluded,  but  they  are  always  combined  in 
some  way  with  a  family  squabble.  For  instance,  a  son  is 
commander-in-chief,  being  elected  when  his  father  had  stood 
for  the  office  ;  afterwards  he  is  taken,  his  father  fails  to  ran- 
som him,  he  is  crucified,  and  on  the  cross  tells  the  ambassa- 
dors, sent  from  home  to  try  and  save  him,  to  beware  of  the 
traitor.  The  father  is  tried  for  treason.  Of  course,  the  story 
is  absurd,  as  absurd  as  the  story  of  Massinger's  "  Old  Law  ;'* 
but  it  is  full  of  exciting  points,  and  any  speeches  that  were 
made  upon  it  would  be  lit  up  by  the  inarticulate  excitement 
of  the  audience,  and  so  seem  finer  than  they  were.  For  all 
sensational  literature  depends  for  its  effect  upon  an  excite- 
ment so  intense  that  its  occasion  is  not  distinctly  conceived. 
Take  another  case  :  it  is  assumed  that  a  law  exists  enacting 
that  a  son  v/ho  strikes  his  father  shall  lose  his  hands.  A 
tyrant  commands  two  sons  to  beat  their  father:  one  commits 
suicide  ;  the  other,  after  beating  his  father,  succeeds  in  killing 
the  tyrant.  Here  was  an  endless  field  for  exciting  epigrams. 
Two  of  the  best  are,  of  the  father  pleading  for  the  son, 
"  Would  that  I  could  plead  for  two,"  and  of  the  son  defend- 
ing himself,  "  Nothing  in  the  whole  tyrannicide  was  harder  to 
do."  Besides,  underlying  the  controversy  there  was  the 
whole  question  whether  purity  or  utility  ought  to  be  para- 
mount; and  there  was  the  literary  interest  of  finding  a  form 
of  suggesting,  without  bombast  or  bathos,  that,  even  at  the 
time,  the  father  would  sooner  have  had  a  son  beat  him  than 
commit  suicide.  Of  course,  this  led  to  plenty  of  grotesque 
expedients;  one  orator  actually  made  the  father  say  that  both 


I 


436 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


THE  DECLAIMERS. 


437 


sons  wanted  to  commit  suicide,  but  that  he  succeeded  in  sav- 
ing one  who,  the  by-standers  wrongly  thought,  had  struck  him 
in  the  scuffle. 

Another  favorite  subject,  which  brought  up  a  social  rather 
than  a  political  question,  was  the  slave  who  married  his  mas- 
ter's daughter,  to  the  disgust  of  his  master's  son.  A  tyrant 
was  supposed  to  have  decreed  that  the  slaves  should  take  the 
free  women  to  wife,  the  men  being  either  slain  or  driven  into 
exile.  One  slave  continued  to  treat  his  master's  daughter 
with  respect,  and  when  the  republic  was  restored  her  father 
gave  her  to  him  in  marriage:  the  son  (in  order  that  the  cause 
may  come  before  some  imaginary  court)  accuses  the  father 
of  madness.  It  was,  of  course,  quite  possible  that  a  tyrant 
should  have  issued  such  a  decree,  but  in  the  days  of  the 
Greek  tyrants  the  pride  of  caste  had  not  reached  the  pitch 
that  it  had  under  the  empire.  All  the  ability  of  the  leading 
speakers  was  spent  on  the  side  of  the  son  :  they  did  not 
trouble  themselves  to  prove  that  the  father  was  out  of  his 
mind;  they  dilated  with  emulous  ingenuity  upon  the  position 
that  the  girl  was  badly  used.  They  hardly  condescend  to 
recognize  that  the  slave  had  any  merit  at  all  in  the  matter  : 
he  was  afraid  of  being  crucified  on  the  restoration  of  the  re- 
public, as  the  rest  had  been ;  at  the  utmost,  he  hoped  that 
when  his  mistress  was  married  he  might  be  emancipated.  If 
he  had  any  merit,  he  lost  it,  thanks  to  the  folly  of  the  father. 
He  was  sufficiently  rewarded  by  looking  on  in  safety,  when 
less  cautious  slaves  were  punished.  It  is  noticeable  that  none 
of  the  defences  of  the  father  are  hearty :  they  never  go  to  the 
length  of  asserting  that  the  generous  slave  was  an  equal  of 
freemen.  Albutius  raised  the  question.  What  is  a  slave,  or 
what  is  a  freeman?  trying  to  prove  that  the  distinction  was 
merely  conventional,  not  that  it  was  a  real  distinction  which 
might  be  transcended  by  adequate  merit.  Latro,  who  was  al- 
ways thorough  and  practical,  dwelt  a  good  deal  on  the  differ- 
ence between  misjudgment  and  insanity;  others  invented 
disparaging  excuses  for  the  father;  he  wanted  to  keep  his 
daughter  at  home,  and  to  give  her  a  convenient,  obsequious 
husband,  and  there  was  no  money  to  provide  a  proper  dower. 


or,  after  all,  in  a  family  like  his  it  was  no  use  looking  high,  and 
if  his  daughter  was  to  marry  a  freedman,  she  had  better  marry 
a  freedman  of  her  own  :  and,  after  all,  a  son-in-law  who  could 
despise  a  tyrant  was  not  to  be  so  much  despised.  Even  this 
was  not  putting  the  matter  on  low  enough  ground  :  one  ingen- 
ious person  thought  that  the  father  was  influenced  by  prudence 
in  descending  to  the  common  level ;  it  would  have  been  too 
invidious,  if  the  only  maiden  left  in  the  community  had  mar- 
ried in  her  own  rank.  This  does  not  seem  to  strike  Seneca 
as  absurd,  although  he  is  shocked  when  the  son,  after  wishing 
the  daughter  might  be  childless,  went  on  to  explain  that  the 
wish  was  only  reasonable,  since  tyrants,  he  heard,  were  bred 

from  such  matches. 

A  slave  is  a  little  better  treated  in  another  discussion,  of 
which  we  have  only  the  summary,  though  the  subject  is  too 
monstrous  for  any  country  but  Rome.     A  man  dying  of  an 
incurable  disease  asked  one  of  his  slaves  for  poison.     The 
slave  refused,  and  the  master  provided  in  his  will  that  his 
heirs  should  crucify  him :  the  slave  appealed  to  the  tribunes. 
The  argument  in  favor  of  the  will  admitted  that  the  slave 
would  probably  have  been  crucified  if  he  had  done  as  his 
master  bade  him,  and  only  insisted  that  the  slave  must  have 
deserved  the  cross  already,  or  no  master  would  have  given 
him  such  an  order;  and  another  peroration  was  made  up  of 
the  sacredness  of  wills  and  epigrams,  of  which  this  is  a  speci- 
men: "  Why,  you  gallows-bird,  do  you  mean  your  master  is  to 
die  when  you  please,  and  you  not  to  die  when  he  pleases  ?" 
But  even  in  the  summary  it  is  clear  that  the  slave's  cause  was 
considered  the  best.     Still,  it  was  thought  that  the  master  had 
a  case,  and  this  is  intelligible  when  we  see  the  state  of  feeling 
shown  in  the  declamations  about  foundlings.     A  man  did  not, 
it  seems,  lose  his  rights  over  his  children  by  exposing  them  : 
if,  when  they  had  grown  up,  the  person  who  had  saved  their 
lives  wished  to  keep  one  to  adopt  himself,  it  was  quite  intel- 
ligible that  the  father  should  go  to  law  with  him  and  bewail 
with  the  sincerest  tenderness  his  misery  in  being  forced  to 
choose  between  his  children.     So,  too,  if  the  foundlings  were 
crippled  in  order  that  they  might  bring  a  profit  to  their  owner 


I 


■  \ 


l< 


43^ 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


THE  DECLALMERS, 


439 


by  begging,  it  seemed  a  serious  aggravation  of  the  crime  that, 
if  the  unnatural  parent  was  ever  inclined  to  recognize  them, 
he  would  not  be  able  to  know  them. 

The  relation  between  husband  and  wife,  on  the  contrary,  is 
less  unequal.  Very  often  the  wife  is  assumed  to  bring  an  ac- 
tion for  ill-treatment,  in  order  to  bring  the  father  into  court 
for  his  harshness  to  a  son,  who  had  no  rights  at  all  unless  he 
undertook  to  prove  that  his  father  was  insane.  A  wife,  on  the 
other  hand,  can  always  bring  an  action  for  an  unjust  divorce 
or  for  ingratitude,  as  the  legendary  lady  did,'  who  was  tort- 
ured by  a  tyrant  to  make  her  disclose  her  husband's  plan  of 
tyrannicide,  and  was  afterwards  divorced  for  being  barren, 
when  her  husband  had  killed  the  tyrant.  The  action  for  in- 
gratitude is  one  of  the  most  unreal  elements  of  the  declaimer's 
laboratory :  it  has  no  relation,  or  very  little,  to  the  actual  in- 
stitutions of  Greece  or  Rome :  it  was  one  of  the  fancy  im- 
provements upon  human  law  which  appeared  in  more  than 
one  of  the  philosophical  constitutions  which,  from  the  fifth 
century  onwards,  it  pleased  philosophers  to  draw  up.  It 
touched  the  actual  life  of  Rome  on  the  side  of  the  relation 
between  client  and  patron,  but  this  was  not  what  the  de- 
claimers  valued  it  for.  They  wanted  the  law  in  order  that 
they  might  try  Popillius  for  the  slaughter  of  Cicero,  on  the 
ground  that  Cicero  had  defended  him,  and,  to  make  the  case 
more  piquant,  they  assumed  that  he  had  defended  him  on  a 
charge  of  parricide.  Another,  and  yet  more  famous  case, 
was  that  of  Cimon  and  Callias.  Callias  had  paid  the  fine  to 
which  Miltiades  was  sentenced,  and  so  released  Cimon,  who 
gave  himself  up  as  a  prisoner  for  his  father's  debt  in  order 
that  his  father  might  be  buried.  Then  Cimon  married  Cal- 
lias's  daughter,  and  on  her  adultery  put  her  to  death.  Was 
this  an  act  of  ingratitude  to  Callias?  The  declaimers  were 
inexhaustible.  Had  Callias  conferred  any  benefit  upon  Ci- 
mon? Was  it  not  much  more  glorious  to  be  in  prison  as  a 
witness  for  the  innocence  of  Miltiades  (for  if  Miltiades  had 
taken  bribes  he  could  have  paid  fines),  than  to  be  the  son-in- 
law  of  Callias?  If  there  had  been  any  benefit,  Callias  can- 
*  The  heroine  of  Fletcher's  play,  the  "  Double  Marringe." 


celled  it  when  he  wished  to  protect  an  adulteress.  If  any 
return  was  due  to  Callias,  Cimon  paid  him,  and  overpaid  him, 
when  he  married  into  his  family.  If  Cimon  owed  Callias  any 
thanks  for  his  daughter  and  her  dower,  he  repaid  him  by  put- 
tin<'^  the  unworthy  daughter  to  death,  as  Callias  should  have 
done.  If  Callias  had  really  done  Cimon  a  service,  still  Cimon 
was  not  bound  to  waive  his  rights  as  a  man  and  a  husband 
out  of  gratitude  ;  and  so  on,  and  so  on.  The  same  audacious 
orator,  who  thought  Callias  ought  to  thank  Cimon  for  killing 
his  daughter  for  him,  opined  that  Cimon  had  put  his  wife  in 
the  way  of  adultery  in  order  to  get  rid  of  the  burden  of  grati- 
tude to  Callias. 

Another  instructive  theme  was  the  story  of  Flamininus,  who 
obliged  his  mistress  by  the  sight  of  an  execution  after  dinner, 
and  was  afterwards  tried  himself  for  conduct  unworthy  the 
majesty  of  Rome.  The  best  thing  on  the  subject  that  Seneca 
quotes  is  due  to  Senecio,  whom  he  did  not  admire.  Senecio 
said  he  felt  easy  about  a  prisoner  who  stopped  at  criminals 
when  he  wanted  to  be  cruel,  and  at  a  courtesan  when  he 
wanted  to  take  his  pleasure.  A  more  serious  speaker,  Voti- 
enus  Montanus,  who  was  still  more  noted  for  his  ingenuity 
than  his  judgment,  brought  up  the  whole  imperial  practice  of 
prosecutions  for  treason,  enumerating  everything  that  might 
be  punished  under  other  laws,  or  reasonably  enough  left,  un- 
punished, to  public  opinion  ;  after  which  he  went  on  to  an 
enumeration  of  all  the  distinguished  commanders  who  had 
taxed  the  forbearance  of  the  Roman  people  quite  as  severely 
as  Flamininus.  Another  favorite  subject  from  Roman  history 
was  the  death  of  Cicero.  Something  has  been  said  already 
of  the  motives  which  led  the  declaimers  to  expand  the  doubt- 
ful tradition  that  the  party  which  hunted  Cicero  down  was  led 
by  a  Popillius  whom  Cicero  had  once  defended  in  a  private 
suit.  The  debates  were  overloaded  by  conceits  like  these. 
It  was  certain  now  that  Popillius  had  murdered  his  father  as 
he  had  murdered  his  patron  ;  or,  it  might  fairly  be  hoped  that 
he  would  be  convicted  now  that  he  had  no  Cicero  to  defend 
him.  Some  ingenuity  was  displayed  in  working  in  quotations 
from  Cicero  himself.     Cestius  Pius  quoted   the  passage   on 


440 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


parricide  from  the  speech  for  Roscius  of  Ameria;  Marcellus 
^serninus  introduced    a  quotation   from  the  fourth  speech 
against  Catiline,  making  Antonius  reflect  that  Cicero  was  in- 
different to  death,  which  could  never  come  untimely  to  a  con- 
sular or  grievously  to  a  philosopher ;  but  that  possibly   he 
might  not   be  indifferent  to  being  killed  by  his  own  client. 
The  f^ict  that  Popillius,  when  he  once  had  received  his  orders, 
had  no  choice  and  ran  no  risk  was  naturally  indifferent  to  the 
declaimers.     Some  of  them  debated  whether,  supposing  that 
necessity  excused  some  crimes,  it  could  excuse  the  crime  of 
killing  Cicero  ;  some  remembered  that  they  would  have  run 
some  risk  themselves  if  they  had  accused  Popillius  under 
Antonius  or  even  Octavian.     Some  reflected  that  the  order 
might  have  been  given  to  J'opillius  because  his  commander 
disliked  him,  and  tried  to  get  some  pathos  out  of  the  imagi- 
nary hesitation  of  an  imaginary  coward.     Only  one  had  the 
boldness  to  lay  down  that  Cicero  deserved  his  fate,  and  to 
say  something  for  Antonius  as  well  as  for  Popillius.     Cicero 
had  carried  a  decree  that  Antonius  and  all  his  adherents  were 
enemies  of  the  State.     What  was  this  but  to  proscribe  Anto- 
nius and  Popillius.?     This  was  thought  a  harsh  method  of 
pleading.     It  suited  public  feeling  better  to  make  Popillius 
say  that  his  only  way  not  to  kill  Cicero  was  for  Cicero  to  kill 
himself ;  and  to  kill  himself  had  been  too  hard  a  task  for  Cicero. 
It  was  assumed,  of  course,  that  Cicero  was  in  hiding,  and  that 
no  one  but  Popillius  would  have  been  admitted  to  his  retreat; 
although  the  fact  that  he  died  as  he  was  beins  carried  alons: 
the  open  country  in  a  litter  was  perfectly  well  known. 

Greek  history  was,  upon  the  whole,  less  fruitful.  There 
were  the  questions,  what  Alexander  was  to  do  when  he  came 
to  the  Sutlej,  and  what  Leonidas  and  his  Spartans  were  to  do 
when  they  were  left  alone  at  Thermopylae ;  but  these  belonged 
to  the  lower  department  of  the  declaimer's  art — they  were 
suasonc^,  not  controversice.  The  only  cont rovers ia  besides  the 
ingratitude  of  Cimon  was  the  legend  of  Parrhasius,  who  bought 
an  Olynthian  captive  in  order  to  make  him  serve  as  a  model 
for  Prometheus  on  Caucasus  ;  the  slave  died  under  the  tort- 
ure, and  the  picture  of  Prometheus  was  dedicated  to  Minerva. 


THE  DECLAIMERS, 


441 


Curiously  enough,  the  only  ground  on  which  it  seems  Parrha- 
sius could  be  prosecuted  was  that  he  had  injured  the  Athe- 
nian State — either  by  the  sacrilege  of  dedicating  such  a  pict- 
ure, or  by  the  disgrace  which  must  fall  on  a  city  where  such 
cruelty  was  possible,  or  by  his  contempt  for  the  decree  which 
gave  Olynthians  equal  rights  at  Athens. 

The  Greeks  all  made  a  point  of  honor  of  declaiming  against 
Parrhasius,  and  introducing  some  dreadful  conceit  about  Pro- 
metheus, as  if  to  outrage  a  model  of  a  picture  was  to  outrage 
the  subject  of  the  picture.  Seneca  was  shocked  at  the  sug- 
gestion that  to  torture  the  Olynthian  with  hot  irons  served 
Prometheus  right  for  stealing  fire  for  men :  it  was  all  right  to 
complain  that  man  and  fire  should  be  turned  against  Prome- 
theus. A  point  of  law  which  the  Romans  were  fond  of  was 
how  the  republic  was  injured  by  a  man  using,  or  even  abus- 
ing, his  power  as  a  master  over  a  slave ;  and  the  same  thor- 
ough-going speaker,  who  said  Cicero  had  no  right  to  complain 
of  Antonius,  went  fully  into  the  question  whether  the  decree 
which  conferred  the  rights  of  Athenian  citizenship  upon  all 
Olynthians  who  got  safe  to  Athens  acted  retrospectively  in 
the  case  of  an  old  man  who  had  been  sold  and  tortured  before 
the  decree  was  passed,  or,  at  any  rate,  before  Parrhasius  knew 
of  it.  Most  who  defended  Parrhasius  were  content  to  observe 
that  the  Olynthian  was  an  old  man,  who  would  soon  have 
(lied  any  way.  Seneca  thought  it  objectionable  to  add  that 
he  was  a  wicked  old  man  :  if  anything  of  that  kind  were  to  be 
said,  it  was  so  easy  to  add  that  he  was  a  traitor  to  Olynthus. 
Of  course  the  point  that  Parrhasius  treated  his  slave  worse 
than  Philip  treated  his  captives  was  pressed  every  way.  When 
the  Olynthian  was  bound  down  he  said,  "  Philip  left  my  limbs 
free."  The  Olynthians  begged  life  of  Philip,  but  of  Parrha- 
sius they  had  to  beg  for  death. 

A  Greek  theme,  which  proved  very  fertile  and  attractive, 
was  the  privilege  assigned  to  special  acts  of  bravery,  which 
could  always  be  complicated  with  the  question  of  parental  au- 
thority. A  "  brave  man  "  might  have  lost  his  hands,  and  then 
order  his  son  to  kill  his  wife  and  her  paramour ;  or  a  "brave 
man"  might  be  forbidden  to  go  to  war  by  his  father, who  had 

I.— 19* 


442 


LATIiV  LITERATURE. 


THE  DECLAIMERS. 


lost  other  sons  ;'  or  both  the  father  and  son  might  be  brave, 
and  dispute  which  was  to  choose  his  reward  first.  This  last 
led  to  a  very  pretty  complication  :  the  son  was  to  insist  on 
choosing  first,  and  to  choose  that  the  people  should  erect  a 
statue  to  his  father,  who  thereupon  was  to  disown  his  distin- 
guished but  disobedient  son. 

In  general,  the  whole  of  this  ingenious  literature  was  a  sort 
of  parasitic  growth  of  the  oratory  of  the  period  that  succeeded 
Cicero.  Its  two  guiding  ideas  were  sense  and  sound:  facts 
were  an  encumbrance  even  in  actual  pleading,""  for  the  wit- 
nesses served  rather  for  ornament  than  use,  and  perjury  was 
not  exactly  discreditable.  When  a  man  was  accused  of  an 
indiscretion,  it  was  spiteful  to  denounce  it,  and  spiteful  or 
cowardly  to  swear  to  it ;  while  a  friend  who  must  have  known 
if  the  indiscretion  was  real  won  the  praise  of  "constancy  "  by 
denying  any  knowledge.  The  court,  in  the  main,  had  to  go, 
not  by  evidence,  but  by  the  a  priori  probabilities  of  the  case  ; 
and  it  seemed  a  real  progress  to  disengage  these  from  the 
long-winded  plausibilities  and  amplifications  which  make  up 
the  staple  of  Cicero's  narratives.  The  court  was  supposed  to 
know  the  facts,  which  each  side  was  bound  to  assume  to  have 
occurred,  by  common  fame  ;  it  was  only  necessary  to  examine 
these  narratives,  not  to  repeat  or  to  adorn  them.  The  use  of 
aphorisms,  which  had  been  introduced  by  the  Asiatic  school, 
was  not  therefore  abolished  :  only,  they  had  to  be  incorporated 
into  the  argument;  it  was  all  the  better  if  they  could  be  made 
concrete.  The  triumph  was,  if  all  the  argument  could  be 
turned  into  a  dazzling  string  of  aphorism  and  apostrophe. 

There  was  another  trace  of  the  period  before  Cicero  in  the 
great  formality  of  division,  which  we  know  was  introduced  by 
Hortensius.  In  the  hands  of  the  declaimers  this  received  a 
new  development,  for  every  declaimer  was  expected  to  divide 
not  so  much  his  own  speech  as  the  question.  If  he  could 
speak  on  both  sides  of  each  of  the  subordinate  questions  into 
which  the  main  one  fell,  so  much  the  better;  but  if  not,  it  was 

>  There  is  a  play  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  on  this. 
*  Cicero,  in  the  "  Republic,"  i.  59,  puts  the  aphorism  into  the  mouth  of 
Laelius:  "A  good  judge  attends  more  to  arguments  than  to  witnesses." 


44. 


something  to  be  proud  of  to  have  started  as  many  questions 
as  possible  on  each  case.  It  was  a  grave  shortcoming  if  a 
declaimer  gave,  by  way  of  division,  simply  the  heads  of  his 
own  speech;  that  was  a  method  only  fit  for  an  orator  who  ex- 
pected a  reply. 

The  opponents  of  Parrhasius,  for  instance,  might  treat  his 
guilt  in  four  degrees:  he  tortured  a  man;  an  Olynthian;  he 
imitated  the  torments  of  the  gods  ;  he  brought  his  picture  into 
the  temple  of  Minerva.  But  if  Parrhasius  was  to  reply,  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  justify  under  these  four  heads -^to  say 
that  there  was  no  harm  in  torturing  an  Olynthian,  and  the 
like;  whereas  it  admitted  of  being  asserted  or  denied  that 
cruelty  to  an  Olynthian  was  an  injury  to  the  state  of  Athens. 

There  was  a  constant  rivalry  between  the  orators  who  actu- 
ally pleaded  in  court  and  the  declaimers ;  and  Seneca  w^as  all 
for  making  the  distinction  as  sharp  as  possible.     A  declaimer 
who  gave  himself  the  airs  of  an  orator  was,  to  his  mind,  the 
absurdest  thing  in  the  world.     Not  that  Seneca  thought  the 
declaimer  was  necessarily  inferior  to  the  orator,  for  the  orator 
was  a  declaimer  for  practice.     The  truth  was,  the  declaimer 
was  much  freer  than  the  orator.     He  had  not  to  observe  the 
conventional  optimism  which  an  orator  who  wished  to  rise 
could  not  escape,  and  the  orator  was  seldom   more  than  a 
second-rate  declaimer.     One  fundamental  difference  w^as  that 
the  orator  spoke  out-of-doors,  and  the  declaimer  adapted  his 
voice  to  a  room.     M.  Porcius  Latro,  the  manliest  of  declaim- 
ers, once  tried  to  plead  in  open  court,  but  found  himself  com- 
pletely at  a  loss  ;  and  his  friend,  the  Proprietor  of  Hither 
Spam,  actually  adjourned  the  case  into  a  room  where  he  could 
make  himself  heard.     This   made  declaimers   ridiculous  to 
their  contemporaries  :  but  we,  who  can  hardly  imagine  the  pos- 
sibility of  finished    speaking   out-of-doors,  need   not   wonder 
that  the  declaimer  wished  for  the  natural  conditions.    In  fact, 
though  Juvenal  still  laughs  at  the  poor  rhetorician  forced  to 
come  down  from  his  "rhetorical  shade"  to  fight  in  the  open 
torum,  the  declaimers  only  led  where  the  orators  were  soon 
to  follow:  the  covered  basilica,  with  its  large  apse  for  the 
tribunal,  tended  in  ever-increasing  measure  to  supersede  the 


444 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


THE  DECLAIMERS. 


445 


forum.  The  cleclaimers,  if  of  sufficient  rank,  simply  admitted 
the  public  to  hear  them  exercise  their  voices  and  invention  in 
their  own  large  halls;  the  others  commonly  took  advantage, 
like  poets,  of  the  spacious  baths  which  were  opened  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  Rome.  This  had  its  disadvantages,  for  it  de- 
stroyed the  teacher's  authority  over  his  class.  Seneca  once 
was  listening  to  Murrhedius,  who  had  a  very  high  opinion  of 
himself,  and  a  very  poor  opinion  of  Cicero ;  so,  as  he  was 
complacently  explaining  that  whatever  line  he  had  entered  he 
would  have  been  the  greatest  man  in  his  line,  Seneca  inter- 
rupted the  climax  by  saying  that  if  he  had  been  a  pumpkin 
he  would  have  been  the  greatest  pumpkin  in  the  world.  Poor 
Murrhedius  insisted  that  Seneca  should  apologize  or  leave 
before  he  would  go  on.  Seneca  coolly  said  he  had  nothing 
to  apologize  for,  and  had  no  intention  of  leaving  a  public  bath 
till  he  had  quite  done  bathing.  Murrhedius  and  his  class 
were  helpless,  and  had  no  choice  but  to  go  away  in  a  rage. 

It  was  a  distinction  of  Latro  that  he  never  would  hear  his 
pupils  declaim  :  they  might  listen  to  him  and  learn,  and  they 
might  profit,  if  they  could,  by  his  ironical  comments  upon  his 
rivals,  whom  he  often  parodied,  till  at  last  his  hearers  were 
afraid  to  applaud  him.  Seneca  gives  an  amusing  instance  of 
his  irony  :  he  solemnly  said,  at  the  end  of  a  burst  of  eloquence, 
*'  Sepulcra  inter  monumenta  sunt."  The  phrase  was  between 
a  bull  and  a  platitude;  but  it  had  the  right  ring  about  it,  and 
the  audience  applauded  to  the  echo,  till  they  were  scolded 
into  silence.  Seneca,  who,  like  him,  had  come  from  Spain  to 
Italy,  gives  us  a  lively  picture  of  his  habits  and  his  immense 
mental  activity:  he  was  invariably  occupied  in  speaking  or 
preparing  to  speak.  He  was  so  eager  that  he  made  himself 
hoarse  by  waking  up  in  the  night  to  study,  only  taking  a  short 
nap  after  dinner,  which,  of  course,  impaired  his  digestion. 
These  exertions  were  rather  fitful :  he  allowed  him«^elf  no  re- 
pose when  at  work,  and  naturally  he  worked  himself  to  a  stand- 
still; and  then  he  would  be  completely  idle  until  he  had 
recruited  himself  by  a  holiday  in  Tuscany,  where  he  would 
farm  and  hunt  as  eagerly  as  he  had  declaimed,  without  touch- 
ing a  book  or  a  pen.     When  he  came  back,  he  was  at  the  height 


of  his  power,  and  astonished  every  one  by  his  fertility  and  en- 
ergy, and  by  his  complete  command  over  his  subject  and  his 
audience.  Though  he  did  not  trouble  himself  to  imitate  the 
speeches  of  real  orators,  he  avoided  the  fantastical  display 
of  ingenuity  which  tempted  most  speakers  on  unreal  themes. 
He  always  tried  to  find  some  broad,  simple  issue  which  would 
give  sufficient  field  for  eloquence,  instead  of  trying  to  raise  as 
many  questions  as  possible.  In  the  same  way,  when  it  was 
clear,  as  it  generally  was,  that  one  side  was  altogether  in  the 
wronir,  he  never  went  far  afield  for  a  "  color  "  to  put  on  the 
case  ;  although  this  left  plenty  of  room  to  invention,  since,  in 
an  imaginary  case,  "  extenuating  circumstances"  might  be 
multiplied  or  complicated  at  pleasure. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  the  fragmentary  state  of  Seneca's 
compilation  has  left  us  in  ignorance  of  his  portrait  of  Gallio, 
who  was,  in  his  judgment,  the  second  rhetorician  of  the  day; 
in  the  judgment  of  many,  the  first.  Seneca  says  that  when- 
ever they  were  matched  against  one  another,  the  glory  would 
have  been  with  Latro  and  the  palm  with  Gallio  ;  as  if  Gallio 
had  been  the  more  exquisite  and  brilliant,  Latro  the  more 
fresh,  vigorous,  and  telling  speaker.  The  extracts  which  are 
given  from  Gallio  are  not  very  characteristic,  and  do  not 
throw  much  light  on  the  traditional  criticism  of  Augustus  pre- 
served by  Tacitus.*  The  phrases  of  Gallio  quoted  by  Seneca 
do  not  seem  to  be  more  "jingly"  than  those  of  other  speak- 
ers ;  and  Seneca  himself  seems  to  think  that  it  v;as  not  Gallio 
but  Albucius  Silo  who  was  most  disposed  to  rely  upon  sound ; 
though  brilliant  aphorisms  with  great  display  of  voice  are  not 
exactly  the  same  as  the  jingles  which  Augustus  detected  in 
Gallio. 

The  reputation  of  Albucius  stood  the  higher  that  he  did  not 
presume  upon  it.  There  were  only  five  or  six  days  in  the 
year  that  he  ventured  to  invite  the  public  to  listen  to  him  ; 
very  few  had  the  privilege  of  hearing  him  in  private,  and 
they  found  the  privilege  worthless.  He  took  no  pains  for  an 
audience  too  small  to  be  inspiring;  he  began  to  speak  before 
he  rose,  and  he  luxuriated  in  idle  speculation ;  he  did  more 
»  "  Tinnitus  Gallionis,''  Tac,  "  Dial."  c.  26. 


446 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


than  lay  out  the  question,  and  yet  he  did  not  speak  on  it.     He 
was  only  copious  when  there  was  a  crowd  to  listen,  and  then 
he  would  often  speak  for  three  hours  at  a  time,  for  he  wished 
to  say  everything  that  possibly  could  be  said.     The  argument 
was  overloaded,  for  every  proof  was  proved  to  be  cogent,  and 
every  division  of  the  subject  was  treated  as  if  it  were  the 
whole ;  every  part  was  separately  established  and  dilated  upon, 
and  digressed  from,  and  put  the  speaker  into  a  separate  fit 
of  virtuous  indignation.     He  was  not  willing  to  trust  him- 
self to  speak  extempore;  and,  to  hide  the  fact  that  his  highly 
ornamented  declamation  had  been  carefully  prepared  before- 
hand, he  was  apt  to  make  excessive  use  of  low  words  like 
"vinegar"  and  "lantern"  and  the  like.     He  wished  to  dis- 
guise the  fact  that  he  was  a  mere  rhetorician,  and  spoiled 
himself  at  last  by  his  attention  to  Fabianus  and  Apollodorus, 
the  standard  writers  upon  rhetoric,  who  insisted  much  upon 
the  importance  of  varying  the  style.     The  result  was  that  in 
his  later  speeches  there  were  long  stretches  of  simple  dulness, 
which  were  meant  to  be  terse  and  vigorous.     His  reluctance 
to  be  a  mere  rhetorician  led  to  a  very  mortifying  fcdlure  in 
open  court:  he  was  pleading  a  cause  of  inheritance,  and  chal- 
lenged the  other  party  to  swear  by  the  memory  of  his  father 
and  his  unburied  ashes.     It  was,  of  course,  a  mere  figure  of 
speech,  but  Arruntius  had  influence  enough  with  the  court  to 
insist  that  the  phrase  should  be  treated  as  a  serious  proposi- 
tion ;  though  poor  Albucius  said  that  at  that  rate  figures  of 
speech  would  perish  from  among  men,  Arruntius  retorted  that 
the  world  would  survive  the  loss.     Happily,  figures  of  speech 
were  quite  safe  in  the  school,  and  Albucius,  who  could  not  give 
them  up  at  any  price,  might  console  himself  with  the  reflec- 
tion that  no  one  had  such  large  audiences  in  the  forum  as  he 
had  at  home.     But  even  at  home  he  was  exposed  to  a  good 
deal  of  ridicule.     When  the  dutiful  son  had  to  put  a  brother 
suspected  of  parricide  to  death,  and  instead  put  him  on  board 
a  leaky  boat  (with  a  view  to  his  being  picked  up  and  saved  by 
pirates,  and  subsequent  complications),  it  occurred  to  Albucius 
that,  as  parricides  were,  as  a  rule,  sewn  up  in  sacks,  it  would 
be  an  effective  allusion  to  call  the  leaky  boat  a  wooden  sack, 


THE  DECLAIMERS. 


447 


as  we  call  dangerous  ships  coffins.  But  Cestius  made  the 
conceit  absurd  by  transferring  it  to  the  statement  of  the  con- 
troversy :  "  One  brother  put  another  aboard  a  wooden  sack  to 
sail  to  Kennaquhair."  The  same  speaker,  whose  success  as 
a  critic  was  as  marked  as  his  failure  in  original  work,  took 
another  opportunity  of  vexing  Albucius,  who  had  gravely  in- 
quired why  a  cup  breaks  when  it  falls,  and  a  sponge  falls  with- 
out breaking,  by  telling  his  own  class  to  go  and  hear  Albucius 
declaim  on  the  question  why  cucumbers  did  not  fly  like  cuck- 
oos. The  poor  man  died  in  character:  he  suffered  from  an 
incurable  complaint,  and  went  home  to  Novara  to  die;  where- 
upon he  invited  all  the  commons  of  the  town  to  hear  him  de- 
liver an  oration  on  his  reasons  for  abstaining  from  food.  His 
career  was  always  a  disappointment;  he  never  satisfied  an 
audience,  and  always  interested  them. 

A  reputation  of  very  much  the  same  kind  was  left  by 
Mamercus  Scaurus,  who  exhausted  the  forgiveness  which  the 
Romans  were  long  willing  to  give  to  his  name  and  unmistak- 
able talent.  He  was  too  indolent  to  prepare  his  speeches,  and 
none  were  good  throughout  but  by  accident:  all  contained 
something  to  prove  what  a  great  orator  was  lost  in  him.  He 
affected  the  gravity  and  dignity  of  antiquity ;  he  was  choice 
and  aristocratic  in  diction,  and  had  a  ready  and  a  pretty  wit, 
whenever  he  could  drag  his  opponents  into  an  altercation. 
He  committed  suicide  three  years  before  the  death  of  Tibe- 
rius because  he  was  accused  of  a  treasonable  tragedy  by 
Macro,  the  praetorian  prefect.  Tacitus  seems  to  imply  that 
his  eloquence  was  as  remarkable  as  his  life  was  scandalous. 

The  same  combination  of  talent  and  censoriousness  and 
dissoluteness  meets  us  in  T.  Labienus  and  Cassius  Severus. 
They  were  not  only  declaimers,  but  orators  and  historians, 
whose  works  cannot  have  been  valuable,  for  they  were  neg- 
lected as  soon  as  Caligula  removed  the  prohibition  against 
having  and  reading  them.  Labienus  was  the  earliest:  when 
the  decree  for  burning  his  books  was  published,  Cassius  said 
he  ought  to  be  burned  too,  inasmuch  as  he  had  learned  them 

by  heart. 

Cassius  Severus  was  a  man  of  more  serious  talent;  as  an 


448 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


orator  he  made  an  epoch,  and  as  a  declaimer  he  was,  if  not  in 
the  first  rank,  a  respectable  champion  and  a  formidable  critic. 
He  was  the  most  effective  of  all  speakers  upon  the  favorite 
theme  of  the  man  who  mutilated  children  who  were  exposed, 
in  order  that  when  they  grew  up  he  might  trade  upon  their 
profitable  infirmities.     Most  speakers  were  content  to  dwell 
upon  the  obvious  point,  that  at  any  rate  he  had  treated  the 
children  better  than  the  parents  who  turned  them  out  to  die; 
but  Cassius  developed  the  subject  into  an  attack  upon  all  the 
injustices  of  contemporary  civilization.     It  was  useless  to  con- 
tend that  the  heartlessness  of  an  individual  was  an  injury  to  a 
state  all  whose  members  were  as  heartless  in  other  ways.    This 
bitter  censoriousness  was  the  secret  of  his  power:'  no   one 
trusted  him  as  an  advocate,  but  he  had  abundant  practice  in 
speaking  for  the  defence,  as  he  was  prosecuted  himself  so  often. 
But  he  preferred,  when  he  could,  to  prosecute,  and  even  then 
he  never  convicted.     It  was  one  of  Augustus's  jokes,  "  I  wish 
Cassius  would  prosecute  my  forum,"  which  hung  on  hand, 
"because  then  it  would  be  sure  to  be  absolved,"  which  in 
Latin  meant  either  "  acquitted  "  or  "finished  "  !     He  was  so 
libellous  in  his  attacks  upon  the  honor  of  men  and  women  of 
position,  that  Augustus  felt  compelled  to  extend  the  law  of 
"majesty"  to  punish  such  oftences;   the  theory  being,  that 
offensive  publications  which  disparaged  persons  of  rank  im- 
paired the  "majesty  "  of  the  state,  and  of  course  this  applied 
a  fortiori  to  any  disrespect  to  the  person   of  the  emperor. 
Cassius  was  banished  under  this  law  to  Crete,  and,  as  he  was 
equally  active  in  mischief-making  there,  he  was  finally  ban- 
ished to  Seriphos,  in  the  tenth  year  of  Tiberius,  where  he  died 
of  old  age,  being  really  too  insignificant  for  further  punish- 
ment. 

Ikit  there  is  a  complete  consensus  of  authority  as  to  his 
very  remarkable  eloquence.  Throughout  the  dialogue  on  the 
orators,  he  is  recognized  on  both  sides  as  the  real  founder  of 
the  new  school  of  oratory ;  and  the  elder  Seneca  and  Quinc- 
tilian  bear  witness  to  the  completeness  of  his  victory  over  all 
the  obstacles  in  his  path— his  low  birth,  his  bad  life,  his  un- 
popular politics.     He  was  practically  the  only  speaker  after 


THE  DECLAIMERS, 


449 


the  age  of  Cicero  whom  Quinctilian  thought  profitable  to  stu- 
dents of  his  own  day.  Tacitus  gives  him  credit  as  the  one  ora- 
tor of  the  new  school  who  had  retained  the  liberal  training 
of  the  republican  period,  who  knew  philosophy  and  history 
and  law.  The  orators  of  the  reign  of  Vespasian  read  nothing 
and  knew  nothing  but  the  forum  ;  and  even  the  declaimers 
had  abandoned  erudition,  and  accepted  a  complete  depend- 
ence on  text-books  and  compilations.  Latro  knew  every  event 
in  the  life  of  every  general  sufficiently  to  get  the  rhetorical 
points  out  of  it,  but  even  in  the  days  of  Latro  such  independ- 
ence was  rare.  Few  took  their  vocation  seriously  enough  to 
work  for  it.  Montanus,  who  was  as  genial  as  he  was  grotesque, 
said  that  he  did  not  write  his  declamations,  for  fear  that  the 
foolish  things  that  he  said  should  fix  themselves  in  his  mem- 
ory and  form  vicious  habits  of  speaking. 

With  all  his  praise,  Seneca  quite  agrees  with  Quinctilian 
and  Tacitus  in  his  description  of  the  limitation  of  Cassius's 
powers  as  a  speaker ;  he  was,  after  all,  too  constantly  heated, 
and  his  speeches  had  no  development  or  repose.  As  the  an- 
cients said,  he  had  more  energy  than  blood;'  he  lacked  the 
fulness  and  pervading  glow  of  a  Demosthenes  or  a  Cicero, 
thouo^h  it  mi":ht  be  said  of«him,  as  it  could  not  be  said  of  Cic- 
ero,  that  there  was  nothing  otiose  in  his  conduct  of  a  case, 
nothing  that  the  hearer  could  miss  without  loss,  nothing  which 
did  not  tell  and  was  not  furnished  with  a  proof  of  its  own. 
Then,  his  voice  and  person  were  full  of  charm  and  dignity. 
Like  so  many  Roman  speakers,  he  is  praised  in  the  same 
breath  for  being  suave  and  for  being  cutting,  for  the  audience 
were  never  supposed  to  sympathize  in  any  measure  with  two 
parties  at  once,  and  a  speaker  had  no  need  to  observe  any 
measure  in  wounding  his  opponent. 

Seneca  explains  that  no  quotations  could  do  justice  to  the 
oratory  of  that  period.^    Cicero  and  one  or  two  of  his  contem- 

*  "  Plus  vis  quam  sanguinis." — Tac.  *'  Dial."  26,  4. 

'  This  may  account  for  his  total  failure  to  convey  to  his  readers  any 
sense  of  the  eminence  of  Q.  Arellius  Fuscus  the  elder,  whom  he  ranks  as 
the  fourth  of  the  great  declaimers  :  his  extracts  are  wearisome,  and  remark- 
able, if  for  anything,  for  arid  acuteness.  Seneca  says  he  was  a  very  capri- 
cious speaker ;  the  framework  of  his  declamation  was  dry  to  a  degree,  but 


450 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


HISTORICAL   COMPILATIONS. 


451 


poraries  were  as  good  to  read  as  to  hear,  but  it  is  a  general 
rule  with   Seneca   that  speeches  were  iiiore  effective  when 
heard  than  when  read,  and  it  was,  moreover,  very  uncertain 
whether  any  particuhir  speaker  would  do  such  justice  as  was 
possible   to  any  particular  speech  in  writing  it  out.     P^ery 
speech  was  like  a  fine  acting  play,  with  the  further  advantage 
that  it  was  acted  by  the  author ;  many  speeches  were  like  act- 
ing plays  which  owe  their  success  to  the  improvisations  of  the 
actor,  inspired  by  contact  with  his  audience.     A  speaker  who 
failed  in  preparation  might  be  roused  at  the  moment  of  speak- 
ing, but  he  would  not  be  able  to  recall  the  effect  at  will.    An- 
other might  overload  himself  with  superfluous  ingenuity,  and 
this  was  a  defect  apt  to  be  exaggerated  in  publication, because 
his  first  thoughts  were  best,  and,  if  he  inflicted  his  second 
thoughts  upon  an  audience,  he  was  apt  to  inflict  his  third 
thoughts  upon  his  readers.     Votienus  Montanus,  the  Ovid  of 
the  declaimers,  made  his  reputation  by  a  speech  before  the 
centumviri,  who  decided  little  but  cases  of  inheritance,  and 
consequently  had  plenty  of  leisure  to  listen  to  young  speakers. 
His  client  was  a  lady  accused  of  poisoning  her  father,  who 
consequently  left  her  only  one  twelfth  of  his  property.     Mon- 
tanus said,  what  in  Seneca's  judgment  ought,  if  he  had  left  it 
alone,  to  have  endured  to  all  ages—"  Uncia  nee  filiae  debetur 
nee  veneficae,'"  but  he  spoiled  the  eftect  by  more  variations 
than  Seneca  could  remember  or  cared  to  go  through.     "  In  a 
father's  will  a  daughter  should  have  her  own  place  or  none." 
"A  daughter  ought  not  to  have  such  a  narrow  footing  in  her 
father's  will."     As  Seneca  says,  each  variation  is  good,  but 
none  equal  to  the  original,  and  when  he  came  to  publish  he 
was  not  content  with  what  he  had  spoken. 

the  cadences  were  always  soft,  flowing,  and  effeminate,  and  he  never  lost 
any  opportunity  of  luxuriating  in  flowery  description  ;  there  was  nothing 
rough,  or  keen,  or  earnest  in  his  speaking.  This  meagre  and  paradoxical 
criticism  is  given  incidentally  when  Seneca  is  characterizing  Fabianus,  an 
amiable  philosopher,  who  took  great  pains  in  his  youth  to  learn  the  man- 
ner of  Fuscus,  and  afterwards  to  unlearn  it,  as  not  quite  worthy  of  a  phi- 
losopher. 

>  "A  twelfth  is  the  due  neither  of  a  daughter  nor  of  a  poisoner." 


% 


CHAPTER   IX. 
HISTORICAL   COMPILATIONS. 

The  rhetorical  activity  of  the  time  made  reading  for  its  own 
sake  superfluous  and  burdensome,  and  there  was  more  demand 
for  compilation  than  for  independent  works.  A  person  who 
cared  to  hear  declamations  required  a  certain  knowledge  of 
history  to  understand  the  allusions  ;  a  person  who  intended 
to  cultivate  declamation  wanted  a  reading-book  to  supply  him 
with  illustrations.  Besides,  a  person  without  intellectual  in- 
terests did  not  like  to  be  entirely  ignorant  either  of  the  out- 
line of  events  or  of  the  most  edifying  and  exciting  anecdotes. 
It  is  our  good  fortune  to  possess  a  specimen  of  each  kind  of 
compilation,  and  it  is  instructive  also  to  learn  that  it  was  the 
reading-book  for  rhetoricians  which  had  the  largest  measure 
of  success. 

There  is  scarcely  any  ancient  book  which  is  so  little  quoted 
in  ancient  or  mediaeval  times  as  the  two  books  of  M.  Velleius 
Paterculus,  who  composed  a  summary  of  Roman  history  for 
Vinicius,  consul  a.d.  30.  Priscian  names  him  once  at  length, 
and  two  scholiasts  mention  him  under  the  name  of  Patercu- 
lus. He  has  given  a  tolerably  complete  account  of  himself,  or 
at  least  his  military  services,  from  the  first  to  the  fourteenth 
year  of  our  era,  when  he  and  his  brother  were  appointed  prae- 
tors, being  the  last  to  receive  that  honor  from  Augustus,  and 
the  first  to  receive  it  from  Tiberius.  As  he  says  nothing  of 
further  promotion,  it  is  probable  that  he  did  not  receive  any, 
although  he  might  have  held  a  provincial  government  without 
feeling  called  to  mention  it  if  it  did  not  bring  him  into  per- 
sonal contact  with  Tiberius.  It  might  not  be  uncharitable  to 
suspect  that  he  took  advantage  of  the  consulate  of  a  personal 
friend  to  see  if  he  could  recall  himself  to  notice  by  an  enthu- 
siastically loyal  history:  he  speaks  of  the  pleasure  with  which 


452 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


he  reflects  on  his  visits  to  the  East  in  the  first  days  of  his 
service,  as  if  the  experience  had  not  been  repeated. 

No  book,  on  the  other  hand,  was  more  popular  than  the 
collection  of  memorable  words  and  deeds  by  Valerius  Maxi- 
mus,  whose  patron,  Sextus  Pompeius,  was  consul  a.d.  14,  and 
pro-consul  of  Asia  in  27;  the  latest  date  he  mentions  is  the 
fall  of  Sejanus,  a.d.  32,  while  in  the  preface  to  the  sixth  book 
he  addresses  a  chamberlain  of  Julia,  the  mother  of  Tiberius: 
she  died  in  a.d.  29.     There  were  two  abridgments  of  his  work, 
executed  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century  by  Julius  Paris, 
who  still  wished  the  book  to  serve  its  old  purpose  as  a  man- 
ual for  young  declaimers,  and  at  a  somewhat  later  period  by 
Januarius  Nepotianus,  for  the  benefit  of  a  young  student,  Vic- 
tor by  name,  who  showed  his  singular  proficiency  by  desiring 
that  ancient  writers  should  be  abridged  for  his  benefit.    Prob- 
ably there  were  few  who  read  anything  beyond  the  necessary 
text-books,  while  a  student  (probably  an   ecclesiastic)   who 
wished  to  know  as  much  of  ancient  literature  as  possible 
found  that  his  time  for  reading  was  limited  by  other  duties; 
and,  besides,  the  wordiness  of  Valerius  Maximus  was  as  disa- 
greeable to  a  reader  more  familiar  with  the  psalter  than  any 
other  book,  as  the  simplicity  of  the  Old  Testament  had  been 
to  a  student  of  Cicero  like  St.  Jerome. 

Velleius  is,  as  he  tells  us  repeatedly,  a  very  cursory  writer: 
he  divides  his  book  into  two  halves  at  the  capture  of  Carthage, 
and  of  these  the  first  has  only  reached  us  in  a  very  fragment- 
ary condition.  The  writer  had  not  confined  himself  strictly 
to  Roman  history,  which  was  his  ostensible  subject :  in  the 
early  history  he  seems  to  have  told  in  outline  what  he  knew 
both  of  the  beginnings  of  Greece  and  of  the  farther  East,  but 
this  has  to  be  made  out  from  later  allusions,  as  considerably 
the  larger  part  of  the  first  book  has  been  lost,  including  the 
whole  regal  period.  What  there  is  of  it  is  not  very  character- 
istic :  the  author  has  better  opportunity  to  display  his  ingenu- 
ity in  the  later  part  of  his  work,  where  he  can  draw  the  out- 
lines of  familiar  characters.  He  makes  a  system  of  optimism; 
when  he  has  to  relate  Sulla's  reconquest  of  Athens  he  is  care- 
ful to  assert  that  Athens  was  always  faithful  to  the  Roman  al- 


mSTORICAL   COMPILATIONS, 


453 


liance,  and  only  needed  to  be  delivered  from  her  tyrant ;  and 
when  he  comes  to  Sulla's  reconquest  of  Italy  he  insists  on  his 
endeavors  to  arrange  the  war  on  just  terms  and  equal  con- 
ditions. He  admires  Cicero  without  reserve,  and  calls  him 
vir  novitatis  nobilissimcc,  a  "  new  man  of  the  highest  nobility  :" 
he  makes  no  excuses  for  the  conspiracy  of  Catilina,  and  ap- 
i)lauds  the  energy  with  which  Cato  forced  the  senate  to  decree 
the  execution  of  the  conspirators  by  taunting  the  advocates 
of  mercy  with  complicity.  So,  too,  he  tells  with  great  unction 
the  story  of  the  homage  paid  to  Q.  Catulus  when  he  opposed 
the  Gabinian  law:  he  does  not  know  which  to  admire  most, 
the  generosity  of  the  people  who  could  see  the  greatness  of  an 
opponent,  or  the  modesty  of  the  statesman  whose  opposition 
was  at  once  disarmed  by  the  generosity  of  his  countrymen. 

This  general  optimism  should  be  taken  into  account  in 
judging  of  his  language  about  Augustus  and  Tiberius,  which 
is  extremely  enthusiastic,  especially  about  the  latter.  We 
naturally  compare  Velleius  with  Livy  and  Tacitus  (as  if  the 
tone  they  take  was  what  any  Roman  who  respected  himself 
would  take),  instead  of  with  those  who  lived  under  Elizabeth 
in  England  or  under  Louis  XIV.  in  France;  so  that, though 
the  loyalty  of  Velleius  does  not  exceed  what  we  might  find 
then,  it  produces  all  the  effect  of  servility,  the  rather  that  his 
loyalty  has  a  strong  religious  color.  He  talks  of  having  been 
a  witness  and  a  minister  of  the  most  heavenly  occupations  of 
Tiberius  before  he  had  succeeded  Augustus,  although  Tiberius 
would  never  allow  his  work  to  be  called  "heavenly"  or  di- 
vine even  when  he  was  emperor.  It  is  true  that  he  served 
under  Tiberius  when  Tiberius  was  at  his  best  in  the  German 
and  Pannonian  campaigns,  after  his  return  from  Rhodes,  and 
that,  when  Tiberius  showed  his  real  care  for  his  men  by  plac- 
ing his  own  litter  at  the  disposal  of  the  wounded,  Velleius 
profited  personally  by  the  kindness.  Still,  one  feels  that  de- 
votion is  a  little  forced  when  the  retreat  to  Rhodes  is  repre- 
sented as  the  heroic  action  of  a  hero,  even  of  a  misunderstood 
hero,  a  hero  whom,  as  Velleius  hints,  it  was  not  always  easy  to 
understand.  He  succeeds  better  with  the  few  moving  words 
that  tell  the  silent  fire  which  burned  in  the  old  man's  heart 


454 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


for  three  years  (a.d.  27-29),'  thanks  to  the  disloyalty  of  his 
daughter-in-law,  Agrippina,  and  her  son.     And  the  description 
of  the  blessings  of  his  orderly  rule  is  not  overcharged  :  it  is 
true   that  the  provinces   and  the  capital,  up  to  the  time  at 
which   Velleius   wrote,  enjoyed  completer   repose   than   they 
had  known  under  Augustus.     About  Augustus  the  writer  is 
less  enthusiastic:  he  feels  that  the  proscription   requires  a 
great  deal  of  apology,  and  is  only  half  satisfied  to  throw  the 
blame  upon  the  other  triumvirs,  especially  Antonius,  who  is 
denounced  in  good  set  terms  for  the  death  of  Cicero.     Even 
Antonius  is  not  altogether  sacrificed— at  least,  he  fares  better 
than  Plancus,  who   deserted   him;  and  between   Ccesar  and 
Pompeius  the   author  is   almost   impartial :   all   honest   men 
wished  both  to  put  down  their  armies.     There  is  some  shrewd- 
ness in  the  remark  that  Pompeius  raised  forces  for  his  war 
against  Mithridates  and  most  of  his  other  wars  at  his  own  dis- 
cretion, and  dismissed  them  at  the  discretion  of  others.=     Sex- 
tus  Pompeius,  one   of  the  most  curious  figures  in  historv,  is 
rather  slurred  over:  the  writer  forgets  to  mention  some  of 
the  most  important  things  that  happen  in  their  place.'     The 
book  is,  as  he  says,  very  hurried  :  no  attempt  is  made  to  ex- 
plain or  describe  a  battle  or  a  campaign,  except  in  the  con- 
trast between  the  conditions  of  the  opposing  fleets  at  Acti- 
um;*  even  then  we  learn  nothing  of  the  battle,  except  that 
Antonius's  men  went  on  fighting  for  some  time  after  he  had 
run  away  after  Cleopatra,  a  theme  for  some  leisurely  antithe- 
sis. "*     Sometimes  the  antithesis  is  helped  by  the  hurrv.     We 
are  told  nothing  of  CiEsar's  campaign  in  Africa,  exceptVhat  he 
fought  first  with  doubtful  fortune,  then  with  his  own.' 
^  In  spite  of  his  brevity,  Velleius  always  finds  room  for  digres- 
sion, on  such  subjects  as  the  constellation  of  genius  which  is 
to  be  found  at  certain  limited  epochs,  or  the  behavior  of  freed- 
men,  slaves,  wives,  or  children  during  a  period  of  proscription. 

"Quamdiu  abstruse,  quod  miserrimum  est,  pectus  ejusflagravit  incen- 
dio?  quod  ex  nuru,  quod  ex  nepote  dolere,  indignari,  erubescere  coactus 
est."— Veil.  "  Pat."  II.  cxxx.  3. 

'  II.  xxxiii.  3.  3  E.g.  II.  Ixxiii.  2.  ♦  II.  ixxxiv.  2. 

*  II.  Ixxxiv.  3-6.  «  jj^  ]y^  J 


HISTORICAL   COMPILATIONS. 


455 


As  a  rule  he  prefers,  when  he  has  made  sure  of  a  striking 
general  fact,  to  leave  it  for  subsequent  explanation.  It  is  a 
shrewd  observation  that  freedmen  behaved  better  than  wives, 
and  slaves  better  than  sons,  and  it  is  to  Velleius's  credit  that 
he  nowhere  shows  any  enthusiasm  for  the  Fatria  potcsias, 
that  singular  survival  of  which  so  many  Roman  writers  were 
proud. 

Valerius  Maximus  is  less  discriminating;  he  waxes  enthusi- 
astic over  the  obedience  of  a  certain  tribune  of  the  commons, 
who,  though  resolved  to  carry  his  agrarian  law  in  defiance  of 
the  senate,  who  were  prepared  for  armed  resistance,  came 
away  at  once,  to  the  full  content  of  the  commons,  when  his 
father  led  him  away  from  the  rostra.'  He  omits  to  inform  us 
that,  in  spite  of  his  deference  to  his  father,  Flaminius  carried 
Iiis  law.  On  the  other  hand,  he  exults  in  all  the  stories  of 
wills  that  were  set  aside  because  made  at  the  expense  of 
family  ties.  He  is  just  as  pleased'^  when  a  son  whose  father 
passed  him  over  because  he  had  been  adopted  into  another 
fimily  (in  which,  of  course,  he  was  to  be  provided  for)  ousts 
the  clients  of  Pompeius,  as  when  the  father  of  eight  sons^  re- 
covered the  estate  of  the  eighth,  who  also  had  been  adopted 
into  another  family  and  thought  he  had  a  right  to  leave  his 
money  away  from  his  own.  Whenever  a  father  puts  a  dis- 
creditable child  to  death,  or  drives  him  or  her  to  suicide, 
Valerius  is  ready  with  applause.  He  applauds  Hortensius 
the  orator  for  making  a  will  in  favor  of  his  unsatisfactory  son, 
because  he  had  traded  upon  his  sentiments  as  a  father  when 
defending  his  son  in  court.  He  applauds  a  nameless  father 
who,  hearing  that  his  son  meditated  parricide,  first  entreated 
his  wife  to  say  whether  he  was  in  very  truth  his  own  son  or 
no,  and,  being  satisfied  that  he  was,  immediately  took  him  to 
a  lonely  place  and  offered  him  a  sword  to  cut  his  throat,  to 
spare  him  the  trouble  of  employing  a  brigand  or  buying  poi- 
son :  the  son,  we  learn,  was  converted.  The  story  looks  very 
like  a  rhetorician's  theme,  dating,  perhaps,  from  a  time  when 
themes  were  not  sharply  divided  into  controversice  and  suasorice. 

One  of  the  points  in  which  the  influence  of  rhetoricians 


'  Val.  Max.  v.  4,  5. 


vn.  7,  2. 


vii.  7»  5- 


456 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


shows  itself  most  plainly  is  the  writer's  sensitiveness  to 
"color"  in  the  technical  sense;  it  is  quite  a  typical  case  when 
he  tells  us*  that  Horatius  was  acquitted  for  killing  his  sister 
because  the  people  thought  that  "  the  childish  love  of  the 
maiden  had  been  visited  rather  severely  than  unkindly."  (It 
is  a  curious  notion  that  it  was  too  soon  for  her  to  be  in  love 
with  her  betrothed;  she  should  have  waited  till  they  were 
married.)  Very  much  in  the  same  spirit  he  treats  the  refusal 
of  Caesetius  to  oblige  Caesar  by  casting  off  his  son,  who,  as 
tribune,  had  done  what  he  could  to  annoy  Ccesar.  In  Vale- 
rius's opinion  Caesar  was  so  divine  and  generous  a  person  that 
he  ought  to  have  been  obeyed,  of  course  all  the  more  because 
Caesetius  had  two  other  promising  sons  left,  to  whom  Caesar 
was  good  enough  to  promise  promotion;  and  so  Caesetius  fig- 
ures among  a  list  of  fathers  who  were  more  or  less  culpably 
indulgent;  while  Hortensius,  whose  son  was  absolutely  worth- 
less, is  classed  with  the  fathers  who  showed  commendable 
moderation. 

Valerius's  tone  about  the  empire,  if  not  as  fervent  as  Vel- 
leius's,  is  quite  as  exaggerated.  Sejanus's  designs  against 
his  father-in-law  are  a  unique  specimen  of  the  crime  of  par- 
ricide. When  Caesar  (as  aedile  ?)  took  the  opportunity  of  ar- 
resting a  man  who  had  abused  the  license  of  Sulla's  time,"* 
we  are  told  that  "  Caesar's  equity  drew  back  the  rudder  of 
Roman  Empire  from  Sulla's  violence,  since  a  more  righteous 
ruler  swayed  the  state."  In  spite  of  this  there  is  an  unre- 
served admiration  for  all  the  heroes  of  the  old  republic.  The 
fiction  that  the  empire  was  the  republic  under  superhuman 
citizens  is  treated  quite  naively  as  a  fiact.  And  this  explains 
why  Valerius  sometimes  seems  to  protest  covertly  against  the 
new  regime.  For  instance,  Tiberius  had  invented  the  system 
of  making  over  the  slaves  of  suspected  persons  to  an  agent 
of  the  treasury,  in  order  that  their  evidence  might  be  given 
against  one  who  was  no  longer  their  master ;  and  yet  Vale- 
rius tells  us  three  times  over,  as  if  it  were  always  a  special 

»  Val.  Max.  viii.  8,  i. 

'  He  had  seized  the  property  of  a  man  whom  he  chose  to  call  his 
father,  ousting  the  real  son. 


HIS  TO  RICA  L    COMPILA  TIOXS. 


457 


proof  of  justice,  of  eminent  Romans  who  had  refused  the  de- 
cisive evidence  of  a  slave  against  his  master  in  some  impor- 
tant trial.  But  very  likely  he  is  blind  to  the  contrast,  just  as 
he  is  blind  to  the  point  of  three  stories  he  tells  of  men  who 
owed  their  success  in  life  to  Lucullus,  to  Augustus,  and  a  less 
illustrious  patron.  All  promised  to  leave  their  fortunes  to 
those  who  had  helped  to  make  it,  and  all  broke  their  word  after 
keeping  up  the  farce  to  the  very  last,  one  presenting  his  pa- 
tron on  his  death-bed  with  the  rings  that  he  had,  to  hand  over 
to  the  heirs.  Valerius  tells  the  stories  under  the  heading  of 
''  Wills  which  were  not  upset,"  though  they  might  have  been, 
and  is  much  more  impressed  by  the  meanness  of  the  testators 
than  by  the  state  of  subservience  in  which  they  had  lived. 
That  Atticus  took  the  money  which  was  left  to  him  after  be- 
ing promised  to  Lucullus  does  not  shock  Valerius,  who  per- 
haps did  not  notice  the  circumstance.  He  is  not  particular 
as  to  details  at  any  time.  For  instance,  he  makes  Spurius 
Cassius,  the  first  victim  of  the  charge  of  seeking  to  restore 
the  monarchy,  a  tribune  of  the  commons,  because  he  was  in 
some  sense  a  demagogue ;  and  there  are  several  cases  where 
people  of  the  same  name  are  confounded. 

The  work  has  neither  chronological  nor  logical  arrange- 
ment. It  begins  with  religion,  and  instead  of  an  invocation 
of  Jupiter,  whTch  Velleius  piously  puts  at  the  end  of  his  history, 
we  have  a  prayer  to  the  Deity  of  Tiberius.  I'he  book  ends 
with  a  chapter  on  Wonders,  beginning  with  the  apparition 
of  the  Twin  Brethren  at  Lake  Regillus,  and  ending  with  the 
serpent  that  was  bombarded  by  the  army  of  Regulus.  Then 
comes  a  second  book,  which  seems  intended  to  illustrate  hu- 
man institutions,  beginning  with  marriage,  and  passing  through 
such  external  things  as  the  public  spectacles  and  the  right 
of  triumph,  to  such  specimens  of  "majesty"  as  C.  Marius 
fii<^htening  off  the  Cimbrian  who  was  sent  to  kill  him  at  Min- 
lurnse,  and  Cato  followed  to  prison  by  the  whole  senate  when 
CiEsar  committed  him  for  obstructing  business,  or  Harmodius 
and  Aristogeiton,  whose  statues  were  treated  like  the  images 
of  the  gods  at  Rhodes,  when  Seleucus  sent  them  back  from 
Asia  to  Athens.     Such  traces  of  a  scheme  as  have  been  visi- 

I.  —  20 


458 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE. 


HISTORICAL    COMPILATIONS. 


459 


ble  disappear  with  the  next  book,  which  begins  with  instances 
of  precocious  virtue  and  rambles  through  all  kinds  of  personal 
traits  — fortitude,  patience,  self-indulgence,  degeneracy,  con- 
stancy, and  the  like,  gratitude  and  ingratitude,  love  to  kith 
and  kin  and  fatherland,  clever  sayings,  resolute  sayings,  justice, 
severity,  perfidy,  study,  and  industry,  which  in  a  methodical 
writer  would  have  been  brought  into  a  close  connection  with  a 
chapter  on  precocity,  just  as  a  chapter  on  chastity  would  have 
been  brought  into  connection  with  the  chapter  on  marriage. 
There  are  several  chapters  where  the  author  is  careful  to  in- 
sist on  the  danger  of  vindictiveness  :  a  man  who  propitiates 
Nemesis  is  always  safe  ;  a  man  who  forgets  her  is  always  sure 
to  be  disappointed.  Every  chapter  is  divided  between  Roman 
and  foreign  examples  of  whatever  trait  the  author  wishes  to 
illustrate,  and  he  does  not  succeed  in  being  impartial  \  for 
instance,  the  battle  of  Cannai  is  in  his  eyes  an  instance  of 
barbarian  cunning  bordering  upon  treachery. 

His  principal  sources,  so  far  as   they  can  be  traced,  are 
Livy,  Herodotus,  Sallust,  Cicero,  Cornelius  Nepos,  and  Pom- 
peius  Trogus.     He  does  not  name  any  often  :  Pomponius  Ru- 
fus,  a  nearly  contemporary  author,  whose  commonplace  book 
is  quoted  under  the  title  "  Collectorum,"  is  only  mentioned 
once.     His   style   has   little  distinction;   fortunately,  for   the 
most  part  he  reproduces  his  authorities  without  much  chano-e, 
but  the  addition  of  a  tame  epigram  of  this  calibre:  ''  So  the 
poor  man  felt  more  unhappy  in  the  author  of  his  murder  than 
in  the  murder  itself"  '     The  story  is  of  a  man  whose  son  be- 
trayed him  during  the  proscription  of  the  triumvirs,  and  is 
probably  taken  from  Livy,  for  it  is  found  in  Orosius.     When 
he  is  original,  his  style  is  a  clumsy  copy  of  the  declaimers. 
He  lacks  their  energy  of  movement  and  their  point  and  fire  ; 
he  is  fond  of  flat  apostrophes,  and  lacks  neatness  of  phrasing; 
he  is  given  to  devices  like  beginning  a  new  paragraph  with 
ergo.     His  last  chapter  is  on  people  who  have  thrust  them- 
selves on  families  to  which  they  were  strangers,  and  perhaps 
may  be  the  occasion  upon  which  the  tract  upon  proper  names, 
of  which  fragments  have  reached  us,  was  annexed  to  his  trea- 

^  IV.  ii.  5. 


V 


tise  as  a  tenth  book.  It  may  be  inferred  that  the  work  in  its 
present  state  dates  from  the  fourth  century,  as  it  does  not  ap- 
pear that  -rammarians  had  hit  upon  the  device  of  calling  the 
second  Jsnomcn  {e.g.  Africanus,  Numidicus)  agnomen  until 
that  date. 


INDEX   TO  VOL.  I. 


Accius,  30,  37  ;  ranked  above  Knni- 
us,  38  ;  his  "  Bacchae,"  "  Piaetex- 
tse,"  "  Hrutus,"  42. 

Aitn^  prima  and  actio seciinda  aganist 
Vents,  150. 

A:(iiiian  campaigns,  in  Livy,  404. 

/Kschylus  ot  Cnidus,  146. 

/Ksop'us,  the  actor,  43. 

/V^opus,  the  fabulist,  386. 

Atianius,  60. 

African  war,  history  of,  by  continua- 
tors  of  Hirtius,  222. 

African  writers,  14. 

Ahala,  Q.  Serviiius,  72. 

Alban  kings,  17. 

Albinovanus,  correspondent  ot  Hor- 
ace, 315,  316. 

All)inovanus.     See  Pedo. 

Albunea,  4. 

Albutius  Silo,  436,  445. 

Alexandrian  literature,  12. 

Alexandrine  affinities  of  Catullus,  109. 

Alimentus,  L.  Cincius,  73. 

Alphius,  304. 

Ancus  Martins,  16. 

Andes,  Vergil's  native  village,  255  ; 
included  in  confiscated  district  of 
Cremona,  260. 

Andronicus,  Titus  Livius,  of  Taren- 
tum,  19  ;  his  plays,  official  thanks- 
giving, abridgment  of  the  Odyssey, 
19. 

Anna  Perenna,  16. 

Annales  Maximi,  69,  72,  126. 

Annals,  5. 

Anser,  C.  Licinius,  251. 

Antias,  Valerius,  I97-I99'  405* 

Antiochus  of  Ascalon,  146. 

Antonius,  C,  consul  with  Cicero, 
152,  156. 


Antonius,  M.,  the   orator,  Cicero  s 
estimate  of,  133  ;  his  speeches,  134. 
Apollonius,  Cicero's  teacher,  144. 
Apollonius  Rhodius,  13. 
Appian  on  battle  of  Cannae,  419. 
Apuleius,  9,  14. 

Aratus,  translated  by  Cicero,  82,  145. 
Archelaus,  81. 

Ardea,  dispute  about  land  near,  402. 
Arruntius,   L.,  imitator    of   Sallust, 

241,  396. 

Aryan  immigration,  I. 

A  tell  an  farces,  18. 

Atticism,  6  ;  in  oratory,  177,  190. 

Atticus,  Titus  Pomponius,  151,  161  ; 
annals  of,  203  ;  life  of,  by  Corne- 
lius Nepos,  205  ;  story  of,  in  Vale- 
rius Maximus,  457. 

Aufidius,  Cn.,  196. 

Augustan  age,  244  sqq. 

Augustin,  St.,  15, 

Aurelian  law,  149. 

Ausonius,  15. 

Babrius,  followed  by  Phxdrus,  386, 

387. 

Bacis,  prophecies  of,  4. 

Barrus,  T.  Betucius  of  Asculum,  136. 

Booksellers,  references  of  Horace 
and  Martial  to,  249. 

Brougham  compared  with  Cicero, 
141,  164. 

Brutulus  Papius,  407. 

Brutus,  L.Junius,  16;  Brutus,  M.  Ju- 
nius, an  orator  opposed  to  Cras- 
sus,  135  ;  Brutus,  M.  Junius,  the 
tyrannicide,  187,  191 ;  Cicero's  Di- 
alogue, 185. 

Bucolics  of  Vergil,  256;  of  T.  Cal- 
purnius  Siculus,  3S9-392. 


462 


IXDEX. 


liullatlus,  letter  to,  312. 

Ca'cilius  Statins,  53. 
Cajliiis,  I..  Antipatcr,  73,  79. 
Cxpio,  Q.  Servilius,  136. 
Caisar,  the  Elder,  tragedies  of,  43  ; 
sj)eeches,  137. 

^^';^^''.'  *-•  J"''"S  his  Latinitv,  186; 
Tacitus's  jud^ment  on,  186;  his 
"Commentaries,"  208  sqq.  ;  quo- 
tations from,  213,  217;  civil  war, 
216;  Alexandrine  war,  219;  ac- 
count of,  continued  by  Ilirtius, 
219;  Sallust's  report  of 'his  speech 
on  Catiline's  conspiracy,  240. 

Calendar  of  Cn.  Flavius,  70. 

Calidius,  M.,  187. 

Callimachus,  13. 

Calpurnius,  T.  Calpurnius   Siculus, 
3^9-393- 

Caivus,  C.  Licinius,   177,   1S8,   189, 

^  251. 

Canutins,  P.,  137. 

Carbo,  C,  contemporary  of  Tiberius 
Gracchus,  128. 

Carmen  Scecularc,  occasion  of,  319. 

Cassius  Ilemina,  wrote  annals  atter 
Cato,  78. 

Cassius  of  Parma,  republican  poet, 
,  250. 

Cassius  Severus,  447. 
Catilina,  Lucius  Sergius,  152. 
Catius,  297. 

Cato,  the  KIder,  4  ;   his  "  Origincs," 
75  ;  character,  77  ;  speech  %^x  the 
Rhodians,  78,  123,424  ;  specimens 
of  his  oratory  preserved  by  Fronto,  I 
123  ;  and(;ellins,  123  ;  manuals  of  ; 
agriculture.  269  ;  Livy  upon,  424.    i 
Catullus,  C.  Valerius,  106  ;  chronol-  i 
ogy  ot  his  poems,  107  ;  Kpithala-  ' 
nmun  to  Maliius,  109,  114;  Attis,  I 
109,   116,   118;   j)oems  to  Lesbia,  ! 
Ill  ;  treatment  of  contemporaries,  | 
112;    Septimius  and  Acme,   113;' 
Peleus  and  Thetis,  115;   favorite 
\vords  of  praise,  1 19, 
Catulus,  Q.  Lutatius,  196. 
Caudine  Forks,  Livy  on,  401,  402. 
Census  of  the  Roman  people,  198. 
Cestius,  447. 

Cethegus,  M.  Corneb"u<;,  122. 
Cicero,  4,  11  ;    his  pre-eminence  in 
Latin    prose,   140 ;    his    writings  : 


Pro  Murena,"i4o,  155;  *' In  Ca- 
tilmam,"  140;  "  Pro  Cxlio,"  140 
15S;  "i'i<>Milone,"i4o,  157,  ,6o- 
Piiilippics,  163,  178  ;  letters  to  At- 
ticus,  140,  179;  Letters  "ad  Fa- 
miliares,"  179  j  treatises  on  the 
Republic,  159,  174;  laws,  160,  174. 

"5'utus,;'  ,61,  175,  ,85;  a  "Con- 
solation,    161  ;  on  friend-shiji,  old 
age,  glory,  162  ;  Tusculan  dispu- 
tations    161,    172,    173;    "Nature 
ot  the  Gods,"  162,  168,  173;  "I)e 
Fato,"i62,  166;  "I)eOfficiis,"i62 
163,  173;  "Academics,"  165,  166- 
•'DeFinibus,"i7o,  172;  "Lxlius," 
^1}>>  175  ;  Panegyric  on  Cato.  i6r  • 
"Cato,"  173;  "J)e()ratore,"i75;' 
"De  Inventione,"  180  ;  parties  m 
the  age  ot  Cicero,  141  ;   his  rela- 
tions to  Caesar  and  Pompeius,  144  ; 
early    studies    and   compositions^ 
144  ;  translations  from  the  Greek, 
43«  82,   145  ;  first  speeches,   146  •' 
subsequent   travels    and    studies; 
his  wives,  Terentia  and  Publilia' 
147 ;  prosecution  of  Verres,  148-^ 
150  ;  defence  of  p'onteius  and  Ca:- 
cina,  150;  sui)porter  of  Manilian 
law,   151;   consulate,   152;   poem 
njion,  156;  defends  Antonius,  Mi- 
nucius     Thermus,    and     Valerius 
Flaccus,  156,  157;  banished.  157; 
restored,  157;  defends  P.  Se>tius, 
158;  Vatinius  and  Ciabinius,  159; 
defends    Sanfeius,    and    is    made 
governor  of  Cilicia.  160  ;  proposed 
travels   in   Greece,   162;   hostility 
ot    Antonius,    proscription,    163  • 
death,    163;    defence    of   Rosciiis 
and   Cluentius,  177;    Livy's  view 
ot,  425  ;    Cicero's   notices   of  Vn- 
nius,  26,  28,  -^i,  2>7 ;  of  Pacuvius, 
31  ;   of  the  elder  CcXsar's  trage- 
dies, 43  ;  of  I>Iautus,  46  ;  of  Liicili- 
ns,  64  :  of  the  Annales  Maximi,  69, 
72  ;  of  L.  Calpurnius  I'iso,  78  ;  of 
Lucretius,  85  ;  of  Appius  Caucus, 
122  ;  of  C.  Laclius,  125  ;  of  S.  Snl- 
picius  Galba,  127;  of  M.  ^Lmilius 
Lepidus  Porcina,  C.  Fanniiis,  and 
C.  Carbo,   12S;  of  Crassns,  133; 
of  Antonius,  134  ;  of  L.  .^lius  Sti- 
lo.   136;    C.  Aurelius  Cotta,   136, 
138;  P.  Sulpicius  Rufus,  137,  138; 


INDEX. 


463 


Mortcnsius,  138;  of  himself,  139; 
of  Cn.  Autidius,  196;  of  iSisenna, 

201. 

Cicero,  Quintus,  43,  155,  159. 

Cincinnatus,  L.  (Quintus,  72. 

Cinna,  his  "Smyrna,"  82,  109,  264; 
killed  by  mistake,  250,  251. 

Classical  character  of  Latin  litera- 
ture, 8. 

Claudian,  14. 

Claiidian  and  Flavian  period,  liter- 
ary opposition  of,  7,  9. 

Claudius.     See  Quadrigarius. 

Clodia,  mistress  of  Catullus,  no. 

Clodius,  155,  157. 

"Coma  Herenices,"  translated  by 
Catullus,  108. 

Comic  drama,  traditional,  5,  45. 

Commentarii  Pontiticum,  70. 

Constantine,  14. 

Coriolanus,  72. 

Cornelius,  A.  Cornelius  Cossus,  405. 

Cornelius,  A.Cornelius  Severus, 374. 

Cornelius  Nepos,  Lives  of  Cato  and 
Cicero,  203  ;  Lives  of  illustrious 
men,  204 ;   Life  of  Atticus,  205. 

Corona,  audience  in  the  law  courts, 
176. 

Cotta,  C.  Aurelius,  136;  Aurelian 
law  of,  149. 

Cotta  Messallinus,  371. 

Court,  standing,  for  the  trial  of  pro- 
vincial governors,  120;  district 
courts  held  in  Gaul,  210,  211. 

Crassus,  Publius,  studied  with  Scae- 
vola,  128;  "maturity"  of,  130 ; 
Cicero's  opinion  of,  133  ;  alterca- 
tion with  IWutus,  136. 

Culex,  ascribed  to  Vergil,  257  ;  me- 
tre of,  281,  11. 

Curio,  C,  130. 

Curio,  the  younger,  188. 

Curius,  M'.,  122. 

Curtius's  Pool,  16. 

Curule  aediles,  their  appointments, 
according  to  Livy,  404. 

Cyprian,  St.,  14. 

Decins,  debate  with  Fabius  in  Livy, 

409. 
Declamation,   becomes    fashionable 

as  political  oratory  decays,  249. 
Delphi,  16. 
Demetrius  Syrus,  146. 


Diodes  of  Peparethus,  followed  by 
Fabius  Pictor,  72. 

Diocletian,  14. 

Diodorus  of  Sicily,  426. 

Diodotus,  Cicero's  teacher,  144. 

Dionysius  of  ILilicarnassus,  426. 

Dionysius  of  ^Llgnesia,  146. 

Dirges,  4. 

Divina  Comcdia,  5,  ;;. 

Divinatio,  the  speech  opening  plead- 
ings, 150. 

Dogs,  British  and  Molossian  breeds, 

378. 
Drama,  earliest  Roman,  17. 
Druids,  described  by  Caesar,  2 16. 
Drusus,  M.  Livius,  132. 
Drusus,  brother   of  Tiberius,  poem 

on  the  death  of,  375-377.  393.  ''• 

Economic  changes,  after  Punic  wars, 
76  ;  referred  to  by  Lucretius,  lOi  ; 
by  Sal  lust,  240. 

Education,  11,  12. 

Elizabethan  literature,  280. 

En  nius,  not  a  native  of  Rome,  5  » 
"Annals,"  17,  22,  27,  30;  born  at 
Rudiae,  23  ;  on  dreams,  24 ;  his 
philosophy,  25  ;  translated  a  Sicil- 
ian cookery  book,  26  ;  the  model 
client  according  to,  26  ;  "  Medea," 
33»  35;  "Eumenides,"  "Ij)hige- 
nia,""Erechtheus,""Melanippa," 
36  ;  Satires,  62  ;  "  Protrepticon," 
63  ;  lines  of,  preserved  in  Vergil, 
279. 

Epicedion  Drusi,  375-377.  394.  «• 

Epicharmus,  5. 

Epicureanism,  Cicero's  attitude  tow- 
ards, 169,  171 ;  Vergil's,  256;  Hor- 
ace's, 293. 

Epitaphs  of  the  Scipios,  4. 

Etruscans,  not  Aryans,  2  ;  Etrurian 
insurgents,  manifesto  of,  231,  ;/. 

Euripides,  33. 

"Evil  songs,"  of  the  nature  of 
charms,  4. 

Exodia,  often  burlesques,  18. 

Fabian  us,  449,  w. 

Fabii,  family  records  of,  72,  73,  409. 

F\abius  ALiximus,  371,  419. 

Fabius  Pictor,  72;  wrote  in  Greek,  73. 

Fabius,  Q.  ^^milianus,  125. 

Fabricius,  122. 


464 


INDEX. 


Family  records,  historical  value  of, 

71  ;  history  of  the  Junii  and  Mar- 

celli  by  Atticus,  203. 
P'aniiius,  C,  his  histories,  79,  80  ;  his 

oratory,  128. 
Febris,  worsiiip  of,  3. 
Fenestella,  428. 
Fimbria,  C,  132,  133. 
Flacciis.     See  Horace  and  Verrius. 
Flavian  period,  malcontent  literature 

of,  7,  9. 
Floralia,  368. 

Florentine  literature,  6,  7. 
Fronto,  M.  Cornelius,  on   Cato,  75, 

123  ;    on   Claudius    ^uadrigarius, 

196;   Valerius   Antias,   196;    and 

Sisenna,  i()6,  201. 
Futius  and  Furl  us,  300. 
Fuscus,  Aristius,  Horace's  letter  to, 

317. 
Fuscus,  Q.  Arellius,  the  elder,  449, ;/. 


Galba,  Servius  Sulpicius,  126;  im- 
I)eached  by  Libo,  127 ;  C.  Galba, 
his  son,  132. 

Galliambics  of  Catullus,  108. 

Gallio,  second  rhetorician  of  Sene- 
ca's day,  4^5. 

Gallus,  Corneiius,  writer  of  elegiacs 
and  friend  of  Vergil,  252. 

Gaul,  literary  activity  in,  15. 

Gellius,  Aulus,  fragments  of  Ca:}cili- 
us  preserved  by,  53  ;  of  L.  Calpur- 
nuis  Piso,  78 ;  of  the  elder  Cato, 
123,  129  ;  opinion  of  C.  Ciracchus, 
130;  Quadrigariusciuf)tedbv,  196; 
on  Valerias  Antias,  199  ;  M.  Ver- 
rius Flaccus  controverted  by,  428. 

Gellius,  Cn.,  195,  426. 

Germans,  manners  and  customs  of, 
described  by  Caesar,  215,  216. 

Glabrio,  C.  Acilius,  74. 

Gracchus,  C.  Sempronius,  130  ;  imi- 
tated by  Cicero,  131,  ;/. 

Gracchus,  Tiberius,  studied  oratory 
under  Porcina,  128. 

Grammarians,  age  of,  8r. 

Gratius  Faliscus,  377,  378. 

Greek  colonists,  2  ;  influence  in  Ita- 
ly, 11  ;  literature,  7  ;  comedy,  imi- 
tation of,  19. 

Gregory,  St.,  15. 


Hanbalite  school,  14. 
Hendecasyllabics  of  Catullus,  108. 
Heneti,  or  Veneti,  395. 
Herennius,  treatise  on  rhetoric  ad- 
dressed to,  180 ;  probable  date  of, 
181  ;    Cicero    hinted    at    in,    181  ;' 
original  specimens  of  oratory  in! 
182-185. 
Hesiod,  13. 

Hirtius,  A.,  continuation  of  Caesar's 
Commentaries,  219,  220;  his  style, 
221  ;  history  continued  bv  an 'in- 
ferior hand,  222  ;  African  war,  222; 
Spanish  war,  223. 
Homer,  13  ;  state  of  society  repre- 
sented by,  3. 
Horace,  Quintus  Horatius  Flaccus, 
ir,  12  ;  on  Accius,  42  ;  parentage 
and    education,  283;    relation   to 
Octavian,    284,    293;     introduced 
to  Maecenas,  286;  compared  with 
Lucilius,  287,  288  ;  earliest  works, 
287  ;    satires,  289-292  ;    2d    book, 
294-299  ;  epodes,  300-305  ;  odes, 
305.  309,  Z^l'y  value  of  single  epi- 
thets    in,   304 ;    Grajcisms,   305  ; 
method  of  work,  307  ;  metres  of, 
289,  308,  322  ;   geography   of  the 
odes,   311  ;    on    friendship,    313; 
period  of  lyric  activity,  314  ;  first 
book  of  letters,  316,  317;  second 
book  of  letters  and  art  of  poetry, 
319-321. 
Horatii  and  Curiatii,  16. 
Hortensius,  Q.,  his  oratory,  137,  442; 
admirable  memory  of,  138  ;  aban- 
dons defence  of  \'erres,  149. 
Hostius,  60. 

Hunting,  treatise  on,  by  Gratius  Fa- 
liscus, 377. 
Hyginus,  32,  36,  428. 
Hynms,  4. 


IXDEX. 


465 


\ 


Hamerlon,  Mr.,  99,  n. 


Icilian  laws,  410. 

"  Imagines  "  of  Varro,  207. 

Isidore  of  Seville,  sentence  of  Scipio 

preserved  by,  126. 
Italian  literatiire  an  exotic,  5;  late 

development  of,  10. 
Italian  mythology,  its  poverty,  3. 
Italy  a  continental  country,  2. 

Jerome,  St.,  misdates   Lucilius,  63  ; 
copies  Suetonius  on  Lucretius,  85. 


Iniia,  the  younger,  Ovid  involved  in 

her  ruin',  369. 
lunii,  family  history  of,  by  Atticus, 

^69. 
Jupiter  Feretrius,  temple  of,  406. 

J  istin,  426. 

Laberius,  386. 

Liibienus,  T.,  399.  447- 

Lulewig  on  Latin  drama,  31. 

l-xlius,  C,  125. 

I  /ike  poets,  6. 

Litro.  M.  Porcius,  194,  434.  M^\ 
broke  down  when  plcacling  in 
court,  443  ;  method  with  his  pu- 
pils, 444. 

law  courts,  mixed  audience  in,  121. 

b.uvs,  Aurelian,  149  ;  Gabinian,  453  ; 
Icilian,  410;  Manilian,  151  ;  Oppi- 
an,  repeal  of,  423  ;  Publilian,  410  ; 
Varian,  134. 

Legis  actiones,  publication  of,  70. 

Library  of  the  Palatine,  327. 

Lil)ri  Lintei,  consulted  by  Licinius 
Macer,  406. 

Lihri  Pontiticales,  70. 

Licinius.     See  Calvus. 

Licinius.     See  Macer. 

Literature  of  Queen  Anne,  280. 

Livia,  consolation  addressed  to,  on 
the  death  of  Drusus,  375,  393,  //. 

Livy,  T.  Livius  Patavinus,on  Atellan 
farces,  18;  his  use  of  Q.  Claudius 
Quadrigarius,  197;  of  Valerius  An- 
tias, 198,  405  ;  on  C.  Licinius  Ma- 
cer, 202  ;  compared  to  Fenelon, 
246  ;  native  of  Patavium,  395  ; 
birth  and  literary  activity  of,  396  ; 
first  decade,  399,  400 ;  second  de- 
cade, 413  ;  third  clecadc,  420  ;  in- 
ternal history  of  Rome,  420,  423, 
434 

Loll  ins,  312;  Horace's  ode  to,  318; 
letter  to  the  younger,  315,  316. 

Lucan,  14. 

Lucilius,  6;  on  Accius,  43  ;  a  Cam- 
panian,  63 ;  his  satires,  63,  67 ;  lect- 
ured on  by  Archelaus  and  Philo- 
comus,  81. 

Lucretius,  T.  Cams,  "  De  Reriim 
Natura,"  84,  104,  105  ;  devotion 
to  Memmius,  86;  his  psychology, 
89;  on  transmigration,  91;  pas- 
sion for  suicide,  93  ;  a  polvtheist, 
I.— 20* 


96;  polemic  against  "religion," 
102  ;  his  versification,  106  ;  metri- 
cal peculiarities,  107. 

Luculhis,  L.  Licinius,  Greek  Me- 
moirs, II,  202. 

Luscius  Lavinius,  or  Lanuvinus,  55. 

Lutorius,  C.  Lutorius  Priscus,  374. 

Lycophron's  "Cassandra,"  334. 

Macaulay,  8,  16. 

Macedonian  wars,  422. 

Macer,  C.  Licinius,  198, ;/.,  201,  241, 
406. 

Macrobius,  174,  11. 

Maecenas,  his  influence  with  Octavi- 
an, 249  ;  intercourse  with  Horace, 
284 ;  poems  addressed  to,  291, 
294,  302,  311,  317. 

Maeiius,  Si>.,  72. 

Mamurra,  112. 

Manilius,  copied  Lucretius,  106;  his 
writings,  379-3^4- 

Marcelli,  fannly  history  of,  by  Atti- 
cus, 203. 

Marcellus,  M.  Claudius,  his  oratory, 
186. 

Marius,  143. 

Marsus,  374, 

Martial,  not  a  native  of  Rome,  5,  14  ; 
his  opinion  of  Sallust,  226  ;  of  Per- 
sius  and  Marsus,  374. 

Martianus  Ca))ella,  14. 

Mcfitis,  worship  of,  3. 

Memmius,  C,  speech  of,  135  ;  satir- 
ized by  Crassus,  135  ;  reported  by 
Sallust,  236. 
i  Memmius,  C.  Memmius  Gemellus, 
86 ;    takes    Catullus  to   Bithynia, 

"3- 

Menander,  12,  47,  56-58,  60,  61. 

Menippus  of  Stratoniceia,  146. 

Messalla,  M.  Valerius,  192-194;  imi- 
tates Maecenas  as  a  patron  of  let- 
ters, 250  ;  celebrated  by  Tibullus, 

324 
Metres,  of  T.  Livius  Andronicus,  20  ; 

of  the  Latin  chorus,  34  ;  of  Enni- 
us's  satires,  62  ;  of  Lucilius's  sat- 
ires, 64  ;  of  Catullus,  118;  of  Ver- 
gil's Culex,  281,  ;/.  ;  of  Horace, 
288,  308,  322  ;  of  Propertius,  329 ; 
of  Ovid,  341. 

Mimnermus,  13,  328. 

Montaigne,  246. 


466 


INDEX. 


Montanus,  Votienus,  450. 
Munatius  Plancus,  ode  to,  312. 
Murrhedius,  444. 

Naevius,  a  Campanlan,  20;  passage 

preserved  by  Cicero,  20. 
Nasidienus,  297. 
Nea;ra,  302. 
Nettlesliip,  Prof.,  no. 
Nicander,  13. 
Niebuhr,  i,  4. 

Nissen,  on  levy's  authorities,  197. 
Norbanus,  C,  133. 

Octavian,  as  a  tragedian,  43  ;  period 
of  his  supremacy,  246. 

Ofellus,  298. 

Oppian  law,  423. 

Oracles  at  Cuniae  and  Prxneste,  16. 

Oratory,  judicial  and  political,  5 ; 
development  of  Latin,  120;  de- 
cay of,  as  a  means  of  political  in- 
fluence, 248. 

Oscans,  perhaps  Sabellians,  17,  n. 

Ostrogoth  rule  in  Italy,  IS- 

Ovid,  13,  246,  328,  334  ;  'his  "  Me- 
dea," 334,  335 ;  letters  of  hero- 
ines, 335,  341  ;  style  and  metre 
of,  340  ;  "Art  of  Love,"  335,  341, 
345'  353  ;  "  Fasti,"  335,  354,  367, 
368;  "Tristia,"  335,  370;  letters 
from  Pontus,  335,  370,  371,  374; 
"Metamorphoses,"  354-367; 
•;  Ibis,"  370. 

Ovius  Paccius,  407. 

Pacuvius,  M.,  30 ;  his  "  Antiope," 
31,  40;  nephew  of  Ennius,  37;' 
praised  as  "learned,"  39;  his  j 
"Chryses."39:  "  Periboea,"  "Bac- 
chic," and  "  Dulorestes,"  40,  41  ; 
"  Armorum  Judicium,"  41  ;  "  Sat- 
ires," 63. 

Palilia,  368. 

Panaetius,  81. 

Papirii,  family  legends  of,  407. 

Papirius,  401. 

Paterculus.     vS"^^  Velleius. 

Pedo,  C.  Pedo  Albinovanus,  377. 

Persius,  320,  374. 

Phaedrus,  9  ;  Fables,  385-387  ;  Pro- 
logue to  the  "  Medea,"  388. 

Philippus,  L,  Marciiis,  contemporary 
of  Antonius  and  Crassus,  136. 


Philodemus,  used  by  Cicero,  173. 
"  Piety "  to  the  emperor,  idea  first 

met  with  in  Ovid,  372. 
Pindar,  309. 

Piso,  L.  Calpurnius,  annalist,  78. 
Plancus,  consulate  of,  300. 
Plautus,  45  ;  Varronian  plays  of,  46; 
"  Pseudolus,"  "Truculentus,"  46  \ 
follower  of  the  new  comedy,  47 ; 
"  Menxchmi,"     "  Stichus,"     48  • 
"Conmorientes,"  "  Persa,"  "Kn- 
dens,"  "Casina,"49;  "Aulularia," 
"Mostellaria,"  "Asinaria,"  "  Pa- 
nulus,"  50;  "Amphitruo,"  "Cur- 
culio,"  51;  "Captivi,"  "Trinum- 
mus,"  52. 
Pleiad,  6. 
Plinv,  112. 
[  Pollio,  C.  Asinius,  his  style,  182  ;  ca- 
I      reer  as  an  orator,  192,  193  ;  his  his- 
t<^''y.3i3'396. 
Pompcius,  Cn.   Pompeius    Magnus, 

his  relation  to  Cicero,  144. 
Pompeius  Grosphus,  312. 
Pompeius  Mela,  431. 
Pompeius,  Sextus,  371  :   patron   of 

Valerius  Maximus,  452. 
Pompeius,    Sex.    Pompeius    Festus, 
429 ;    fate   of  his   abridgment   of 
Verrius,  430. 
Pompeius  Trogus,  426. 
Pope,  8. 

Porchia,  M.  ^tmilius  Lcpidus,  128. 
Potitii,  tradition  concerning,  397. 
Prize  poems,  250. 
Prolixity,  6. 

Propertius,  Sex.  Aurelius,  12  ;  Ro- 
man Callimachus,  327  ;   work  on 
Roman  antiquities,  328  ;  his  me- 
tres. 330  ;  elegies,  329-333. 
Publilia,  Cicero's  second  wife,  147. 
Publilius,  laws  of,  410. 
Pullarius,  Livy's  story  of,  401. 
Punic  wars,  11  ;  Livy's  history  of, 
413-421. 

Quadrigarius,  Q.  Claudius,  196,  426. 

Quinctilian  on  Ennius,  22,  62  ;  on 
Varius's  "  Thyestes,"  37  ;  on  trag- 
edy under  the  empire,  44  ;  on  Cie- 
cilius,  53;  on  Caesar,  187;  on  M. 
Caelius  Rufus,  189  ;  on  Varro,  206; 
on  Sallust,  228;  on  Horace,  307  ; 
on   Ovid,  334  ;    on   A.  Cornelius 


INDEX, 


467 


Severus,  374  ;  o"  Livy's  moral  di- 
alo'^ues,  396  ;  on  Cassms  Severus, 


449 


iiictius,  Horace's  letter  to,  317. 


( )ai 


Racine,  9. 

Kasena.     SdC  Etruscans. 

Kictians,  2. 

Religion  of  Rome,  based  on  propiti- 
atory ceremonies,  265. 

Rhinthonian  tragedies,  18;  specimen 
of,  51  ;  Rhinthon,  64. 

Ribbeck,  32,  39. 

Kicsc,  no. 

Ritschl  on  Plautus,  45,  4^- 

Romantic  literature  opposed  to  clas- 
sical, 9. 

Rome  as  a  city,  6. 

i;onuilus  and  Remulus,  17. 

Roscius,  43. 

RiiUis,  M.  Caelius,  188,  189. 

Rufus,  P.  Rutilius,  196. 

Riifiis,  P.  Sulpicius,  the  orator,  137. 

Rufus,  P.  Sulpicius,  the  jurist,  193. 

Rullus,  land  commission  of,  opposed 
by  Cicero,  153. 


Sabellians,  n. 

Sabines,  described  by  Cato,  76. 
Sabinus,  works  ascribed  to,  written 
in  the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  cen-  ; 

tury,  335,  377-    .       ^  .  ...    I 

Sallust,  C.  Sallustius  Cnspus,  on  Si- 
senna,  200,  224  ;  his  birth,  govern-  i 
or  of  Xumidia,  225 ;  histories,  226 ; 
Jugurthanwar,  227  ;  conspiracy  of 
Catiline,  228-233  ;  beginning  of 
the  "Jugurtha,"  234;  speech  of 
Memmius,  236  ;  his  style,  241  ;  in- 
fluence on  later  writers,  241  ;  trea- 
son of  Bomilcar,  242,  243. 

Samnites  or  Saunites,  i  ;  Samnite 
war  in  Livy,  407,  408. 

Saturnian  metre,  20. 

Scaeva,  Horace's  letter  to,  316. 

Scaevola,  Pontifex  Maximus  P.  Mu- 
cius,  published  and  discontinued 
"Annales  Maximi,"  69.  128. 

Scaevola,  Q.  Mucius,  the  jurist,  136, 
144. 

Scaptius,  M.,  story  of,  in  Livy,  402. 

Scaurus,  Mam.  ^milius,  princeps 
senatus,  129;  three  books  on  his 
own  life,  195. 


Scaurus,  Mam.  ^milius,  orator  of 

the  early  empire,  447. 
Scipio  Africanus  Minor  (P. Cornelius 
yEmilianus),  history,  75  ;   quoted 
by  Isidore  of  Seville,  126 ;  men- 
tioned by  Cicero,  132. 
Scipio  Asiaticus  (L.  Cornelius),  424. 
Scipios,  their  epitaphs,  4. 
Senate,  forms  of  debate  in,  121. 
Seneca,  14  ;  on  Varro,  206  ;  passage 
of  Livy  preserved  by,  425  ;  "  Ten 
Lesser  Orators  "  of,  433,  450- 
Seneca  the  Younger,  on  Sallust,  227. 
Sextii,  speculative  movement  of,  431. 
Sibylline  books,  4,  327,  406. 
Sidonitis  Apollinaris,  15. 
Sisenna,  L.  Cornelius,  196,  200. 
Sister's  Beam,  16. 
Social  position  of  Greek  and  Latin 

writers,  n. 
Spanish  descent  of  Latin  writers,  14. 
Spanish  war,  history  of,  by  continu- 

ators  of  Hirtius,  223. 
Stilo,  L.  ^lius,  136. 
Stoicism,  attitude  of  Cicero  towards, 
169  ;   of  Vergil,  255  ;   of  Horace, 
293,  296. 
Strabo    on  Caesar's  Commentaries, 

211. 

Suetonius  on  Caesar's  oratory,  186, 

187. 
Sulla,  12,  143  ;  his  memoirs,  202. 
Syron,  Vergil's  teacher,  255,  260. 


Tacitus,  M.  Cornelius,  14  ;  his  opin- 
ion of  Crassus's  oratory,  136  ;  of 
Caesar's,  186  ;  of  Augustus,  445  ; 
of  Mamercus  Scaurus,  447  ;  of 
Cassius  Severus,  449;  influenced 
by  Sallust,  241  ;  seditious  litera- 
ture of  his  time,  373. 

Taminius  Geminus,  author  of  Popu- 
lar Annals,  109. 

Tennvson's  "  CEnone,"  n7. 

Terence,  his  "  Adelphi,"  49  ;  "  He- 
autontimoroumenos,"    *'  Hecyra," 

"  Andria,"  55,  56. 
I  Terentia,  Cicero's  first  wife,  147. 

Terentianus  Maurus,  quatrain  pre- 
served by,  20. 

Tertullian,  14. 

Theocritus,  13. 

Theodoric,  15. 

Tiberius  Coruncanius,  122. 


468 


INDEX. 


Tibullus  Albius,  12  ;  Elegies,  326; 
poem  on  the  Sibylline  books,  327. 

Tigellius,  293. 

•'Tity-Jus,"  VergiTs,  perhaps  virtual- 
ly a  metayer  tenant,  260. 

Tribuni  aerarii,  tunction  ot,  148,  ;/. 

Tubero,  Q.  ^Llius,  125,  202,  406. 

I'uditanns,  C  Seniproniiis,  antiqua- 
rian ttMidency  of,  79. 

Tuliia,  Cicero's  daughter,  161. 

Tullus  llostilius,  16. 

Turpio,  Anibivius,  53,  60. 

Urbanity,  6,  321. 

Valerii,  family  records  of,  72. 

Valerius.     See  Antias. 

Valerius  Maximu>,  426  ;  his  collec- 
tion of  memorable  words  and 
^  deeds,  452.  455-459- 

Valerius  Frobus,  200. 

Vargunteius  on  Ennius,  22,  Si. 

Varius,  law  of,  120,  134. 

Varius,  L.  Varius  KuVus,  his  "  I'hy- 
estes,"  251,  334. 

Varro,  M.  Terentius,  Plantus's  plays 
according  to,  45;  "  Didascalia," 
54;  voknninous  writings,  206, 207; 
manual  of  agriculture  by,  269. 

Varro,  Atacinus,  of  Atax,'25i. 

Veii,  siege  of.  41 1. 

Velieius,  M.Vclleius  Paterculus,45i ; 
enthusiasm  for  Tiberius,  453. 


Vennonius,  his  history,  195. 

Verres,  prosecution  of,  147,  150. 

\'errius,  M.  Verrius   Flaccus,  428 
his  etynu)logies,  429. 

\'ergil,  I'.  Vergilius  Maro,  8,  13,  2:^3 
his  mastery  of  the  hexameter,  254 
unworldliness,  254;  his  origin, 255 
"  Georgics,"   256,  264,  266,  269 
obscurity  of,  270  ;   archaisms  in 
270;   Bucolics  »)r  J]ch>gues,  2^6 
259-261,  263,  264;    poem    on"  . 
gnat,  257  ;  "  Catalecta,"  2^7,  258 
"Ciris,^'  258,  259  ;  "Alneid,"  259 
271,  273,  275,  276,  27S;  indemiii 
lied  foi   the  h^ss  of  his  farm,  260 
allusions  to  contemporary  writer> 
261  ;   "Pollio,"  262;    his  love  ot 
nature,  267  ;  metiuxl  of  work,  270 
"  piety  "  of  ylineas,  276. 

Vindelici,  ode  on  conquest   of,  309, 
//. 

\  itruvius,  430. 

Volcatius  on  Caecilius,  53. 

Volscian  campaigns  in  Livy,  404. 

Vorlander  on  Catullus,  107. 

\\'ailing  women,  4. 

War,  Roman  laws  of,  209,  238,  ;/. 

Webster,  9. 

Welcker,  32. 

Xenoclcs  of  Adrnmyttium,  146. 
Xcnophanes,  '$>i. 


^C-c 


M  T,-,*^-^  (,, 


END   OF    VOL.  I. 


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\4-  '• 


LATIN    LITERATURE 


Vol.  II. 


i. 


■■ 


A    HISTORY 


OF 


LATIN   LITERATURE 


FROM 


ENNIUS  TO  BOETHIUS 


BY 


GEORGE    AUGUSTUS     SIMCOX,    M.A. 

FELLOW  OF  queen's  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


IN  TWO  VOLUMES 
Vol.  II. 


NEW     YORK 

HARPER   &   BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN    SQUARE 

1883 


CONTENTS    OF    VOL.  II. 


;• 


!l 


PAGB 

Chronological  Table 

ix 

PART    IV.                                      \ 

THE    CLAUDIAN    PERIOD. 

CHAPTER   I. 

CHAPTER  n. 

SENECA. 

PAGE 

LUCAN   AND   HIS   SUCCESSORS. 

Literary  Position 

5 

The  Fashionable  Poet 

35 

Moral  Treatises . 

6 

The  "Pharsalia" 

37 

Letters  to  Lucilius 

13 

Statius 

49 

Natural  Questions 

16 

The  "Thebaic!" 

■    49 

'A7roKo\oKvvT(sjaig 

•     23 

The  "  Silvae  "     . 

.     56 

Plays  .... 

.     24 

The"Achilleid" 

•    57 

Lucilius  Junior   . 

.      28 

Silius  .... 

•    63 

Panegyric  on  Piso 

•    33 

Valerius  Flaccus 

.    67 

^f 


PART   V. 

ROMAN    SATIRE    FROM    NERO   TO    HADRIAN. 

CHAPTER   L  I  CHAPTER   IV. 

General  Aspects         ...     75    Partial 

CHAPTER   H. 


Persius 


80 


CHAPTER   HI. 
Petronius 87 


CHAPIER  V. 


Juvenal     . 
Sulpicia    . 


103 


.     118 
.     139 


391024 


Vi 


CONTENTS. 
PART  VI. 

PROSE    LITERATURE    FROM    VESPASIAN    TO    HADRIAN. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

Character  of  the  Period    . 
Pliny  the  Elder 

CHAPTER   n. 

Pliny  the  Younger    . 
Speeches  and  Official  Letters 
Private  Letters 

CHAPTER   HL 

Quinctiliaii 

CHAPTER   IV. 
Frontinus .... 


PAGE 


161 
162 


171 


176 


CHAPTER  V. 


Tacitus 


PAGB 

"  Dialogue  on  Oratory  "   . 

184 

"Agricola"       .... 

.        189 

"  Germania  "     . 

191 

The  "Histories"      . 

•        193 

The  "  Annals  " 

.       206 

Doubts  upon  their  Genuineness     216 

CHAPTER  VL 

Suetonius  .... 

.      220 

"  Lives  of  the  Caesars  "     . 

.      220 

Other  Works    . 

.      231 

CHAPTER   VH. 


Florus 


CHAPTER  VHL 

179    The  Jurists 


PART   VII. 

PRONTO   AND    HIS    SCHOOL. 
CHAPTER   L 


Fronto 


241 


CHAPTER   IL 

Apuleius  .... 

.     248 

"Apologia" 

.     249 

"  De  Deo  Socratis  " . 

.     252 

"  De  Dogmate  Platonis 
"  Metamorphoses  "   . 
"  Pervigilium  Veneris  " 


CHAPTER  in. 

Aulus  Gellius  . 


PART   VIII. 

THE    BARREN    PERIOD. 


CHAPTER   L 
Minucius  Felix 


272 


CHAPTER   n. 


Tertullian 


233 


236 


254 
254 
262 


264 


275 


4 


CHAPTER   in. 

St.  Cyprian 

CHAPTER  IV. 

MINOR    WRITERS. 

Julius  Solinus  . 


PAGE 

289 


Commodian 
Nemesianus 
Sammonicus 
Dionysius  Cato 


CHAPTER   V. 
296  !  Augustafi  Histories  . 


PART    IX. 


THE    REVIVAL    OF    THE    EMPIRE. 


CHAPTER  L 

Rhetoricians     ... 

Arnobius  .... 

Lactantius 

"  De  Opificio  Dei  "  . 

"  De  Iia  Dei  "  . 

"  Divine  Institutions  " 

"  De  Mortibus  Persecutorum  ' 

The  Panegyrists 

The  Elder  Mamertinus     . 

Eumenius 

Anonymous  to  Constantine 

Nazarius   .... 

Claudius  Mamertinus 

Drepanius  Pacatus  . 

CHAPTER   IL 

THE    HISTORIANS. 

Sextus  Aurelius  Victor     . 

Eutropius 

Ammianus  Marcellinus    . 

CHAPTER   in. 

POETS   OF  THE   REVIVAL. 

Optatianus 

Juveiicus  . 

Avienus    . 

Ausonius  . 

Prudentius 

"  Cathemerinon 

"  Hamartigenia  "  and  "  Apothe 


osis 


>> 


316 

323 
324 
324 

325 
328 

329 
330 

332 
333 
334 
334 


338 
339 


350 

351 

353 

353 
360 

360 
363 


j> 


"Against  Symmachus  " 
"  Psychomachia  " 
"  Peristephanon 
Claudian   . 
Numatian 
Merobaudis 
Avienus    . 


CHAPTER   IV. 

PAGAN    CULTURE. 

Firmicus  Maternus  {a) 

Firmicus  Maternus  {b) 

Julius  Obsequens 

Dictys  and  Dares 

Victorinus. 

Donatus    . 

Charisius  and  Diomedes 

Servius 

Symmachus 

Pra^textatus 

Macrobius 


Vll 

PAGE 
297 

298 

300 

302 


304 


364 
364 
366 

367 
376 
378 
381 


383 

384 

385 

385 
386 

387 
387 
388 

389 

393 
393 


CHAPTER   V. 

THE  FATHERS  OF  THE  PERIOD. 

St.  Hilary 395 

St.  Ambrose  ....  397 
St.  Jerome  ....  406 
Controversy  with  Rufinus  .  411 
Commentaries  ....  414 
Panegyrical  Letters  .  .  .416 
Historical  Works     .        .        .416 


m 


Vlll 


St.  Augustin 

Early  Writings 

"  Confessions  " 

"  De  Doctrina  Christiana  " 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

PAGE 

.       418 

Controversial  Works 

.       425 

•       419 

"  De  Trinitate  " 

.       426 

.       420 

Correspondence 

.       427 

"           .       425 

"City  of  God" 

.       428 

PART   X. 

LITERATURE    OF    THE    DECLINE. 


Paulinus    . 

436 

Vettius  Agorius 

.    442 

Sulpicius  Severus 

437 

Marius  Victor   . 

•     443 

Vincent  of  Lerins 

438 

Sedulius    .... 

.     443 

Cassian 

439 

Dracontius 

•    443 

Julian  of  Eclanum    . 

441 

Avitus       .... 

•     444 

Prosper     . 

■     441 

Sidonius  ApoUinaris 

•     445 

Fulgentius 

442 

Faustus  and  Mamertus  Clau- 

Marti  an  us  Capella 

442 

dianus   .... 

■    446 

St.  Leo 

442 

Salvian      .... 

448 

PART  XL 

LITERATURE   OF    ITALY    UNDER   THE   OSTROGOTHS. 
CHAPTER   L 


Boethius  .... 
Logical  and  Scientific  Work 
Consolations  of  Philosophy 

CHAPTER  IL 
Ennodius  .... 


Cassiodorus 
449    Gothic  History 
451    Chronicle. 
451    Commentaries  and  Treatises 

Letters 

Maximianus 

459 


INDEX 


460 
461 
462 
462 

464 
468 


469 


\ 


I 
6 


t 


'•• 


\ 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE. 


Death  of  Tiberius . 


Suicide  of  Silanus,  the 
father-in-law  of  Calig- 
ula. Caligula  marries 
LolliaPaulina,the  heir- 
ess of  M.  LoUius     .     . 

Caligula  visits  Gaul   .     . 


Caligula  invades  Britain. 


Caligula  is  killed  .     .     . 

Servius  Galba  ( after- 
wards emperor  )  in- 
vades the  Chatti.  Con- 
spiracy of  Annius  Vi- 
nicianusandM.Furius 
CaniillusScribonianiis, 
proconsul  of  Dalmatia. 


A.D. 

30 


34 
35 


37 


38 
39 

40 


41 
42 


m 


Claudius  invades  Britain.         43 

A* 


C.  Masurius  Sabinus,  the  founder  of 
the  Sabinian  school,  is  admitted  also 
to  the  equestrian  order.  C.  Cassius 
Longinus,  the  jurist,  is  consul. 

Birth  of  Persius. 

}  Birth  of  Quinctilian.  Cyclopaedia  of 
Celsus  (A.  Cornelius),  five  books  on 
agriculture,  eight  on  medicine,  still 
extant ;  six  on  rhetoric,  often  criti- 
cised by  Quinctilian,  six  on  philoso- 
phy, principally  an  outline  of  the 
views  of  different  schools.  He  also 
wrote  after  Corbulo's  campaign  one 
book  on  tactics.  Julius  Atticus 
writes  upon  the  culture  of  vines. 

Cn.  Domitius  Afer,  of  Nimes,  is  con- 
sul. 

Cn.  Lentulus  GaetuHcus,  a  poet  and  his- 
torian ( ?  historical  poet),  who  had 
commanded  for  ten  years  in  Upper 
Germany,  is  put  to  death. 

?  Lucan  brought  to  Rome.  Execution 
of  Julius  Graecinus,  the  father  of 
Agricola,  who  wrote  on  agriculture 
and  followed  Celsus.  Birth  of  Sta- 
tins.'' 

Exile  of  Seneca. 

Q.  Asconius  Pedianus  flourishes.  Most 
of  the  extant  scholia  on  Cicero  are  as- 
cribed to  him  ;  those  on  Pro  Miloue^ 
Pro  Sestio,  In  Vatiumm,  In  C.  Clo- 
dinm,  De  /Ere  Alieno  Milotiis,  Pro 
Pi-e  AlexandrinOy  Pro  Archia,  Pro 
Snilit,  In  Catilinam,  Pro  Mur^iia, 
Pro  Lii^ario^  Pro  Rege  Deiotaro,  Pro 
Sea nro  seem  to  be  more  or  less  genu- 
ine. Those  on  the  Verrine  orations 
hardly  prove  that  the  scholiast  had 
Asconius  before  him.  Death  of  the 
elder  Arria. 

Martial  born.  Q.  Curtius  Rufus  writes 
history  of  Alexander  the  Great  in  ten 


m 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XI 


Censorship  of  Claudius  . 


Domitius     Corbulo    in- 
vades the  Chauci    . 


Ostorius  Scapula  in  Brit- 
ain. Messalina  mar- 
ries Silius  and  is  put 
to  death 

Claudius  marries  Agrip- 
pina 

Foundation  of  Camalo- 

dunum 

Surrender  of  Caractacus. 

Death  of  Claudius     .     . 

Death  of  Britannicus,  his 

son 


Murder     of    Agrippina, 
mother  of  Nero  .    .    . 


The  war  of  Boadicea .     . 

Victories  of  Corbulo  in 

Armenia 


A.D. 


45 
46 


47 


48 


(( 


49 


50 
51 
53 
54 

55 
57 


58 
59 


61 


(( 


books,  of  which  the  two  first  are  lost. 
The  only  date  is  a  rhetorical  allusion 
to  the  accession  of  Claudius. 

Cn.  Domitius  Afer  passes  for  a  cele- 
brated orator.  Claudius  rebukes  the 
people  for  their  levity  during  the  per- 
formance of  the  tragedies  of  P.  Pom- 
ponius  Secundus. 

After  the  British  triumph  of  Claudius, 
Pomponius  Mela,  of  Tingentera,  in 
Spain,  writes  his  description  of  the 
world  (ed.  Parthey,  Berlin,  1867). 

Q.  Remmius  Palaemon  is  celebrated  as 
a  grammarian.  M.  Antonius  Li- 
beralis,  the  rhetorician,  is  his  rival. 
Crispus  Passienus,  the  orator,  and 
husband  of  Agrippina,  dies. 

Recall  of  Seneca  from  exile  ;  he  is  in- 
trusted with  the  education  of  Agrip- 
pina's  son,  adopted  by  Claudius. 


Q.  Ilaterius,  the  orator,  is  consul. 


Seneca  (L.  Annaeus)  is  consul. 

Death  of  Aufidius  Bassus,  the  author 
of  an  historical  work  which  was 
probably  carried  to  the  death  of 
Claudius.  It  was  continued  by  the 
elder  Pliny,  and  is  only  known  by 
chance  allusions  and  by  the  excerpt 
in  Seneca  on  the  death  of  Cicero, 
which  leave  it  uncertain  whether  it 
included  the  work  on  the  German 
wars,  for  which  he  is  oftenest  quoted. 

Exile  of  P.  Suillius,  a  celebrated  orator 
and  dec! aimer. 

Julius  Africanus  distinguishes  himself 
by  exhorting  Nero  to  bear  his  good 
fortune  with  courage.  Deaths  of 
Domitius  Afer  in  old  age,  after  he 
had  outlived  his  reputation,  and  M. 
Servilius  Nonianus,  who  had  almost 
an  equal  reputation  and  a  higher 
character.  He  wrote  a  history  of 
Augustus,  besides  his  orations  ;  both 
are  lost. 

The  bucolic  poems  of  Calpurnius  Sicu- 
lus'^belong  to  this  period  (on  the  last 
four  see  M.  Haupt,  Berlin,  1854,  and 


4> 


Banishment  of  Antistius 
for  scurrilous  verses  on 
Nero,  and  of  A.  Fabri- 
cius  Veiento  for  scur- 
rilous writings  and  for 
trafficking  in  offices     . 

Death  of  Burrus.  Octa- 
via,  the  wife  of  Nero, 
is  put  to  death.  Great 
earthquake    .     .     .     . 


A.D. 


62 


Ed.  C. 


Burning  of  Rome  .     . 

Conspiracy  of  Piso,  who 
is  compelled  to  kill 
himself 


(( 


63 


({ 


64 


65 


Conington,  Vergil,  vol.  i.). 
Glaser,  1842. 
Death  of  Persius.      The  best  MS.  of 
his  works  is  at  Montpellier  ;  it  is  of 
the  9th  or  loth  century,  and  a  copy 
of  one  made  at  Barcelona  402  a.d. 
Best  editions,  O.  Jahn,  Leipsic,  1843, 
Prof  Conington,  Clarendon    Press, 
1872. 
After  Seneca's  retreat  L.  Junius  Mod- 
eratus  Columella  wrote  twelve  books, 
still  extant,  on  agriculture,  and  the 
tenth,  on  gardening,  is  in  hexameters, 
being  meant  for  a  supplement  to  the 
Georgics ;  we  have  also  a  book  on 
arboriculture  which  belongs  to  the 
first  edition. 
L.  Lucilius  Junior  writes  on  yEtna ;  best 
edition,   H.  A.  Munro,   Cambridge, 
1869. 
Banishment   of  P.  Musonius  Rufus,  a 
Stoic    philosopher,   who    wrote    in 
Greek.     Seneca  is  compelled  to  kill 
himself      His    orations    (principally 
composed  in   the   name   of  Nero  ?) 
have   been   lost ;   so,  too,  the   early 
works  on  earthquakes  (quoted  Nat. 
Qiiccst.  VI.   iv.   2).      "  De   Lapidum 
Natura,"    "  De     Natura    Piscium,'* 
"  De  Situ  Indiae,"  "  De  Situ  et  Sacris 
iElgyptiorum"  (the  aunt  who  brought 
him   to  Rome   had   a   husband  who 
was  sixteen  years  governor  of  Egypt, 
and  no  doubt  supplied  the  materials 
for  the  works  on  Egypt  and  India), 
and  the  following  moral  works  :  Ex- 
hortationes,  "  De  Officiis,"  "  De  Im- 
matura  Morte,"  "  De   Superstitione 
Dialogus,"  "De  Matrimonio"  (which 
seems  from  the  fragments  and  allu- 
sions  to   have  been  piquant),  "  De 
Amicitia,"    "  Moralis    Philosophiae 
Libri,"  "  De  Remediis  Fortuitorum" 
(to  his  brother  Gallio),  "  De  Pauper- 
tale"  (uncertain),"  De  Misericordia,'* 
"  De  Vita  Patris;"  also  ten  books  at 
least  of  letters  to  his  brother  Gallio 
and  a  suppressed  panegyric  on  Mes- 
salina.    The  "Consolatio   ad  Mar- 
ciam  "  was  written  before  41.    In  his 
exile  he  wrote  some  of  his  tragedies. 
The  "  Consolatio  ad  Helviam  "  was 
written  a.d.  43,  the  "  Consolatio  ad 


4 


Xll 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


Xlll 


A.D. 


Polybium  "  A.D.  44.  The  "  De  Tran- 
quillitate  Aiiimi,"  "  De  Ira,"  "  De 
Brevitate  Vitae  "  were  published  be- 
tween A.D.  49  and  54.  The  Attoko- 
\oK\)VTio(5i^  was  pubh'shed  anony- 
mously just  after  Claudius's  death. 
"  De  Clementia,"  "  De  Constantia 
Sapientis,"  "De  Vita  Beata,"  "  De 
Beneliciis,"  date  between  54  and  62. 
"De  Providentia,"  "  De  Otio  Sa- 
pientis," and  the  seven  books  "  Na- 
turalium  Quaestionum  "  were  written 
after  his  retreat  in  a.d.  62 ;  so,  too, 
were  the  bulk  of  the  letters  to  Lu- 
cilius,  though  the  series  was  begun 
as  far  back  as  A.D.  57.  We  have 
twenty  books  ;  the  twenty-second  is 
quoted.  The  later  tragedies  may  be 
thought  to  date  from  62,  since  Seneca 
was  accused  of  writing  in  rivalry  with 
Nero.  The  titles  of  the  tragedies 
are  Hercules  Furens,  Thyestes,  Phae- 
dra, Q^dipus,  Troades,  Hecuba,  Me- 
dea, Agamenmon,  Hercules  Qitaeus, 
362  lines  of  an  Qidipus  Coloneus, 
and  302  of  a  Phcenissas,  run  together 
in  the  MSS.  under  the  latter  title. 
The  oldest  and  best  MS.  (at  Milan, 
saec.  ix.)  of  the  philosophical  works 
contains  all  but  the  "  De  Beneficiis," 
"  De  Clementia,"  "  Naturales  Quaes- 
tiones,"  and  the  letters  to  Lucilius. 
The  best  edition  is  by  Haase,  Leip- 
sic,  1869.  Lucan  (M.  Annxus  Lu- 
canus)  is  also  compelled  to  kill  him- 
self. Besides  the  ten  books  of  the 
Pharsalia,  of  which  the  first  three  were 
published  while  Nero  was  still  re- 
spectable, he  wrote  ( ?  in  Greek)  "  Ilia- 
con,"  "  Catachthonion  "  (the  pure 
Latin  titles  would  have  been  "  Troi- 
corum,"  "  Inferorum  "),  ten  books 
of  "Silvae,"  or  miscellanies,  fourteen 
"Salticae  Fabulae,"  one  tragedy,  the 
Medea.  In  prose  he  wrote  a  speech 
for  and  against  Octavius  Sagitta, 
"  De  Incendio  Urbis,"  and  a  book, 
"  Epistolarum  ex  Campania,"  which 
probably  dates  from  the  time  when 
ne  was  forbidden  to  declaim  at  Rome. 
Everything  has  been  completely  lost 
but  the  "Pharsalia,"  the  oldest  MS. 
of  which  is  a  few  palimpsest  leaves 


Condemnation  and  death 
of  Barea  Soranus,  and 
Pxtus  Thrasea  .     .     . 


A.D. 


NerovisitsGreece.  Recall 
and  enforced  suicide  of 
the  brothers  Scriboni- 
iis,  who  commanded  in 
Germany,  and  of  Cor- 
bulo,  who  commanded 
in  Syria.  Vespasian's 
campaign  in  Galilee    . 

Nero  returns  to  Rome. 
Vindex  rises  in  the 
name  of  Galba  ;  his 
troops  come  into  col- 
lision with  those  of 
Verginius  Rufus,  the 
newcommander  in  Ger- 
many. Galba  rises,  and 
Verginius  Rufus  de- 
clares against  Nero. 
Nero  kills  himself  .     . 

Galba  assumes  the  consu- 
late. Jan.  T,  Vitellius 
is  proclaimed  in  Ger- 
many ;  Galba  adopts 
Piso.  Jan.  15,  Otho  is 
proclaimed  emperor  by 
the  Praetorian  Guard ; 
Galba  and  Piso  are 
killed.  April  15,  Otho 
kills  himself.  Vespa- 
sian is  proclaimed  July 
I  at  Alexandria,  3  in 
Palestine,  15  in  Syria. 
Towards  the  end  of 
October  Antonius  Pri- 
mus defeats  the  army 
of  Vitellius.  In  De- 
cember the  Capitol  is 
burned.  Vitellius  is 
killed,  Dec.  21     .     .     . 


66 


67 

68 


69 


of  the  ninth  century  at  Milan  ;  the 
next  are  two  of  Voss's,  which  repre- 
sent a  Constantinopolitan  recension 
of  A.D.  6.74.  In  the  latter  books  they 
omit  many  lines,  probably  interpo- 
lated.     Best   edition,  Weber,  182 1- 

1832. 

Death  of  T.  Petronius  Arbiter,  gener- 
ally regarded  as  the  author  of  the 
"  Satyricon."  The  work  as  a  whole 
was  lost  before  the  seventh  century  ; 
our  late  MSS.  are  all  based  upon 
one  collection  of  excerpts ;  the  best 
edition  is  by  Biichler,  1854. 


Galerius  Trachalus,  the  orator,  and  C. 
Silius  Italicus  are  consuls. 


Quinctilian  is  established  as  a  teacher 
of  rhetoric  at  Rome  by  Galba.  Al- 
tercation of  Helvidius  Priscus  with 
Eprius  Marcellus.  Caslius  Sabinus, 
the  jurisconsult,  is  consul.  Serranus, 
an  epic  writer  praised  by  Quinctilian 
for  his  genuine  though  immature  tal- 
ent, seems  to  belong  to  this  period. 


XIV 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE, 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XV 


Capture     of    Jerusalem 
early  in  September 


Consecration  of  the  Tem- 
ple of  Peace  .     .     .     . 


Julius  Agricola  is  consul 


Julius  Agricola  in  Britain 

Death  of  Vespasian,  June 

23.    Great  eruption  of 

Pompeii,  Aug.  24    . 


A.D. 


70 


75 


77 


7S 
79 


Salaries  fixed  for  rhetoricians  and 
philosophers.  Ilelvidius  Priscus  is 
praetor,  and  is  exiled  and  put  to 
death  for  his  turbulent  indepen- 
dence ;  Julius  Frontinus  is  praetor. 

Alleged  date  of  the  Dialogue  on  Ora- 
tory. The  philosophers  are  banished. 
Cluvius  Rufus  is  consul  ;  praised  by 
Helvidius  Priscus  (Tac.  Hist.  iv.  43) 
as  a  rich  and  eloquent  man,  who  did 
not  rise  by  accusations.  He  wrote  a 
history  which  was  one  of  Plutarch's 
chief  authorities  for  Galba  and  Otho. 

Sex  Julius  Gabinianus  has  an  immense 
rhetorical  reputation  in  Gaul.  Tacitus 
says  every  schoolman  preters  him- 
self to  Cicero,  and  has  the  modesty 
to  put  himself  after  Gabinianus. 

?  Quaistorship  of  Tacitus. 


Death  of  Pliny  (C.  Plinius  Secundus) 
during  the  eruption  of  Vesuvius.  He 
wrote  "  De  Jaculatione  Equestri,"  3 
books  on  the  life  of  Pomponius  Se- 
cjndus,  15  of  the  "  Wars  of  Ger- 
many," 3  books  in  6  volumes  called 
**  Studiosi,"  8  on  doubtful  points  of 
language,  31  of  histories  "A  Fine 
Aufidii  Bassi,"  which  were  the  prin- 
cipal source  of  the  Histories  of  Taci- 
tus, as  the  "  German  Wars  "  were  of 
his  "Germany."  All  have  been  lost, 
including  the  160  volumes  of  select 
notes,  which  no  doubt  were  largely 
embodied  in  the  37  books  of  "  Natu- 
ral History,"  which  we  still  have. 
The  best  MS.  is  the  Bamberg  of  the 
tenth  century,  which  contains  books 
xxxii.-xxxvii. ;  the  next  are  Lipsius's 
Leyden  MS.  of  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury, and  Paris  1795  of  the  tenth  or 
eleventh  century.  Best  editions, 
Sillig  and  Schraeder,  Gotha,  1851^ 
1853  ;  D.  Detlefsen,  Berlin,  1863- 
1 868.  .''  Death  of  Caesius  Bassus, 
the  lyric  poet  and  friend  of  Persius, 
who,  according  to  the  scholia  on  Per- 
sius, died,  like  Pliny,  in  the  eruption 
of  Vesuvius  (till  lately  he  was  al- 
ways identified  with  Saleius  Bassus, 
whom   Quinctilian    mentions   as   an 


Death  of  Titus,  Sept.  13 


Agricolabeyond  the  Forth 

Council  of  the  Turbot     . 

Battle  on  the  Gram- 
pians ( .'* ).  Domitian's 
campaign  in  Hesse 

Domitian  invades  Dacia . 


Defeat  and  death  of  Cor 
nelius  Fuscus     .     .     , 


False  Nero  .     .     .     . 
Pacification  of  Dacia 


Cornelia,  the  senior  ves- 
tal, is  buried  alive  .     . 


L.  Antonius  Saturninus, 
the  commander  of  Up- 
per Germany,  rebels, 
and  is  put  to  death. 
Agricola  dies      .     .     . 


Acilius  Glabrio  and  Fla- 
vins Clemens,  the  cous- 
in of  Domitian,  are  put 
to  death     

Domitian  is  assassinated. 


Sept.  2'^ 


A.D. 


81 


82 

83 


84 

86 


87 
88 

89 
90 


91 

92 
93 

(C 


95 
96 


epic  poet)  ;  a  mutilated  work  on 
metre  is  generally  ascribed  to  him. 
?  Death  of  Statius's  father,  who  wrote 
upon  the  burning  of  the  Capitol,  and 
did  not  live  to  write,  as  he  had  in- 
tended, upon  the  great  eruption  of 
Vesuvius. 

Martial  receives  a  piece  of  land  near 
Nomentum. 

Paris,  the  actor,  is  put  to  death. 
Institutes  the  Agon  Capitolinus,  a  com. 

petition  in  music  and  poetry,  to  be 

held  every  five  years. 


Secular  games  of  Domitian ;  Tacitus 
is  praetor. 

Death  of  Valerius  Flaccus  (C.Valerius 
Flaccus  Balbus  Setinus);  Quinctilian 
speaks  of  him  as  a  great  and  recent 
loss.  Oldest  MS,,  Vatican,  3277, 
saec.  ix.,  ed.  G.  Thilo,  Halle,  1863. 

Turnus,  the  satiric  poet,  is  influential 
under  Titus  and  Domitian.  Scsevius 
Mcmor,  the  tragic  poet,  belongs  to 
this  period. 

Quinctilian  begins  his  "  Institutions  ;" 
receives  the  consular  ornaments. 

Quinctilian  finishes  the  "Institutions" 
(MS.  Ambrosian,  saec.  xi. ;  Bern,  saec 
ix.,  ed.  C.  Halm,  Leipsic,  1868).  Tu- 
tilius  and  Verginius  Rufus  also  wrote 
on  rhetoric.  Philosophers  are  ban- 
ished from  Rome.  ?  Satire  of  Sul- 
picia.  ?  Death  of  Curiatius  Mater- 
nus  ;  a  Maternus  was  put  to  death 
under  Domitian  for  denouncing  ty- 
rants in  a  literary  exercise.  Besides 
a  tragedy  against  Vatinius,  written 
under  Nero  or  bearing  his  name,  he 
wrote  a  Medea,  a  Domitius,  a  Cato, 
and  a  Thyestes  before  A.D.  75.  Junius 
Rusticus  Arulenus  is  put  to  death 
for  too  laudatory  lives  of  Thrasea 
and  Helvidius  Priscus. 

Statins  dedicates  the  fourth  book  of  his 
Silvae  to  Victorinus  Marcellus. 

Last  consulate  and  death  of  Verginius 
Rufus,  who  played  at  poetry  after  de- 
featint^  Vindex.  Consulate  of  Tacitus. 


XVI 


ClIROiXOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XVI I 


Nerva  adopts  Trajan  in 

October 

Nerva  dies,  Jan.  25     .     . 


A.D. 


Prosecution  of  Marius    . 

First  campaign  of  Trajan 
in  Dacia 


Before  this  date  Mucianus 
(M.  Licinius  Crassus), 
who  raised  Vespasian 
to  the  empire,  publish- 
es a  collection  of  mis- 
cellaneous information 
which  Tacitus  quotes 
for  old  speeches,  Pliny 
for  odd  facts  in  natural 
history.  The  rhetori- 
cal collection  included 
II  books  of  speeches 
and  3  of  letters  .     .     . 


97 
98 


100 


lOI 


102  ? 


The  Silvae  contain  pieces  written 
from  A.D.  80  {e.g.  V.  iii.)  to  96  (the 
fifth  book  is  probably  posthumous). 
It  is  uncertain  whether  the  twelve 
years  which  the  Thebaid  occupied 
are  to  be  dated  from  80  or  84 ;  the 
former  is  more  probable,  as  the 
change  of  manner  in  the  Achilleid, 
which  is  still  dedicated  to  Domitian, 
seems  to  prove  a  certain  interval  be- 
tween the  two.  The  best  MS.  (of 
some  70)  of  the  Thebaid  is  Paris, 
8051,  saec.  X.  ;  all  the  MSS.  of  the 
Silvae  are  copied  from  one  that  Pog- 
gio  brought  from  France  to  Italy,  now 
lost.  The  best  edition  of  the  whole 
work  is  by  G.  Queck,  Leipsic,  1857. 


Pompeius  Planta  is  prefect  of  Egypt ; 
he  subsequently  wrote  a  history  of 
the  civil  wars  which  followed  the 
death  of  Nero,  though  he  had  the 
Histories  of  Tacitus  before  him. 

Consulate  of  Pliny  the  Younger ;  his 
panegyric  on  Trajan.  Speeches  of 
Tacitus  and  Pliny  against  Marius. 

L.  Arruntius  Stella,  the  friend  and  pa- 
tron of  Martial,  and  author  of  a  poem 
on  the  war  of  the  giants,  is  consul. 
Death  of  Silius  at  the  age  of  75. 
The  MSS.  of  the  Punica  are  all  15th- 
century  copies  of  a  St.  Gall  arche- 
type. Ed.  Weber,  Corpus  Poetarum, 
1839. 

Martial  (M.  Valerius  Martialis)  dies  in 
Spain.  The  *'  Liber  Spectaculorum," 
which  perhaps  is  not  all  Martial's, 
dates  from  the  first  year  of  Domitian; 
xiii.  and  xiv.  seem  to  have  been  pub- 
lished between  a.d.  88  and  93.  The 
remaining  books  were  arranged  in 
chronological  order  :  i,,  ii.  are  writ- 
ten between  82  and  87,  iii.  must  have 
been  written  just  after,  iv.  dates  from 
88  and  89,  v.  from  90,  vi.  from  90  and 
9i,vii.and  viii.from  92  to93,ix.,x.,xi. 
from  94  to  96,  X.  and  xi.  were  partially 
re-edited  under  Nerva  in  97,  xii.  was 
issued  in  loi,  and  perhaps  contains 
early  poems,  l^est  MS.,  Thuaneus, 
saec.  X.  Ed.  Schneidewinn,  1842. 
Second  ed.,  Teubner,  Leipsic,  1853. 


First  triumph  over  Dacia. 


i 


? 


Dacia   is    reduced    to    a 
province    


Pliny  in  Bithynia 


A.D. 

103 


104  ? 


105 
108 

109 


III 


112 


Trajan  at  Athens  .     .     . 

Earthquake  at  Antioch. 
Invasion  of  Armenia 
to  oust  the  Parthian 
candidate 

Conquest  of  Ctesiphon  . 

Jewish  rising.  Death  of 
Trajan  early  in  Au- 
gust   


114 
115 


116 


^}1 


Vestricius  Spurinna  at  the  age  of  77  is 
still  alive,  and  edifies  Pliny  by  the 
elegant  routine  of  his  life  and  by  his 
ingenuity  as  a  versifier. 

Pliny  succeeds  Frontinus  as  augur. 
Frontinus,  ed.  "  Gromatics  "  in  Lach- 
mann,  "  Die  Schriften  der  Komisch. 
Feldmesser  ;"  *'  Strategematica," 
Oudendorp,  Leyden,  1779;  "  De 
Cura  Aquarum,''  Fr.  Buchelcr,  Leip- 
sic, 1858. 


Death  of  M.  Regulus,  the  orator. 

Fabius  Rusticus  still  alive,  whom  Tac- 
itus (Agr.  10)  describes  as  the  most 
eloquent  of  recent  writers.  His  his- 
tory is  quoted  twice  as  favoring  Sen- 
eca. 

Javolenus  Priscus,  the  jurisconsult,  Ne- 
ratius  Priscus,  Urseius  Ferox,  Juven- 
tius  Celsus,  Titius  Aristo  are  cele- 
brated. 

Of  letters  to  Trajan  15  (or  i6)-i2i  date 
from  the  command  in  Bithynia,  Sept. 
Ill  to  Jan.  113.  Nothing  later  is 
known  of  him  ;  his  speeches  were 
mostly  delivered  under  Domitian, 
though  the  accusations  of  Marius, 
100,  Csecilius  Maximus,  loi,  and  the 
defence  of  Julius  Bassus,  105,  and 
Varenus  Rufus,  106,  fall  under  Tra- 
jan. He  seems  to  have  begun  the 
collection  of  his  letters  in  97,  and 
kept  more  closely  to  chronological 
order  than  he  cared  to  confess.  The 
1st  book  contains  letters  from  A.D. 
96  and  97;  the  2d  from  97  to  100;  3d, 
from  100 ;  4th,  from  104 ;  5th  was 
pul:)lished  106  ;  the  6th  contains  let- 
ters from  106 ;  7th,  from  107  ? ;  8th 
and  9th,  from  107  to  109.  Best  MS. 
Medicean,  sa^c.  x. ;  ed.  G.  H.  Schse- 
fer,  1868. 

Hyginus,  Balbus,  and  Siculus  Flaccus 
wrote  under  Trajan  on  land  survey- 
ing. 


XVlll 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


Hadrian  in  Britain 


Hadrian  in  Athens    .    . 


Hadrian  in  Alexandria  . 

Revolt  of  Barcochba  .     . 
Adoption  of  T.  Antoni- 
nus    

Death  of  Hadrian,  July  . 


A.D. 

119 


119 


125 


131 


?  132 


Terentius  Scaurus  is  celebrated  as  a 
grammarian.  We  have  probably  a 
little  treatise  of  his  on  orthography, 
pp.  2249-2264,  Putschke.  He  also 
wrote  commentaries  on  Plautus  and 
Vergil,  if  not  upon  Lucan.  The  51 
declamations  of  Calpurnius,  perhaps, 
belong  to  this  period. 

}  Death  of  Tacitus.  The  Dialogue 
written  early  under  Domitian  rests 
upon  a  13th-century  copy  of  a  Fulda 
MS. of  the  8th  or  9th  century,  brought 
to  Italy  1457,  whence  all  extant  MSS. 
are  cojiicd.  The  Agricola,  written  in 
A.D.  98,  depends  upon  two  Vatican 
MSS, ;  theGermania,written  between 
93  and  100  (the  second  and  third  con- 
sulate of  Trajan),  rests  on  the  same 
MS.  as  the  Dialogue.  The  Histo- 
ries were  still  unfinished  in  106  or 
107,  when  Pliny  sent  him  materials, 
and  perhaps  the  books  were  sepa- 
rately published.  The  text  rests  on 
the  Medicean  MS.(sasc.  xi.)  of  Monte 
Cassino,  which  contains  the  last  seven 
books  of  the  Annals  and  what  is  left 
of  the  Histories.  The  Annals  were 
published,  apparently,  between  115 
and  117,  as  the  writer  refers  to  the 
frontier  established  by  Trajan's  con- 
quests. The  text  of  the  first  part  of 
the  Annals  rests  upon  an  eleventh- 
century  copy  made  at  Corbey  of  a 
ninth-century  MS.  at  Fulda,  which 
last  is  sometimes  regarded  as  the 
archetype  of  the  Monte  Cassino  MS. 
It  came  to  Florence  1508.  Ed.  Rit- 
ter,  Cambridge,  1848  ;  Leipsic,  1864  ; 
Orelli,  Zurich,  1859. 

?  Death  of  Juvenal.  Ed.  Mayer,  Cam- 
bridge, and  Jahn,  text  and  scholia, 
Berlin,  1851. 

Edictum  Perpetuum  drawn  up  by  Juli- 
an us. 

Sex.  Pomponius,  the  jurist,  is  praetor. 


M.  Vindius  Verus,  a  disciple  of  Julianus, 
is  consul.  Sex.  Caecilius,  a  correspond- 
ent of  Julianus,  belongs  to  the  same 
period ;  so,  too,  Terentius  Clemens, 
Veruleius  Saturninus,  and  L.  Volusi- 
us  Maecianus,  teacher  of  M,  Aurelius. 


'^ 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XIX 


Death  of  Faustina,  wife 
of  Antoninus      .     •    . 


A.D. 

140 
141 


146 

150 
?  160 


Panegyric   a^  Fronto    on   the    British 

achievements  of  Antoninus. 
Granius   Licinianus,  an  annalist,  who 
seems  to  have  written  40  books,  go- 
ing down  to  the  death  of  Caesar,  is 
assigned  to  the  Antonine  period  on 
account  of  his  mentioning  the  com- 
pletion   of  the    Temple    of  Jupiter 
Olympius  at  Athens  under  Hadrian, 
the  preoccupation  with  Sallust,  and 
the  archaic  spelling.     We  have  frag- 
ments of  books   xxvi.,   xxviii.,  and 
xxxvi.,  from  an  Egyptian  MS.  of  a 
Syriac   version    of  St.   Chrysostom, 
written   over   a   Latin   gratiimarian, 
written  over  Licinianus.     The  latest 
edition  is  by  seven  Bonn  philologers, 
Leipsic,  Teubner,  1858, 
Sex.  Erucius  Cassius,  wdiom  Pliny  rec- 
ommended to  the  quaestorship,  who 
is  praised  for  learning  by  A.  Gellius, 
is  consul. 
Proconsulate  of  Claudius  Maximus,  to 
whom  Apuleius   addresses   his   de- 
fence on  a  charge  of  magic. 
Birth  of  Tertullian.     Death  of  C.  Sue- 
tonius Tranquillus  ;  he  was  recom- 
mended for  a  tribunate  by  Pliny  the 
Younger  about  a.d.  100;   asked  to 
publish,  A.D.  105  ;   received  the  jus 
trium  liberorum,  A.D.  112;  was  ap- 
parently removed  from  office  about 
121  in  company  with  Septicius  Cla- 
rus,  to  whom  the  Lives  of  the  Cae- 
sars, in  eight  books,  Galba,  Otho,  and 
Vitellius,  and  the  three  Flavian  em- 
perors, making  one  book  each,  are 
dedicated.     His  work  "  De  Viris  II- 
lustribus"  does  not   seem   to  have 
been  carried  below  Domitian.     Be- 
sides the   works   mentioned   in    the 
text,  he  wrote  a  Guide  to  Officials 
(De  Institutione  Officiorum)  and  De 
Regibus,  which  treated  of  the  most 
celebrated  monarchs  of  each  conti- 
nent, beginning  with  the  deities,  who 
were  treated  on  Euhemerist  princi- 
ples.    All  the  remains  of  Suetonius, 
except  the  Lives  of  the  Caesars,  have 
been  edited  by  Reifferscheid,  Leip- 
sic, i860;   the   Caesars,  C.  L.  Roth, 
Leipsic.     Best  MS.  of  the  Lives  of 
the  Caesars,  Paris,  1 1 15.    Julius  [An- 


XX 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE, 


XXI 


A.D. 


Death  of  T.  Antoninus   .       i6i 


Victories  of  Avidius  Cas- 
sius.  Capture  of  the 
Parthian  capitals    .     . 


Triumph  of  M.  Aurelius 
and  Verus  over  Par- 
thia.    Great  pestilence 

Death  of  Verus      .     .     . 


Victory  over  the  Quadi  . 

Revolt  of  Avidius  Cassi- 
us  suppressed  by  a  mu- 
tiny of  his  own  troops. 
Death  of  Faustina  .     . 

Death  of  M.  Aurelius, 
March  17 


Perennis,  the  praetorian 
prefect,  is  sacrificed     . 

L.  vSeptimius  Severus 
married  Julia  Domna. 


162 

(( 
165 


166 
168 
169 


174 

175 

180 

185 
186 


nius  ?]  Florus  seems  to  belong  to  the 
same  period  as  Suetonius.  Best  MS., 
Bamberg,  saec.  ix.  Ed.  C.  Halm, 
Leipsic,  1850.  Justin,  who  excerpted 
Pompeius  Trogus,  is  assigned  to  this 
period  ;  also  L.  Ampelius,  who  used 
Florus,  and  dedicated  his  work  (a 
Liber  Memorialis,  in  fifty  chapters, 
mentioning  two  events  later  than 
Trajan)  to  a  certain  Maximus,  who 
may  have  been  the  emperor  killed 
218,  at  the  age  of  54.  If  so,  the 
work  cannot  be  earlier  than  175. 

Institutes  of  Gains  :  only  MS.  Vienna 
palimpsest;  Ulpius  INIarcellus,  an- 
other jurisconsult,  flourished  under 
M.  Aurelius. 

Q.  Junius  Rusticus,  a  Stoic  philosopher 
and  teacher  of  M.  Aurelius,  is  consul 
a  second  time. 

.''  Death  of  Aulus  Gellius.  The  date 
of  his  work  can  only  be  detected  by 
the  fact  that  he  speaks  of  Erucius 
(Cons.  A.D.  146),  and  does  not  quote 
Froiito's  writings, which  were  still  un- 
published. The  MSS.  contain  either 
the  first  seven  or  last  twelve  books. 
Of  the  eighth  book  we  have  only  the 
headings  of  the  chapters.  The  best 
edition  is  by  the  Gronovii,  Leyden, 
1706. 


Death  of  Fronto.  The  greater  part 
of  the  letters  to  M.  Aurelius  as  Cae- 
sar date  between  139  and  143.  Ed. 
Naber,  Leipsic,  1867. 


Q.  Cervidius  Scaevola,  the  tutor  of  Pa- 
pinianus  Paulus  and  Tryphonianus, 
is  consul. 


?  M.  Minucius  Felix  writes  his  Octavi- 
us,  using  the  Apology  of  Athenago- 
ras,  written  A.D.  177.     Ed.  C.  Halm, 

Vienna,  1867. 


•rm 


*.» 


Cleander  is  put  to  death 
Commodus        strangled, 

Dec.  31      .... 
Pertinax  is  killed  in  a  mu 
tiny,  March  28  ;  Didi 
us  Julianus  purchases 
the   empire.      Clodius 
Albinus  is  proclaimed 
in   Britain,  Pescennius 
Niger   in    Syria,    Sep- 
timius  Severus  in  Pan- 
nonia 


Death  of  Niger . 


Surrender  of  Byzantium, 
which  held  out  for  him 

Plautianus,  the  praetorian 
prefect,  is  put  to  death, 
and  succeeded  by  Pa- 
pinianus 

Severus  goes  to  Britain  . 

Keverus  dies  at  York.     . 


Caracalla,  his  son,  mur- 
ders his  brother  Geta. 
Papinianus  is  killed  by 
the  troops       .     .     • 


Caracalla  killed  by  Mar- 
tialis,  March  3,  by  the 
contrivance  of  Opilius 
Macrinus,  the  praeto- 
rian prefect,  who  suc- 
ceeds      

Proclamation  of  Elaga- 
balus,   grandson   of  a; 


A.D. 

189 
192 


193 
195 


197 


208 
211 

212 


217 

218 


L.  Marius  Maximus  Perpetuus  Aure- 
lianus,  the  continuator  of  Suetonius 
(from  Nerva  to  Elagabalus),is  consul. 


203       ?  Birth  of  St.  Cyprian. 


De 


Papinianus    publishes   his  work 
Excusationibus." 

Before  this  date  Julius  Paulus  publish- 
es his  commentary  on  the  edict,  and 
his  manual.  Callistratus  and  A. 
Claudius  Tryphoninus  belong  to  the 
same  period.  Serenus  Sammonicus, 
an  exceedingly  learned  writer,  is  put 
to  death.  Helenius  Aero,  who  really 
commented  upon  Terence  and  Hor- 
ace and  Persius  ;  the  scholia  on  Hor- 
ace, under  his  name,  are  not  genuine. 
We  have  quotations  from  the  scho- 
lia on  Terence,  and  perhaps  frag- 
ments of  the  one  on  Persius,  in  the 
scholia  ascribed  to  Cornutus  and 
Porphyrion  (whose  scholia  on  Hor- 
ace are  still  extant).  Dositheus,  a 
grammar  master  of  the  same  date,  is 
known  from  a  MS,  of  St.  Gall  (saec. 
ix.,  X.),  which  contains  thirty- one 
leaves  of  his  grammar  with  a  liter- 
al Greek  rendering. 


^  Q.   Serenus   Sammonicus  writes  his 
work  on  medicine.  Zurich  MS. saec. i.x. 


XX  u 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE, 


sister-in-law  of  the  late 
empress,  and  claiming 
to  be  the  natural  son 
of  Caracalla  .     .     .     . 

Elagabalus  adopts  his 
cousin,  Alexander  Se- 
verus     

Is  killed  by  praetorian 
guards  in  the  interest 
of  Alexander,  March 
i6 


Ulpian,  the  praetorian 
prefect,  is  killed  in  a 
sedition  of  the  soldiers 

Persian  monarchy  is  re 
stored 


Persian  war 

Alexander  Severus  is 
killed,  March  19,  in  a 
mutiny,  and  Maximin 
proclaimed     .     .     .     . 


The  Gordians,  father  and 
son,  are  proclaimed  in 
Africa  at  the  end  of 
May,  and   suppressed 


A.D. 

218 
221 

222 
223 

228 
230 

233 
235 


The  earliest  date  of  the  "Responsa" 

of  Julius  Paulus. 
Second  consulate  of  Marius  Maximus, 

the  historian. 


?  i^lius  Marcianus  writes  his  six  books 
of  Institutiones. 

?  Death  of  Tertullian.  Of  his  works, 
Apologeticum  (199?),  Ad  Nationes, 
lib.  ii.,  De  Testimonio  Animce,  De 
Culto  Feminarum  ii.,  and  its  pendant, 
De  Pallio,  De  Patientia,  De  Oratione 
(these  are  some  of  the  earliest),  De 
l.aptismo,  and  De  Poenitentia  (both 
late).  Ad  Uxorem  ii.,  Ad  Martyres, 
Adversus  Judaeos  have  little  or  no 
trace  of  Montanism.  De  Corona 
Militis  (originally  written  in  Greek), 
Ad  Scapulam  (212),  De  Exhortatione 
Castitatis,  De  Virginibus  Velandis 
(also  published  in  Greek),  De  Mono- 
gamia,  De  Pudicitia,  even  the  De 
Prsescriptionibus  Haereticorum,  De 
Anima,  De  Carne  Christi,  De  Resur- 
rectione  Carnis,  Adversus  Gnosticos 
Scorpiace,  De  Idolatria,  De  Spec- 
taculis^re  all  more  or  less  Montanist, 
as  are  the  controversial  works  De 
Jejunio,  Adv.  Psychicos,  Adv.  Mar- 
cionem,  which  was  in  writing  A.D. 
237,  Adv.  Praxeam,  Adv.  Hermoge- 
nem.  Adv.  Valentinum,  and  the  lost 
books  De  Ecstasi  and  De  Tvinitate. 
Ed.  Oehler,  in  Gernsdorf 's  Patristic 
Series,  Leipsic,  1854. 


M 


CHROXOLOGICAL    TABLE, 


xxin 


by  the  governor  of 
Mauritania  early  in 
July.  Maximus  and 
Balbinus  are  proclaim- 
ed at  Rome   .     .     .     . 

Maximin  is  killed  by  his 
own  troops  before  Aqui- 
leia  in  April.  Maxi- 
mus and  Balbinus  are 
massacred  July  15. 
Gordian  the  younger, 
the  grandson  of  "the 
elder  Gordian,  is  left 
sole  emperor .... 

Gordian  is  killed  in  a 
military  mutiny  to  the 
profit  of  Philip,  his  prae- 
torian prefect      .     .     . 

Philip  celebrates  the  Sec- 
ular Games    .... 

Mutiny  in  Moesia.  De- 
cius  is  sent  to  quell 
it ;  is  proclaimed  em- 
peror      


Decius  appoints  Valerian 
censor.  Persecution  of 
Decius 

He  is  defeated  and  killed 
by  the  Goths .     .     .     . 


Galius  is  appointed  to 
succeed  by  the  Senate, 
is  deposed  and  put  to 
death  by  ^Emilianus, 
the  governor  of  Pan- 
nonia,  who  is  super- 
seded by  Valerian,  Au- 
gust  

Valerian's  persecution    . 

First  naval  foray  of  the 
Goths 


A.D. 


238 


t( 


244 
248 

249 

250 
253 


256 
257 

258 
259 


'i  Commodian^s  Instructiones,  in  Gerns- 
dorf's  Bibliotheca  Patrum,  Leipsic, 
1847.  Close  of  the  History  of  Junius 
Cordus. 


Conversion  of  St.  Cyprian.  Herennius 
Modestinus,  the  jurist,  is  praefectus 
vigiliis. 

St.  Cyprian  bishop. 


Commodiani  Carmen  Apologeticum  ; 
latest  edition  by  H.  Rausch,in  Kahn's 
♦'Zeitschrift  fiir  Historische  Theolo- 
gie." 


Pestilence  mentioned  by  St.  Cyprian  in 
his  work  De  Mortalitate. 


Martyrdom  of  St.  Cyprian.  Works, 
Ad  Donatum  (De  Gratia  Dei),  De 
Oratione  Dominica,  De  Habitu  Vir- 
ginum,  De  Bono  Patientias,  De  Zelo 
et  Livore,  De  Idolorum  Vanitate 
(from  Tertullian  and  Minucius  Felix), 
De  Lapsis,  251,  De  Mortalitate  and 
Ad  Demetrianum,  253,  De  Unitate 
Ecclesiae,  De  Opere  et  Eleemosynis, 


!i| 


XXIV 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


A.D. 


Persian  conquest  of  Ar- 
menia    

Defeat  and  capture  of 
Valerian 

Second  naval  foray  of 
the  Goths 


Aureolus  invades  Italy, 
is  besieged  in  Milan  ; 
Gallienus,  the  son  of 
Valerian,  is  killed  in 
a  night  alarm,  March 
20.    Claudius  succeeds 

Victories  and  death  of 
Claudius,  who  nomi- 
nates Aurelian  .     .     . 

Victory  over  the  Ale- 
manni.  Suppression  of 
Seleucus 

War  with  Zenobia     .     . 

Triumph  of  Aurelian. 
Birth  of  Constantine  . 

Assassination  of  Aure- 
lian, January.  Elec- 
tion of  Tacitus,  Sept. 


23 


Death  of  Tacitus,  April 
12  ;  in  July,  Probus, 
in  the  name  of  the 
Senate,  deposes  Flo- 
rianus,  the  brother  of 
Tacitus 

Probus  clears  Gaul  of 
Germans 

Revolt  of  Saturninus  inj 
Egypt 

Revolt  of  Bonosus  in; 
Gaul i 

Probus  is  massacred  at! 
Sirmium,  and  succeed- 
ed by  Cams,  his  prae- 
torian prefect      .     .     . 

Death  of  Carus,  Dec.  25, 
in  a  campaign  against 
Persia.  Carinus  and 
Numerian,  his  sons, 
succeed  him  .     .     .     . 

Death  of  Numerian.   His 


260 
261 

262 


26S 
270 


271 

272,  273 


274 


275 


276 

277 
279 
280 

282 


283 


Testimoniorum  adversus  Judaeos,  lib. 
iii.,  De  Exhortatione  Martyrii,  lib.  iii., 
86  letters.  Ed.  G.  Hartel,  Vienna, 
1868-1871. 

C.  Julius  Solinus,  Collectanea,  copied 
under  Theodosius,  A.D.  402.  Ed. 
Mommsen,  Berlin,  1864. 

Marius  Plotius  Sacerdos  writes  on 
grammar  in  three  books,  still  extant, 
using  Juba,  who  used  Heliodorus. 


I 


la 

V 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXV 


army  elect  Diocletian, 
Sept.  17 

Carinus  is  assassinated 
in  the  course  of  a  bat- 
tle against  Diocletian, 
May 

Maximian  is  appointed 
Augustus.  He  sup- 
presses the  Bagaudae 
in  Gaul.  Tiridaies  re- 
gains the  throne  of 
Armenia 

Carausius  rebels  in  Brit- 
ain     


Galerius  and  Constantius 
appointed  Caesars  .     . 

Death  of  Carausius    .     . 

Revolt  of  Egypt     .     .     . 

Recovery  of  Britain  by 
Constantius.  Firstcani- 
paign  of  Galerius  foi 
the  restoration  of  Ti- 
ridates,  who  had  been 
expelled  by  the  Per- 
sians    ..*... 

Victorious  campaign  of 
Galerius 


Triumph  of  Maximian 
and  Diocletian.  First 
edict  against  the  Chris- 
tians       

Diocletian  and  Maximian 
abdicate.  Galerius  and 
Constantius  succeed : 
the  former  nominates 
two  Caesars    .     .     .     . 

Constantius  dies  at  York, 
July  25.  Constantinus 
succeeds  him.  Maxen- 
tius,  son  of  Maximian, 
is  declared  emperor  at 
Rome,  Oct.  28.  Max- 
imian resumes  the  em- 
pire   

Maximian  receives  the 
surrender  of  Severus 
( whom  Galerius  had 
appointed  to  rule  in 
Italy   after   the   death 

B 


A.D. 
2S4 

285 


286 

2S7 
289 
291 

293 

294 

295 


296 
297 


303 


305 


306 


Poem  of  M.AureliusNemesianus, which 
was  still  complete  in  the  youth  of 
Hincmar,  Archbishop  of  Rbeims. 


First  panegyric  on  Maximian. 
Second  panegyric  on  Maximian. 


First  panegyric  of  Eumenius  on  Con- 
stantius. 

Julius  Valerius's  translation  of  Pseudo- 
Callisthenes  De  Vita  Alexandri  Mag- 
ni.     Second  panegyric  of  Eumenius. 


XXVI 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE, 


XXVll 


' 


of  Constantius).  Seve- 
rus  is  put  to  death  .  . 
Galerius,  after  an  unsuc- 
cessful campaign  in 
Italy,  creates  Licinius 
Augustus  in  Illyricum, 
and  promotes  Maxi- 
min  in  Syria  .     .     .     . 


Maximian  is  deposed  by 
his  son,  and  takes  ref- 
uge first  with  Licinius, 
and  then  with  Constan- 
tine,  who  puts  him  to 
death  in  February  .     . 

EdictofToleration.  Death 
of  Galerius    .... 

Maxentius  is  defeated  at 
the  battle  of  Saxa  Ru- 
bra, and  drowned  inj 
the  Tiber,  Oct.  20  .     .{ 

Conversion  of  Constan-j 
tine  ?  Edict  of  Milan  ;] 
alliance  with  Licinius, 
Apr.  30 ;  defeat  and 
deathofMaximin,  Aug. 

.15. 

Licinius      declares     war 

against  Constaiitine     . 

He  loses  the  Danubian 

provinces,  Greece,  and 

Macedonia     .     .     .     . 


Gothic  War 

War  with  Licinius ;  after 
three  battles  he  sur- 
renders and  is  put  to 
death     

Foundation  of  Constan- 
tinople   

Council  of  Nice     .    .     . 


A.D. 

307 
308 


;io 


311 


312 


313 
3H 

315 


322 


323 


324 
325 
329 


Arnobius's  Seven  Books  Adversus  Na- 
tiones.  Ed.  A.  Reifferscheid,Vienna, 
1875.  Best  MS.,  Paris,  1661,  copied 
in  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  century 
from  a  cursive  in  the  hand  which 
subsequently  developed  into  the 
Lombardic.  This  was  copied  from 
an  uncial  written  in  a  country  where 
the  language  was  full  of  corruptions. 


Third  panegyric  of  Eumenius. 
Fourth  panegyric  of  Eumenius. 


Death  of  Lnctantius.  Of  his  works,  De 
Opificio  Dei  (ad  Dcmetrianum)  was 
finished  A.D.  304.  Divinarum  Insti- 
tutionum,  lib.  viii.,  307-310.  De  Ira 
Dei,  De  Mortibus  Persecutorum,  313, 
314.  The  Epitome  of  the  Institu- 
tions published  by  Pfaif  in  171 2  from 
a  Turin  MS.  may  possibly  be  the 
same  which  St,  Jerome  ascribed  to 
Lactantius.  Edited  in  Gernsdorf's 
Bibliotheca  Patrum,  1842. 


Dedication  of  Constanti- 
nople.   Birth  of  Julian 


Gothic  war 

Death  of  Arius      .     .     . 

Baptism  and  death  of 
Constantine,  May  22. 
Massacre  of  Constan- 
tine's  brothers  and 
nephews  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Julian  and 
Gallus 


Civil  war  between  Con- 
stans  and  Constantine 
II. ;  death  of  the  latter 

Sapor'sunsuccessful  siege 
of  Nisibis 

Magnentius  murders  Con- 
stans,  and  associates 
Vetranio,  the  comman- 
dant of  Illyrium,  in  the 
empire 

Constantius  compels  Ve- 
tranio to  capitulate 

Battle  of  Mursa ;  defeat 
of  Magnentius  ;  Gal- 
lus declared  Csesar 

Final  defeat  and  death  of 
Magnentius,  Aug.  10. 


Disgrace    and  execution 
of  Gallus 


.''  Death  of  Arnobius  j  it  is  in  this  year 


A.D. 


Zl^ 


332 


337 


342 
346 


348 
350 

351 
353 


354 


that  St.  Jerome  enters  him  as  cele- 
brated. 
Before  the  Gothic  war  C.Vettius  Aqui- 
linus  Juvencus  publishes  his  four 
books  "Historiae  Evangelicae."  They 
have  been  edited,  with  the  doubtful 
additions  on  the  Old  Testament,  by 
Arevalo,  Rome,  1792. 


Attins  Patera  is  a  celebrated  teacher 
of  rhetoric  at  Rome. 


Birth  of  Prudentius, 


Birth  of  St.  Paulinus  of  Nola.  Pasiphi- 
lus  is  ai-)pointed  prefect  of  the  city. 
Probably  the  14  books  of  Palladius 
on  husbandry  are  dedicated  to  him  : 
the  first  is  taken  up  with  generali- 
ties ;  the  next  12  are  a  monthly 
farmer's  calendar  ;  the  last  treats  of 
trees  in  170  elegiacs. 

Birth  of  St.  Augustin.  Under  this  year 
St.  Jerome  marks  in  his  Chronicle 
the  reputation  of  Donatus's  "  My 
Professor."  The  work  of  Julius  Fir- 
micus  Maternus  dates  from  this  year ; 
so  does,  according  to  St.  Jerome,  the 
reputation  of  Marius  Victorinus,  who 
had  a  statue  in  Trajan's  Forum.  He 
translated  the  Isagoge  of  Porphvry, 
wrote  comments  on  Cicero's   Dia- 


XXVlll 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXIX 


I 


Julian  at  Athens,  May  ; 
proclaimed  Caesar  at 
Milan,  Nov.  6     .     .     . 

Enforced  rebellion  of  Sil- 
vanus,  who  is  cut  off 
by  Ursicinus  ,     ,     .     » 

Constantius  at  Rome, 
April  28  to  May  28. 
Battle  of  Strasburg 

Fall  of  Amid  on  the  Tigris 

Julian  proclaimed  Au- 
gustus   

Death  ofConstantius;  he 
is  succeeded  by  Julian. 

George  of  Cappadocia 
slain  in  a  tumult  at 
Alexandria     .     .     .     . 

Persian  campaign  and 
death  of  Julian.  Jovian 
surrenders  the  con- 
quests of  Galerius  .     . 

Death  of  Jovian,  Feb,  17  ; 
Valentinian  succeeds. 
Partition  of  the  em- 
pire between  Valentin- 
ian  and   Valens,  June 

4 


A.D. 


Rebellion  of  Procopius 


Capture  and  death  of 
Procopius .     .     .     .     . 

Theodosius,  the  father  of 
the  emperor,  pacifies 
Britain .'.... 


Theodosius     suppresses! 
the  revolt  of  Africa 


355 
356 

357 
359 


360 


161 


362 


2>^2, 


364 

365 


366 


367 
368 


370 

373 
374 


logues.  We  have  an  Ars  Gram- 
matica  of  his,  which  treats  mostly  of 
metre. 


Banishment  of  St.  Hilary. 

Latinus  Alcimns  Alethius  and  Attias 
Piso  Delphidius  are  orators  at  Aries. 

Return  of  St.  Hilary, 


C.Claudius  Mamertinus  returns  thanks 
for  the  consulate  to  Julian  at  Con- 
stantinople. 


Rescript  to  I..  Aurelius  Avianus  Sym- 
machus,  the  father  of  the  orator. 

Symmachus,  the  orator,  is  appointed 
Corrector  "Suediniae  et  Bruttiorum.'* 
Publication  of  Codex  Hermogeni- 
anus,  which  contained  all  the  Impe- 
rial rescripts  from  290  to  364. 

St,  Uamasus  Pope.  Death  of  St.  Hila- 
ry. 


Rufinus,  the  writer,  in  Egypt.  Sym- 
machus's  speech  on  the  third  consu- 
late of  Valentinian. 

Symmachus  is  proconsul  of  Africa. 


St.  Jerome  in  the  wilderness  of  Chalcis. 
St.  Ambrose  Bishop  of  Milan.  St. 
Optatus  writes  under  Valentinian  and 
Valens  against  the  Donatists  ;  works 
in  Migne- 


»■ 


Death  of  Valentinian  ; 
Gratian  succeeds  with 
his  half-brother  Val- 
entinian n 

The  Goths  take  refuge 
on  Roman  territory     . 

Gratian  at  Rome   .     .     . 

Battle  of  Adrianople  ; 
defeat  and  death  of 
Valens 

Theodosius  appointed 
emperor 

Council  of  Constantino- 
ple     

Submission  of  the  Goths. 

Maximus  revolts  ;  Gra- 
tian is  killed .     .    .     . 


The  Ostrogoths  defeated 
on  the  Danube  ;  are 
settled  in  Phrygia  . 

Maximus  invades  Italy, 
is  defeated  on  the  Save 
and  put  to  death     . 


Sack  of  the  Serapeum  at 

Alexandria     .     .     .     . 

Massacre  of  Thessalonica 

Penance  of  Theodosius  . 


Murder  of  Valentinian  H. 
by  Arbogastes,who  ap- 
points Eugenius  em- 
peror      

Defeat  and  death  of  Ar- 
bogastes  and  his  em- 
peror     

Death  of  Theodosius  ; 
the  empire  is  divided 
between  Arcadius  and 
Honorius ;   Rufinus  is 


A.D. 


375 


2>1^ 


377 


378 
379 

3S1 

3S2 

383 
384 


385 
386 

387 


388 
389 

390 
391 


392 
394 


About  this  date  Proba  Faltonia  com- 
poses her  Cento  of  Vergil. 
Rufinus  on  the  Mount  of  Olives. 


St.  Jerome  at  Antioch  ordained  priest. 


St.  Jerome  at  Rome.  Augustin  at 
Rome.  Death  of  L.  Aurelius  Flavi- 
anus  Symmachus. 

Death  of  St.  Damasus ;  letters  and 
poems  in  Migne's  Patrology ;  the 
hymns  ascribed  to  him  for  St.  An- 
drew and  St.  Agatha  are  rather  in 
the  manner  of  Prudentius. 

St.  Jerome  and  St.  Paula  in  Egypt. 


Baptism  of  St.  Augustin.  Publication 
of  the  Codex  Gregorianus,  which 
contains  all  the  Ini^perial  rescripts 
known  to  the  compiler  up  to  a.d.  295. 

St.  Augustin  returns  to  Africa. 

Panegyric  of  Latinus  Pacatus  Drepa- 
nius  in  Panegyrici  Veteres. 

Relation  of  Symmachus. 

St.  Augustin  is  ordained  Presbyter. 
Death  of  St.  Pacianus,  who  wrote  on 
Penitence  against  the  Novatians ; 
works  in  Migne. 


St.  Paulinus  at  Nola. 


U 


1f 


XXX 


CJIROXOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    'JAB/.E. 


^XXI 


minister  in  the  East, 
Stilicho  in  the  West. 
Rufinus  is  overthrown 
by  the  military  party  . 

Alaric  invades  Greece    . 


Glide  rebels  in  Africa ; 
he  is  suppressed  by  hisj 
own  brother  at  Stili-j 
cho's  instigation      .     . 

Goths  revolt  under  Tri-^ 
bigild  (the  Targibilus! 
of  Claudian).  Down-j 
fall  of  Eutropius     .     .' 

Alaric  invades  Italy  and 
is  defeated  at  Pollentia 

Triumph  of  Honorius     . 


Invasion  of  Rhadagaise ; 
he  is  defeated  and 
dies ;  his  troops  invade 
Gaul 


A.D. 


395 

396 
397 


399 


402 

403 
404 

405 


St.  Augustin  Coadjutor  Bishop  of  Hip- 
po. 

St.  Augustin  Bishop  of  Hippo. 

Rufinus,  the  theologian,  returns  to  Italy. 
Death  of  St.  Ambrose. 


406 


Cassian  at  Rome.  Aurelius  Prudentius 
Clemens  publishes  his  works  ;  latest 
edition,  A.  Dressel,  Leipsic.  Of  the 
hymns  in  the  Cathemerinon,  vv.  1-8, 
81-84,  397-400  of  the  hymn  "Ad 
Galli  Cantum"  are  used  in  the  Bre- 
viary for  lauds  ;  vv.  1-8,  ^'i,  39,  52, 
57,  59,  60,  67,  68  of  the  Ilymnus  Ma- 
tutinus  for  prime  ;  25,  93,  94,  96,  97- 
100,  10-12,  19,  27,  109-111  of  the 
1  lymnus  Omnis  Hora^  for  compline  ; 
125,  130,  93-102,  107-112,  117,  114, 
113,  120,  133-136  of  the  hymn  for 
Epiphany  for  Innocents'  Day  ;  1-4, 
37-44,  85-88  of  the  same  for  the 
Transfiguration  ;  77-80,  5-8,  61-64, 
69-72  of  the  same  for  lauds  in  Lent ; 
first  ten  lines  of  the  Hymnus  Jejunan- 
tium  for  compline  in  Lent;  125-152 
of  the  Hymnus  ante  somnum,  com- 
pline in  Passion  Week  ;  1-27,  25-28, 
149-164  of  the  Hymnus  ad  Incensum 
Lucernae  for  the  benediction  of  the 
Paschal  candle  ;  1,51,  719,  720,  721- 
732  of  the  hymn  for  St.  Laurence, 
and  545-548,  557-560  of  the  hymn  for 
St.  Vincent  is  used  for  any  martyr; 
117-120,53-56,33-44,  1 21-140  of  the 
Hymnus  in  Exsequiis  Defunctorum 
was  used  in  Germany. 


I 


Constantine  at  the  head 
of  the  British  armv  con- 
quers  Gaul  and  Spain. 

Downfall  of  Stilicho. 
Death  of  Arcadius  .     . 

Alaric  ransoms  Rome     . 

Alaric  captures  Rome, 
Aug.    Death  of  Alaric 


Ataulphus      leads 
Goths  to  Gaul    . 


the 


The  Goths  re-establish 
the  authority  of  Ho- 1 
norius  in  Gaul  audi 
Spain,  and  found  a 
kingdom  at  Toulouse. 


Death  of  Honorius 


Usurpation  of  John    .     . 

Valentinianlll.  Emperor 
of  the  West    .     .     .     . 

Revolt  of  Bonifacius, 
who  invites  the  Van- 
dals (who  had  moved 
from  Gallicia  to  Anda- 
lusia) into  Africa    .     . 


Siege  of  Hippo 


A.D. 


407 

408 
409 

410 


412 
415 


416 
417 


419 
420 

423 


425 
426 


427 
428 

430 


St.  Paulinus  Bishop  of  Nola. 

The  capture  of  Rome  is  the  last  event 
mentioned  by  Orosius.  Death  of 
Rufinus.  Besides  the  other  transla- 
tions mentioned  in  the  text  there  was 
a  translation  of  Sextius,  whom  the 
translators  identified  with  Pope  Sex- 
tus. 

Claudius  Rutilius  Numatianus,  or  Na- 
niatianus,writes  on  his  return  to  Gaul 
in  two  books  ;  most  of  the  latter  lost. 
The  text  depends  on  the  Codex  Bob- 
bianus,  discovered  in  1492,  and  now 
lost. 

Ousius  dedicates  his  Rivellas  :  Teub- 
^  ner,  Leipsic,  1871. 

Cassian  writes  the  first  ten  collations. 


Death  of  St.  Jerome.  Works  in  Migne 
reprinted  trom  the  Venice  edition. 

Paulinus  of  Milan  settles  in  Africa  and 
writes  a  life  of  St.  Ambrose  in  imita- 
tion of  Sulpicius  Severus's  Life  of 
St.  Martin. 


Prosper  of  Aquitaine,  first  letter  to  St. 
Augustin. 

Death  of  St.  Augustin.  Works,  besides 
those  mentioned,  De  Quantitate  Ani- 
mae,  at  Rome,  De  Magistro,  at  Tha- 
gaste  (a  dialogue  with  Adeodatus, 
his  natural  son),  De  Bono  Conjugali, 
De  Sancta  Viiginitate,  363  sermons 
published  from  reports,  De  Cura  pro 
Mortuis,  on  prayer  for  the  dead,  and 


xxxn 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


Council  of  Ephesus 


A.D. 


Defeat  of  Bonifacius ; 
evacuation  of  Hippo   . 

Death  of  Bonifacius  (in  a 
private  war  witli  Ae- 
tius) 


Surprise  of  Carthage  by 
the  Vandals  .     .     .     . 

Third  consulate    of  Ae- 
tius 


Battle  of  Chalons  .     .     . 


Council  of  Chalcedon 
Attila  dies  after  invading 

Italy      , I 

Valentinian  kills  Aetius. 

He  is  killed  by  two  of 
Aetius's  izuards.  His 
wicUnv  invites  tiie  Van- 
dals, who  occupy  audi 
pillage  Rome  for  four- 
teen days ' 

The  Goths  nominate  A  Vi- 
tus, the  father- in -lawi 
of  Sidonius  Apollina-| 
ris,  to  the  empire.  Hei 
is  deposed,  and  for  fif-{ 
teen  years  Ricimer  gov-i 
erns  Italy  in  the  name 
of  various  emperors.  . 


431 


432 

434 

435 


439 
440 

446 
449 

450 


451 

453 
454 


455 
456 


458 


relic- worship  and  ghost  stories,  to 
Paulinus  at  Nola,  De  Mendacio  and 
Contra  Mendacium,  De  Divinatione 
Dx-monum,  De  Opere  Monachorum, 
De  Catechizandis  Rudibus  (400),  De 
Doctrina  Christiana,  begun  397,  fin- 
ished 427,  Fsalmus  Abecedarius,  393. 
Birth  of  C.  Sollius  Sidonius  Apolhna- 
ris.  Death  of  St,  Paulinus  ;  his  pan- 
egyrics on  St.  John  Baptist  in  hex- 
ameters, which  dates  cir.  a.d.  390,  is 
addressed  to  Nicetes,  Bishop  of  Da- 
cia,  like  a  sapphic  ode  on  the  mar- 
tyrs, in  eighty-five  stanzas. 


Flavius   Merobaudes    has  a  statue  in 

Trajan's  Forum. 
?  Vincentius  of  Lerins  writes  his  Com- 

monitorium. 


St.  Leo  is  Pope. 


?  Commonitorium  of  Vincentius  in  dis- 
tichs. 

C.  Claudius  Marius  Victorinus,  a  rhet- 
orician of  Marseilles,  composes  a 
commentary  on  Genesis  for  his  son. 


The  death  of  Aetius,  latest  event  men- 
tioned in  Prosper's  Chronicle. 


Philippus,  an  admirer  of  St.  Jerome, 
dies,  leaving  a  Commentary  on  Job 
(printed  in  Migne's  Patrology).  Si- 
donius Apollinaris's  panegyric  on 
Avitus. 


Sidonius  Apollinaris's  panegyric  on 
Majorian.  About  this  time  Flavius 
Rusticus  Helpidius  Dormulus,  who 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


XXXIll 


Death    of  Majorian,  thei 
ablest  of  them    .     .     . 

Death   of  Theodoric  of! 
Toulouse  ..... 

Ricimer  receives  an  em- 
peror from  Constanti- 
nople      


A  joint  expedition  against 
the  Vandals  fails    . 


Death  of  Ricimer 


Submission  of  Auvergne 
to  the  Goths  .''... 

Odoacer  gives  the  bar- 
barian troops  lands  in 
Italy,anddeposes  Rom- 
ulus Augustulus;  the 
Senate,  with  his  per- 
mission, return  the  im- 
perial ornaments  to 
Zeno 


Clovis  becomes  the  chief 
of  the  Franks     .     .     . 

Accession  of  Gunther- 
mund  in  Africa  .     .     . 


Clovis  defeats  Syagrius 


B- 


A.D. 

461 
465 

468 
469 
470 


472 

473 
474 


476 

477 


484 
485, 


edited   MS.  of  Pomponius  Mela  at 
Ravenna,  was  writing  at  Aries. 
Death  of  St.  Leo.     We   have  98  ser- 
mons and  173  letters  in  Migne's  Pa- 
trology. 

Paulinus  of  Pel  la,  at  the  age  of  84,  com- 
poses a  poem  of  thanksgiving  in  ele- 
giacs for  thirty  years  of  good  luck 
and  fifty-four  of  bad. 

Sidonius  Apollinaris's  panegyric  on 
Anthemius. 

.^  Publication  of  Sidonius  Apollinaris's 
poems.  Idacius,  a  bishop  in  Galli- 
cia,  writes  a  chronicle. 

Paulinus  of  Perigueux,  a  poetaster, 
versifies  Sulpicius  Severus's  Life  of 
St.  Martin  in  two  books,  385.  717 
hexameters.  At  about  the  same 
date  Claudianus  Mamertus  Ecdidius 
dedicates  to  Sidonius  his  work  De 
Statu  Animas.  This,  with  his  hymns, 
has  been  printed  in  Migne.  It  is  un- 
certain whether  he  or  Vincentius  For- 
tunatus  is  the  author  of  the  Passion 
hymn  "  Pange  Lingua  gloriosi  prae- 
lium  certaminis." 

Consecration  of  Sidonius  Apollinaris 
as  Bishop  of  Auvergne. 

Birth  of  Magnus  Felix  Ennodius. 


Birth  of  Cassiodorus. 


4S1      j Birth  of  Boethius  and  Jornandes. 


486 


Q.  Aurelius  Memmius  Symmachus,  the 
father-in-law  of  Boethius,  is  consul  ; 
he  emends  Macrobius's  Somnium 
Scipionis  with  the  help  of  Macrobius 
Plotinus  Eudoxius. 

Victor  Vitensis  writes  his  chronicle  of 
the  Vandal  persecution  :  printed  in 
Migne. 


^      '? 


XXXIV 


CHRONOLOGICAL    TABLE. 


CIIROXOLOGICAL    TABLK. 


XXXV 


A.I). 
487 


Theodoric  invades  Italy 
Battle  of  Tolbiac  .  .  . 
Capture  of  Ravenna,  and 
death  of  Odoacer  .  . 
Death  ot  Gunthermund  . 


489 
490 

493 
496 


Submission  of  Western 

Gaul  to  Clovis   .     .     J 

Theodoric  visits  Rome  .' 

Frankish     conquest    of 

Aquitaine.     ... 


Accession    of   Justinian 
as  colleague  to  Justin  J 


498 
500 

507 
510 
511 
5H 


t;2o 
521 


Death  of  Sidonius  Apollinaris.  His 
three  panegyrics  on  Julius  Csesar, 
A  Vitus,  and  Majorian,  his  epithala- 
mia,  his  descriptive  poems  on  Narbo 
and  the  burg  or  fortified  villa  of  Le- 
ontius,  and  most  of  the  epigrams,  are 
earlier  than  his  consecration  as  bish- 
op. The  first  two  books  of  letters, 
though  collected  afterwards,  were 
written  when  he  was  a  layman.  Ed. 
Simond,  1652;  reprinted'in  Migne. 

St.  Avitus,  Bishop  of  Vienne. 


Between  484  and  496  Blissius  .^imilius 
Dracontius  writes  his  Satisfactio,  158 
distichs,  and  De  Deo  in  three  books, 
unintelligible,  754,  843,  699  hexame- 
ters.    Ed.  Arevalo,  Rome,  1791  ;  C. 
E.  Glaser,  Breslau,  1847,  1848.    Dra- 
contiiCarmina, Vienna,  1870.    About 
this  date  Gennadi  us,  a  presbyter  of 
Marseilles,   continued   Jerome's   De 
Viris  Illustribus.     He  seems  to  have 
written  just  after  the  end  of  the  pon- 
tificate of  St.  Gelasius,  who  died  496. 
Works  in  Migne's  Patrology.     The 
most  considerable  of  the  contempo- 
raries he  mentions  are  Pomerius,  a 
continuator  of  Claudianus   Mamer- 
tus,  and  Ruricius,  Bishop  of  Limoges 
{4^4-507),  a  continuator  and  corre- 
spondent   of  Sidonius    Apollinaris; 
remains  of  both  in  Migne's  Patrolo- 
gy.    About  the  same  date  Coelius 
Sednlius  composes  his  Carmen  Pas- 
chale  on  the  Gospel  history,  divided 
into  four  books,  with  an  introductory 
book  on  the  wonders  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament. Edited  by  F.  Arevalo,  Rome, 
1794. 


Boethius  is  consul. 

Ennodius  is  elected  Bishop  of  Pavia. 

Cassiodorus  consul. 


Death  of  Ennodius  ;  his  works  are  cd- 


Death  of  Sigismund,  last 
king  of  Burgundy    .     . 

Imprisonment  of  Boe- 
thius       

He  is  put  to  death  ;  so 
is  his  father-in-law, 
Symmachus  .     .     .     . 

DeatH  of  Theodoric   .     .' 
Reconquest  of  Africa 


A.D. 


Death  of  Athanaric, 
grandson'of  Theodoric 

Death  of  Amalasentha    . 

Reconquest  of  Sicily.; 
Wiiiges  king  of  thei 
Goths 

Belisarius  takes  Ravenna 

The  Goths  renew  the  war 
under  Totila  .... 

Revolt  of  the  Moors  in 
Africa 

Narses  conquers  Italy    .j 

Narsesdefeatsthe  Franks 

Death  of  Justinian      .     . 

Lombards  invade  Italy  J 


523 
524 

525 

526 
530 

533 


534 

535 


536 
539 

540 

543-558 
552 
559 
565 
567 
569 


ited  in  Migne.  They  include,  besides 
those  mentioned,  a  panegyric  on  The- 
odoric, and  a  defence  ot  the  Svnod 
which  absolved  Pope  Symmachus. 


Death  of  St.   Avitus. 
Migne's  Patrology. 


His  works   in 


Death  of  Rusticus  Elpidius,  a  physi- 
cian of  Theodoric,  who  wrote  149 
hexameters  on  the  benefits  of  Christ. 

Latest  date  of  the  2d  edition  of  the 
Chronicle  of  Marcellinus  ;  Comes's 
Continuation  of  the  Chronicle  of  St. 
Jerome. 


;  Death  of  Avitus;  works  in  Migne. 


Retreat  of  Cassiodorus. 


Death  of  Cassiodorus. 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


PART   IV. 

THE  CLAUDIAN   PERIOD. 


CHAPTER  I. 

SENECA. 

Seneca  is  the  patriarch  of  a  whole  literary  revival,  as 
Quinctilian  acknowledges  when  he  has  to  give  a  reason  for 
not  mentioning  him  in  his  place  in  the  list  of  classics.  He 
wrote  in  every  style,  both  in  prose  and  verse — orations,  essays, 
dialogues,  tragedies  :  and  he  was  the  favorite  author  of  young 
men  when  Quinctilian  undertook  his  educational  reform, 
which  consisted  in  a  return  to  the  classical  tradition  of  the 
Augustan  age.  According  to  Quinctilian,  Seneca  was  intol- 
erant in  literature,  and  would  allow  his  admirers  leave  to  ad- 
mire nothing  but  himself.  It  is  plain  from  his  own  works 
that  he  thought  very  badly  of  the  literature  of  erudition  to 
which  most  teachers  of  the  time  were  devoted,  and  his  con- 
stant insistence  on  edification  would  act  as  a  disparagement 
of  most  contemporary  writers. 

He  was  born  apparently  about  the  beginning  of  the  Chris- 
tian era,  in  Spain  ;  but  came  early  to  Rome  wath  his  aunt,  who 
nursed  him  through  his  delicate  childhood.  All  his  life  he 
seems  to  have  been  more  or  less  of  an  invalid,  and  when 

n.— I 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


SENECA. 


4 


growing  old  he  suffered  severely  from  asthma.'     He  was  smit- 
ten with  a  passion  for  asceticism  in  his  youth,  thanks  to  the 
teaching  of  a  certain  Attalus,  and  became  a  water-drinker  and 
vegetarian,  till  Tiberius  took  measures  to  expel  the  rites  of 
Egypt  and  Judaea  from   Rome,  when  his  father,  who  disap- 
proved of  philosophy,  was  glad  of  the  pretext  to  induce  him 
to  resume  the  use  of  flesh-meat,  lest  he  should  be  suspected 
of  abstaining  upon  superstitious  grounds.     However,  he  per- 
sistently renounced  the  two  great  dainties  of  the  time,  mush- 
rooms and  oysters,  because  both  served  not  to  nourishment, 
but  to  appetite.     He  seems  to  have  distinguished  himself  by 
his  eloquence  as  early  as  the  reign  of  Caligula,  for  that  per- 
verse and  acute  observer  remarked  that  he  did  nothing  but 
put  together  librettos,  and  his  style  was  mere  sand  without 
lime.     Suetonius  mentions  this  as  a  proof  that  Caligula  dis- 
liked a  smooth,  highly  finished  style,  and  perhaps  his  criticism 
may  give  us  some  idea  of  Seneca's  early  manner  before  his 
earnestness  had  become  strong  enough  to  be   a  torment  to 
him.     The  comparatively  early  work  on  Anger  is  smooth  and 
easy  in  a  sense ;  the  writer  is  not  so  familiar  with  his  thoughts 
that  he  refuses  to  do  more  than  allude  to  them.     Such  as 
they  are,  he  puts  them  quite  clearly  and  pointedly;  and,  at 
the  same  time,  it  is  quite  true  that  he  seems  to  be  playing 
with  commonplaces,  and  to  have  no  thought  or  information 
to  communicate;  and  this  explains  Caligula's  second  criti- 
cism.    From  first  to  last  Seneca  is  a  very  incoherent  writer; 
he   never  succeeds   in  having  a  plan  in  any  of  his  longer 
works;  he  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  association  of  ideas  and'^of 
the  way  in  which  one  topic  suggests  another.     He  generally 
seems  to  hold  that  a  plan  is  a  good  thing  in  itself,  and  the 
arid  method  of  Stoical  text-books  would  naturally  supply  him 
with  a  framework  more  than  sufficient,  if  only  he  could  keep 
to  it.     In  fact,  one  might  almost  admire  the  agility  with  which 
he  dances  round  his  argument,  never  quite  losing  sight  of  it, 
and  coming  back  to  it  for  a  moment,  without  apparent  effort, 
when  he  wishes  to  make  a  fresh  start.     The  weakness  of  his 
method  is  that  it  is  impossible  to  summarize  one  of  his  trea- 

'  Sen.  "  Ad  Luci].".Ep.  liv.,  Ixxv.  6. 


tises,  and  therefore  impossible  to  remember  more  of  it  than 
fine  phrases  and  passages ;  and  a  conscientious  editor  who 
undertakes  to  trace  the  connection  of  the  whole  is  soon  re- 
duced to  suspect  his  MSS.  Apart  from  this  want  of  lucid 
order,  the  treatise  on  Anger  is  easy  reading.  Every  word 
and  syllable  is  kept  in  place ;  there  is  nothing  tumid  or 
rough  or  tedious ;  the  writing  seems  to  be  pointed  only  that 
it  may  be  entertaining  and  clear;  there  is  no  effort  to  be  sub- 
lime or  startling  or  impressive. 

As  was  natural,  considering  his  delicate  health  and  his  edu- 
cation, Seneca  was  in  early  life  a  ladies'  man,  visiting  matrons 
of  rank  very  much  as  the  better  kind  of  French  abbe  did  in 
the  seventeenth  century.  A  Roman  of  rank  who  took  an 
interest  in  his  character  kept  a  philosopher,  as  in  later  times 
serious  nobles  kept  chaplains;  but,  as  it  was  not  etiquette  for 
Roman  ladies  to  study,  they  were  dependent  upon  philosophi- 
cal friends.  An  ambitious  man  might  hope  to  make  his  way 
by  feminine  protection;  a  kind-hearted  man  might  feel  he 
was  doing  good  by  introducing  a  little  method  among  the  fine 
feelings  of  high-born,  high-souled,  uninstructed  women.  His 
success  was  all  the  easier  because  society  was  still  very  much 
divided  by  sex,  and  a  man  who  mixed  in  ladies'  society  found 
himself  in  the  enviable  situation  of  a  solitary  phoenix.  But 
his  position  had  its  temptations  and  dangers.^  When  a  Ro- 
man lady  compromised  herself,  she  commonly  compromised 
all  her  intimates.  Julia,  the  daughter  of  Germanicus,  was  ac- 
cused of  adultery  and  banished,  and  Seneca  was  banished  to 
Corsica  too.  According  to  Suetonius,  he  was  supposed  to 
have  been  one  of  her  paramours ;  according  to  others,  he  was 
supposed  to  have  known  of  her  intrigues  and  to  have  aided 
them ;  and  in  the  minds  of  Messalina  and  Claudius  the  two 
charges  would  hardly  be  distinguished.  He  remained  in  ex- 
ile for  eight  years,  and  was  then  recalled  by  the  influence  of 
Agrippina  to  superintend  the  education  of  Nero.  After  the 
death  of  Claudius,  he  and  Burrus,  the  praetorian  prefect,  gov- 
erned the  Roman  empire  for  five  years.  As  neither  had  any 
independent  authority,  it  iS  not  surprising  that  their  govern- 
ment was  studiously  popular,  and  it  was  so  intelligent  that  it 
was  quoted  as  a  model  long  after. 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


It  was  necessary  to  humor  Nero,  not  only  in  his  private 
vices,  but  in  his  family  crimes.  Seneca  composed  the  speech 
in  which  Nero  apologized  for  the  death  of  his  mother,  as  we 
learn  from  the  quotation*  of  the  opening  sentence  in  which 
he  assured  the  senate  that  he  could  not  yet  believe  or  rejoice 
in  his  safety.  It  is  possible  that,  if  Nero  had  continued  to 
respect  the  senate,  senatorian  historians  might  have  used 
Agrippina's  memoirs  with  less  confidence,  and  have  enter- 
tained the  question  whether,  when  she  found  it  impossible  to 
reign  in  her  son's  name,  she  did  not  pass  into  a  formidable 
conspirator  against  his  authority  and  even  his  safety.  Seneca 
was  certainly  a  less  disinterested  judge  of  the  question  than 
Tacitus  or  Suetonius,  or  the  authors  of  the  pasquinades  which 
compared  Nero  to  the  matricides  of  Greek  tragedy ;  on  the 
other  hand,  he  was  much  better  informed.  It  is  only  fair  to 
his  memory  to  remember  that,  if  Agrippina  was  really  danger- 
ous, the  safest  and  easiest  precaution  was  to  put  her  to  death. 
It  is  easier  to  prove  that  no  perfectly  virtuous  man  in  Seneca's 
situation  would  have  condescended  to  be  an  accomplice  in  a 
perfidious  matricide,  than  to  guess  what  course  a  perfectly 
virtuous  minister  ought  to  have  recommended  to  an  excitable 
boy  whose  mother — a  clever,  energetic  woman,  still  in  the 
prime  of  life — was  conspiring  against  him. 

Seneca  was  always  a  comparatively  wealthy  man  :  when 
Nero  came  to  the  throne  his  wealth  rapidly  became  enormous. 
Nero  himself  gave  him  large  sums,  and  every  one  who  wished 
to  do  business  with  him  doubtless  was  ready  with  presents. 
Even  if  Seneca  had  been  so  scrupulous  as  to  refuse  these,  he 
would  not  think  of  refusing  legacies.  He  appears  also  to 
have  had  investments  in  Egypt,  which  would  become  much 
more  profitable  when  he  was  in  power.  When  he  retired,  we 
find  that  he  had  put  them  on  a  footing  which  protected  him 
against  all  fluctuations  of  profit  and  loss.  Even  if  he  made 
more  moderate  use  of  his  opportunities  of  enriching  himself 
than  other  ministers,  he  would  still  have  enriched  himself 
faster ;  for  he  clung  for  a  long  time  to  simplicity  of  food  and 
dress,  and  even  furniture,  and  these  things  were  the  largest 

»  Quinctilian,  iii.  5. 


SENECA. 


items  of  the  expenditure  of  most  of  the  rich.  Seneca  had  ad- 
mirable villas  and  gardens;  we  even  hear  that  he  had  a  set 
of  five  hundred  dinner-tables,  all  mounted  on  ivory— which  was 
not  an  excessive  number,  as  he  probably  entertained  his  cli- 
ents by  hundreds  in  his  gardens.  He  was  one  of  the  last 
prominent  Romans  who  gave  away  considerable  sums  to  his 
dependants  when  in  difficulties ;  but  he  had  large  sums  out 
at  interest  in  all  the  provinces,  including  Britain,  and  when 
he  desired  to  retire  he  provoked  a  rebellion  there  by  calling 
in  all  his  investments  at  once.  Some  time  before  his  death, 
he  vainly  endeavored  to  propitiate  Nero  by  resigning  all  his 
property,  which  Nero  judiciously  refused  to  accept.  But 
when  information  came  of  a  mysterious  message  to  Piso,*  al- 
though Seneca  would  have  had  a  perfectly  good  defence  if  he 
could  have  had  a  fiiir  trial,  it  is  not  surprising  that  Nero  be- 
lieved the  evidence,  and  concluded  that  Seneca  was  at  least 
privy  to  the  conspiracy  of  which  he  was  the  latest  victim.  He 
died  in  character,  with  a  great  deal  of  philosophical  eloquence, 
and  left  a  high,  though  not  an  uncontested,  reputation  behind 
him. 

The  real  significance  of  his  career  is  that  he  brought  decla- 
mation into  literature,  and  that  he  brought  philosophy  into 
literature  too,  at  a  time  when  literature  was  languishing- for 
the  want  of  something  new.  Cicero's  philosophical  treatises, 
though  they  often  have  more  substance  than  Seneca's,  have 
too  much  the  appearance  of  school-books,  as  if  philosophy 
required  a  great  deal  of  introduction  to  Roman  society. 
Seneca  alwavs  has  the  air  of  discussinsf  a  familiar  matter  of 
practical  concern.  He  always  appears  to  have  something  to 
say  which  wants  saying ;  and  this  was  a  great  advantage  at  a 
time  when  literature  practically  consisted  of  three  things — 
orations,  which  were  a  great  deal  too  pretentious  for  the 
cases  tried  ;  histories,  which  dealt  with  events  too  recent  for 
impartiality,  and  were  deficient  even  in  the  attraction  of 
novelty ;  and  poetry,  which  was  mainly  a  series  of  variations 
upon  too  familiar  themes.     The  great  intellectual  interest  of 

*  Seneca  had  sent  word  to  Piso  that  it  was  better  they  should  not  meet 
so  often,  but  that  Piso's  safety  was  the  guarantee  of  his  own. 


6  LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 

the  day  had  been  supplied  by  declamations  on  imaginary 
subjects.     It  was  a  great  change  to  have  declamations  on 
general  and  permanent  interests;  and   the  public,  used  to 
satisfy  themselves  for  a  time  with  a  display  of  ingenuity  about 
nothing,  were  reasonably  fascinated  with  a  display  of  inge- 
nuity on  the  regulation  of  the  temper.     Seneca's  weak  heatth 
was  probably  an  advantage  to  him  in  two  ways  :  it  forced  him 
to  write  instead  of  speaking,  and  it  threw  him  forcibly  upon 
the  inner  life.     It  is  important  to  notice  throughout  that  his 
philosophy  deals  with  temper,  and  not  with  conduct,  or  only 
with  conduct  so  far  as  it  is  connected  with  temper.     There 
are  two  treatises,  on  Anger  and  on  Benefits,  which  refer  more 
or  less  to  behavior ;  the  first  is  the  expression  of  his  disgust 
at  the  feverish  tyranny  of  Caligula;  the  second  is  a  theory 
of  how  he  and  Nero  ought  to  exercise  their  patronage.     There 
is  a  treatise  on  Clemency,  which  is  meant  to  encourage  Nero 
in  his  sentimental  dislike  to  inflicting  extreme  penalties.     But 
the  main  current  of  Seneca's  teaching  flows  elsewhere,  es- 
pecially in  its  latest  form.     The  letters  to  Lucilius,  which  are 
really  a  philosophical  diary,  turn  upon  cheerfulness  and  fear- 
lessness and  self-possession,  and  say  nothing  about  external 
duties.     It  is  remarkable  that  Seneca,  as  soon  as  he  wishes 
hnnself  to  withdraw  from  power,  begins  a  vigorous  though  in- 
termittent polemic  against  the  Stoical  doctrine  that  the' wise 
man  will  take  part  in  the  government  of  the  state.     He  ob- 
serves that  the   celebrated  Stoical  sages,  Zeno,  Cleanthes, 
Chrysippus,  and  the  rest,  remained  private  teachers  all  their 
lives;  and  therefore,  if  they  were  consistent,  must  have  in- 
tended the  precept  to  take  part  in  the  common  weal  in  some 
other  sense,  or  have  attached  some  condition  or  other  as  to 
its  performance.     Either  they  abstained  from  public  aff'airs 
because  they  had  not  sufficient  station  to  make  their  virtue 
and  wisdom  of  use  to  their  fellow-citizens,  and  then  their  ex- 
ample would  justify  any  philosopher  who  thought  he  was  pre- 
cluded by  circumstances  from  public  life;  or  they  considered 
that  they  did  their  part  of  the  public  service^by  forming  the 
characters  of  those  who  would  be  called  to  undertake'^it  in 
their  own  persons;  or  they  thought  chiefly  of  the  great  com- 


SENECA. 


monwealth  of  the  universe,  and  in  practising  and  teaching 
virtue  they  were  certainly  active  citizens  of  this.  Such  versa- 
tility in  explaining  away  one  of  the  most  distinctive  tenets  of 
Stoicism  prepares  us  to  find  that  Seneca  was  not  a  very  stricti 
Stoic.  He  wishes  to  be  the  disciple  of  truth,  and  not  of  men  \ 
he  professes  to  think  it  desirable  that  there  should  be  different 
schools  of  philosophy  to  suit  different  temperaments,  and  to 
prefer  Stoicism  for  himself,  as  the  manliest;  because  all 
schools  practically  recommended  very  much  the  same  course 
of  behavior,  while  the  Stoics  professed  most  confidence  in  the 
sufficiency  of  their  recommendations.  No  philosophy  under- 
took to  guarantee  its  disciples  against  the  undesirable  acci- 
dents of  life  ;  but  Stoicism  undertook  to  prove  that  they  were 
not  real  evils,  and  the  conviction  might  be  bracing  or  consol- 
ing when  they  could  not  be  honorably  avoided.  Not  that 
Seneca  asserts  the  absolute  indifference  of  prosperity  and 
adversity;  in  his  early  writings  he  dwells  by  choice  on  the 
glory  which  is  only  to  be  won  by  difficult  heroism,  on  the  need 
that  every  courageous  nature  will  feet  to  prove  its  strength,  on 
the  glory  and  gladness  of  God  in  beholding  of  what  the  lesser 
spirits  which  have  communion  with  his  are  capable.  It  is 
quite  of  a  piece  with  the  rest  of  the  discussion  of  such  sub- 
jects in  Seneca  that  he  expects  his  readers  to  be  edified  by 
the  example  of  gladiators  who  were  disappointed  if  kept  long 
without  a  chance  of  being  killed. 

Later  on,  in  the  letters  to  Lucilius  and  the  essay  ^De  Otio 
Sapientis,'  there  is  another  feeling:  the  wise  man  will  always 
rejoice  in  any  call  to  exercise  his  virtue ;  but  there  are  calls 
of  different  kinds,  and  it  is  permissible  to  prefer  a  call  to  the 
virtue  which  is  least  laborious ;  for  in  prosperity  virtue  is  shown 
by  self-control,  which  is  easier  than  the  efforts  which  are  re- 
quired in  adversity.  This  casuistry  reminds  us  of  the  better 
aspects  of  the  casuistry  which  Pascal  criticised  without  much 
study,  with  a  little  carelessness  of  the  facts  of  an  old  and  com- 
plex society.  In  such  a  society  it  is  difficult  to  get  many 
people  capable  of  large  practical  success  to  move  fiir  from  the 
conventional  standard  of  action :  if  so,  it  is  somethins:  gained 
to  get  them  to  conform  to  it  in  a  higher  than  the  conventional 


8 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


temper,  which  is  what  Pascal's  adversaries  meant  by  their  doc- 
trine  of  directing  the  intention— a  doctrine  which,  with  other 
phraseology,  is  as  familiar  to  Epictetus  as  to  Seneca.  This  may 
serve  as  an  explanation  of  the  contrast,  which  at  first  appears 
so  glaring,  between  Seneca's  ethical  fervor  and  his  political 
career.  There  is  no  reason  to  think  that  he  had  to  do  much, 
if  any,  violence  to  his  conscience  in  his  position  as  Nero's 
minister:  he  thought  more  of  the  good  he  did  than  of  the  evil 
he  condoned.  He  had  been  used  to  having  his  sense  of 
personal  dignity  offended  from  his  first  connection  with  the 
court,  when  he  was  put  in  charge  of  Nero's  education,  and 
reconciled  himself  to  the  trial  as  one  of  the  things  that  are 
frequent  in  life.  After  all,  he  seems  to  think  that  there  is  very 
little  more  to  be  required  than  usefulness  and  fearlessness. 

The  ho?icstiu}i  which  is  so  prominent  in  Cicero  has  retired 
into  the  background  with  Seneca:  the  habitual  sense  of  look- 
ing well  in  men's  eyes,  respecting  one's  self  and  being  respect- 
ed, counts  for  little  in  his  scheme  of  life:  self-applause  at  the- 
abiding  victory  over  the  world  seems  to  be  part  of  the  happi- 
ness of  the  wise  man,  and  the  enthusiasm  of  great  moments 
seems  to  be  the  portion  of  all  who  are  sincere.     Cut  Seneca 
is  aware  that  self-complacency  is  dangerous  to  moral  progress, 
and  is  too  much   tormented   by  introspection   to  be   much 
tempted  to  it.   He  begins  his  treatise  on  "Mental  Tranquillity" 
by  a  piece  of  self-accusation.     When  he  sees  the  splendor  of 
the  world,  he  finds  it  difficult  to  keep  to  his  ideal  of  simplicity; 
he  is  dazzled,  and  finds  it  easier  to  rouse  his  spirit  to  resist 
temptation  than  his  eyes.    When  he  resolves  to  keep  himself 
to  himself,  to  do  nothing  for  the  judgment  of  others,  he  will 
occupy  himself  with  instructive  writing,  which  exacts  less  la- 
bor than  what  is  meant  to  be  immortal ;  but  even  here  his 
infirmity  besets  him.     ''  As  soon  as  the  mind  is  lifted  up  with 
the  greatness  of  its  thought,  its  ambition  runs  loose  ;  it  pants 
for  a  higher  speech  to  match  its  higher  spirit,  and  the  lan- 
guage mounts  to  the  dignity  of  the  subject.     Then  I  forget 
my  rule  and  my  chastened  judgment:  I  am  borne  aloft,  a'lid 
my  words  are  no  longer  mine."  * 

'  "  De  Tranquillitate  Aniinae,"  i.  adfinem. 


SENECA. 

He  holds  that  there  is  no  danger  in  his  state  of  unrest :  he 
compares  it  to  the  unsteadiness  of  the  nerves  of  convalescents, 
and  apparently  considers  the  malady  general.    Those  are  best 
off  who  profess  nothing,  and  look  down  upon  everything;  they 
have  not  to  keep  a  character  which  they  hardly  care  for,  and 
are  ashamed  to  give  up.    Others  are  always  changing,  alVays 
best  pleased  with  what  they  were  doing  a  little  while  ago; 
others,  again,  change  till  they  are  tired,  and  only  settle  down 
to  whatever  they  happen  to  be   doing  when   they  are   old; 
others  are  too  laz)^,  not  too  resolute,  to  change ;  they  live  not 
as  they  choose,  but  as  they  happen  to  have  begun  living.    All 
these  are  forms  of  one  vice,  with  one  end— discontent.    "  This 
arises  from  an  ill-tempered  mind  and  fearfulness  of  desire,  or  ill- 
success  therein,  when  men  dare  less  than  they  covet,  or  come 
short  of  what  they  seek,  and  so  lose  their  balance  on  a  hope,  and 
always  are  unstable  and  in  suspense.    While  they  are  waiting 
and  hoping  they  teach  themselves  and  force  themselves  to 
everything  that  is  hard  and  shameful ;  and,  when  they  have 
no  reward  for  their  labor,  they  are  tormented  by  their  unprof- 
itable disgrace  ;  and  even  then  lament,  not  that  their  choice 
was  shameful,  but  that  it  was  barren.     Then  comes  regret  of 
old  undertakings  and  fears  of  new;  and  they  feel  three'^things 
creeping  over  them— the  unrest  of  a  mind  which  finds  no 
way  open,  since  it  can  neither  command  nor  fulfil  its  desires, 
and  the  slow  pace  of  an  undeveloped  life,  and  the  rust  of  a 
spirit  sinking  into  lethargy  among  disappointed  purposes." 
And  outward  rest  only  aggravates  the  evil ;  they  have  no  re- 
sources within.     "They  complain  of  being  unemployed,  and 
their  envy  is  the  bitterest  enemy  of  others  who  are  thriving. 
They  would  have  all  men  pulled  down,  since  they  have  not 
been  able  to  come  to  the  front  themselves,  and  so,  out  of  dis- 
gust at  successes  of  others  and  despair  of  their  own,  their 
mind  waxes  wroth  with  fortune,  and  complains  of  the  dmes, 
and  withdraws  into  a  corner  to  brood  upon  its  own  affliction' 
For  the  sores  of  the  mind  are  like  those  of  the  body— they 
Itch  to  be  handled,  though  it  keeps  them  from  healing."' 
Then  Seneca  changes  the  subject  without  letting  us  or  himself 

'  "  De  Tranquillitate  Animae,"  ii. 


lO 


LATIN-  LITERATURE. 


■» 

1 


SENECA. 


II 


quite  know  it :  he  goes  off  to  the  ordinary  innocent  restless- 
ness that  can  attempt  to  relieve  itself  by  travelling,  and 
remarks  shrewdly  on  the  fancifulness  that  can  turn  from  the 
dainty  trimness  of  Campania  (which  was  then  all  farms  or 
gardens)  to  the  wild  forest  pastures  of  the  far  south,  where 
the  solitude  was  relieved  by  the  romantic  stateliness  of  the 
deserted  and  unruined  cities  of  Magna  Graecia. 

Then  he  comes  back  to  Lucretius's  observation  that  even 
travel  palls,  since  no  man  can  fly  from  himself,  and  returns 
to  the  high  tragic  vein.     "  We  are  too  weak  to  bear  labor  or 
pleasure :  we  are  past  serving  our  own  turn  or  other  men's. 
This  has  driven  not  a  few  to  death,  because  they  had  changed 
their  aims  so  often  that  they  found  themselves  coming  back 
to  the  same  as  before,  and  had  left  no  room  for  anything  new. 
They  began  to  despise  their  life  and  the  very  universe,  and 
they  feel  the  sting  of  self-indulgence  run  mad.      'Is  it  to  be 
always  the  same  ?'  "    Elsewhere  Seneca  quotes  the  same  say- 
ing with  approval,  as  if  everything  were  good  which  makes 
men  willing  to  die.     After  the  disease  comes  the  remedy- 
unselfish  exertion;  and  here  we  see  that   Seneca   has   been 
copying  Athenodorus,  who  recommends  public  life  in  theory, 
and,  despairing  of  the  republic,  falls  back  upon  a  recommen- 
dation of  the  exercise  of  moral  influence  in  private.      Seneca 
puts   his  own  eloquence  at  the  service  of  Athenodorus,  in 
order  perhaps  to  have  the  credit  of  refuting  a  worthy  antago- 
nist.    He  adds  something  to  the  statement  of  the  view  he  is 
going  to  correct.     It  is  important  that  the  retired  sage  should 
work  in  earnest  at  his  own  improvement  and  that  of  others,  or 
he  will  waste  his  time  on  outward  trifles,  putting  up  buildings 
and  pulling  down,  banking  out  the  sea,  and  carrying  water  up- 
hill.    The  truth  is,  Athenodorus  gave  up  the  game  too  soon  : 
if  there  is  no  room  for  the  sage  in  the  army,  he  may  look  to 
civil  office :  if  he  must  remain  in  private  life,  he  may  be  an 
orator;  if  forced  to  silence,  he  may  still  stand  by  his  friends 
in  court;  if  forced  to  forsake  the  forum,  he  may  still  be  good 
company  at  table  and  at  play.     Rome  is  not  all  the  world  : 
wherever  you  are  banished  you  may  be  at  home  and  of  use.' 
Besides,  a  private  Roman  who  cannot  put  himself  forward  in 


any  way  may  still  be  a  good  soldier  of  the  state.  "If  he  is 
forced  into  the  rear  rank,  still  there  he  can  shout  and  exhort 
and  set  a  soldier's  example  and  show  a  soldier's  spirit.  What- 
ever happens,  you  ought  to  keep  your  stand,  help  with  your 
war-cry ;  if  your  mouth  is  stopped,  keep  your  stand  and  help 
with  your  silence.  A  good  citizen  always  does  good  service: 
to  see  him,  to  hear  him,  does  good;  his  look  and  gesture,  his 
silent  steadfastness,  his  very  going  by,  does  good.  The  ex- 
ample of  one  who  keeps  quiet  well  has  its  use.'"  And  then 
comes  the  example  of  Socrates  under  the  Thirty,  without  any 
mention  of  his  resistance  to  an  illegal  order  of  theirs.  Seneca 
goes  on  to  his  execution  under  the  restored  democracy  as  a 
proof  that  all  circumstances  are  equally  favorable  or  unfavor- 
able to  the  wise  man  ;  and  that  as  they  help  or  hinder  him,  he 
will  expand  to  his  full  dimensions  or  draw  in  ;  but,  either  way, 
he  will  be  moving,  not  rusting  in  the  bondage  of  fear. 

Among  other  remedies  of  discontent,  Seneca  mentions 
friendship  and  economy,  which  he  bases  upon  a  deliberate 
adherence  to  old  fashions,  a  preference  for  use  rather  than  for 
ornament,  and  the  avoidance  of  unnecessary  business.  Here 
Seneca  gets  into  confusion  with  his  eclecticism :  he  sees  the 
force  of  Democritus's  recommendation  to  keep  free  from  busi- 
ness, but  he  is  too  much  of  a  Stoic  to  refuse  business  which 
had  a  claim  upon  him,  or  to  contemplate  arranging  his  life  so 
as  to  be  free  from  many  claims.  Consequently  he  shuts  his 
eyes  to  the  point  of  Democritus's  precept,  and  represents  it  as 
a  protest  against  the  useless  round  of  salutation  and  "that 
worst  of  vices,"  an  itching  ear  and  inquiry  into  everything 
public  and  secret,  and  the  knowledge  of  many  things  which  it 
is  not  safe  to  tell  nor  safe  to  hear.  He  escapes  into  some  ed- 
ifying remarks  upon  the  impossibility  of  disconcerting  the 
wise  man.  who  is  prepared  for  whatever  can  happen  to  him. 
And  so  he  will  be  free  from  attachment  to  his  plans  and  meet 
everything  cheerfully,  like  Julius  Canus,  who  received  a  sen- 
tence of  death  under  Caligula  with  thanks,  and  was  playing 
chess  when  summoned  to  execution,  and  discoursed  by  the 
way  on  the  question  whether  the  soul  would  be  conscious  of 
its  departure  from  the  body. 

'  "  De  Tranquillitate  Animae,"  iii. 


12 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


SENECA. 


13 


But  there  are  impersonal  sources  of  trouble  :  Seneca  sees 
all  that  is  to  be  said  for  pessimism,  the  only  resource  is  to 
laugh  at  it  all.  Even  the  misfortunes  of  the  good  are  not 
worth  a  tear :  if  they  bear  them  well,  what  need  to  pity  them  ? 
if  they  pity  themselves,  they  deserve  no  pity.  And,  in  order 
to  maintain  this  cheerful  temper,  we  must  amuse  ourselves, 
like  Cato  and  Scipio  and  Asinius  Pollio.  Apparently  Seneca 
agrees  with  Plato  that  it  is  well  to  drink  occasionally  up  to 
or  beyond  the  verge  of  sobriety  ;  partly  because  the  younger 
Cato  (an  exceedingly  dull  person)  took  that  means  of  putting 
himself  into  high  spirits,  and  partly  because  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  Greek  authority  for  connecting  madness  and  inspira- 
tion. Here  Seneca  winds  up  abruptly  with  a  caution  that 
diligent  practice  is  more  important  than  precept. 

The  treatise  on  the  "  Shortness  of  Life  "  is  a  sort  of  pendant 
to  that  on  "Tranquillity  of  Mind."  It  is  full  of  earnestness, 
which  many  will  find  disproportioned,  drawn  from  the  familiar 
topic  that  the  shortness  of  life  makes  it  a  very  important  ques- 
tion how  it  is  spent.  Granted  that  life  is  important,  it  is  easy 
to  prove  that  it  is  more  important  for  being  short,  and  not 
difficult  to  maintain  that  it  is  too  important  to  be  wasted  o\\ 
any  or  all  of  the  things  for  which  men  naturally  and  spon- 
taneously care.  The  particular  way  in  which  Seneca  puts 
the  doctrine  is  that  life  is  too  short  and  too  uncertain  to  be 
spent,  according  to  a  fashionable  Roman  theory,  as  a  prep- 
aration for  an  easy  and  luxurious  old-age.  When  will  you 
live,  Seneca  asks,  if  not  now.?  and  waxes  eloquent  on  all  the 
business  which  keeps  people  from  realizing  the  present  and 
recalling  the  past,  while  all  their  desire  is  taken  up  in  an 
abortive  effort  to  forestall  the  future.  He  glorifies  the  sage 
whose  perfect  self-possession  makes  him  as  God  ;  for  to  him 
the  past  and  the  present  and  the  future  are  united  in  every 
moment  of  his  contemplation.  This  is  the  reward  of  givino- 
his  whole  attention  to  each  hour,  and  doing  nothing  that  he 
would  not  think  worth  doing  forever:  but  this  felicity  he 
shares  with  the  crowd  of  plain,  wholesome,  commonplace 
folk  who  have  no  plans  and  no  aspirations,  and  live  content- 
edly from  one  day  to  another.    The  dilettante  was  the  typical 


man  of  leisure,  but  Seneca  sees  nothing  in  his  occupations 
but  undignified  fuss.  Yet  he  had  less  peace  than  some  "  who 
passed  their  days  in  arranging  Corinthian  bronzes  "  or  "  sorting 
droves  of  useless  slaves  by  colors  and  ages."  It  was  pleasant 
to  watch  them  brawling,  and  pretend  that  one  was  superin- 
tending their  exercises.  A  man  occupied  with  his  toilet, 
who  "  would  rather  have  the  state  in  confusion  than  his  hair 
disarranged,"  *  is  not  so  much  more  unreasonable  than  a  phi- 
losopher who  would  rather  let  everything  go  wrong  than  risk 
liis  temper  in  rebuking  it.  The  philosopher  is  occupied  with 
perfection,  and  so  is  the  amateur  who  nurses  his  voice:  if 
the  voice  is  best  when  left  alone,  as  Seneca  says,  most  ascet- 
ics find  that  the  same  holds  of  the  temper.  It  is  no  reproach 
to  anybody  to  give  good  dinners,  or  to  train  the  waiters  to  be- 
have better  than  the  guests.  What  seems  to  provoke  Seneca 
most  of  all  is  the  useless  learning  which  had  become  fashion- 
able at  Rome,  which  consisted  in  a  mere  monoria  icchnica  of 
superficial  trivialities ;  as,  Who  was  the  first  to  induce 
Romans  to  go  to  sea?  Who  was  the  first  to  exhibit  lions 
loose.?     Who  was  the  first  to  lead  elephants  in  triumph P""* 

All  the  time  which  is  given  to  this  information,  which  has 
no  eftect  upon  the  character,  is  so  much  lost  to  the  study  of 
philosophy,  and  all  the  time  that  is  spent  on  philosophy  is 
true  life.  It  is  a  great  privilege  to  be  adopted  at  will  into  a 
great  house,  and  take  not  only  its  name  but  its  heritage;  and 
it  should  seem  that,  in  Seneca's  judgment,  to  be  a  serious  phi- 
losopher of  any  school  is  all  that  is  required.  He  has  a  hearty 
dislike  to  the  pettifogging  logic  of  the  earlier  Stoics,  and 
spends  the  best  part  of  a  letter  to  Lucilius  on  refuting  an  un- 
lucky syllogism  of  Zeno  :^  a  drunken  man  is  not  trusted  with 
a  secret ;  a  good  man  is  trusted  with  a  secret ;  therefore  a 
good  man  is  not  drunken.  First  of  all,  he  scolds  Zeno  for 
saying  a  drunken  man  if  he  meant  a  drunkard,  and  then  he 
quotes  several  noted  drunkards  of  the  late  republic  and  the 
early  empire  who  held  high  office  and  knew  great  secrets  and 
kept  them.  In  the  letters  to  Lucilius  throughout  he  quotes 
Epicurus  by  preference,  because  Lucilius  supposed  himself  to 

>  "  De  Brevitate  Vitae,"  xii.  ^  Id.  xiii.  ^  Ep.  Ixxxiii. 


14 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


SENECA. 


be  an  Epicurean,  and  because  Seneca  was  delighted  to  prove 
that  Epicurus  was  as  unworldly  and  as  abstinent  as  any  of 
the  rest,  though  every  now  and  then  he  insists  that  the  Stoics 
are  always  at  the  level  which  Epicurus  only  reaches  some- 
times.     Another  attraction  of  Epicurus  may  have  been  his 
retired  life;  for  the  love  of  retirement  certainly  grew  upon 
Seneca  :  he  says  that  he  never  returns  from  company  or  busi- 
ness in  as  good  a  frame  of  mind  as  he  entered  upon  it.     He 
urges  Lucilius,  as  the  first  step  to  improvement,  to  shake  him- 
self loose  from  the  cares  of  this  world,  and  not  to  believe  that 
he  is  entangled  against  his  will  because  he  finds  the  entangle- 
ment irksome;  he  could  relieve  himself  at  once,  or  very  soon, 
if  he  could  only  renounce  the  objects  for  which  he  undertakes 
so  much  irksome  business.     He  rejoices  when  he  finds  that 
he  can  resist  distractions  himself,  when  he  can  lodge  near  the 
baths  and  not  be  disturbed  by  the  different  noises;  and  tri- 
umphs when  he  can  arrive  at  one  of  his  villas  and  simply  lie 
down  to  rest  from  his  journey  without  a  bath  and  a  shampoo. 
The  conception  of  progress  is  very  prominent ;  it  is  more  to 
him  than  it  could  be  to  a  strict  Stoic,  who  consistently  divided 
the  world  into  the  two  classes,  the  wise  and  the  mad.     Of 
course  the  first  class  was  practically  non-existent,  and  the 
worldly  were  fond  of  dwelling  upon  the  weaknesses  and  in- 
consistencies of  the  classical  philosophers  whom  their  earnest 
disciples  wished  to  canonize.     We  see  traces  of  this  in  one 
of  the  most  interesting  episodes  of  the  correspondence  with 
Lucilius.     A  certain  Marcellinus  made  Lucilius  and  Seneca 
anxious  by  showing  increasing  signs  of  a  resolution  to  live 
for  the  world,  and  using  his  cleverness  to  disparage  philoso- 
phy.'    He  relieved  their  anxiety  by  suicide,  at  the  advice  of 
a  Stoic,  who  told  him  that  life  was  too  unimportant  to  be 
worth  the  anxiety  of  recovering  from  a  tedious  illness,  which 
would  require  a  long  and  troublesome  course  of  treatment ; 
and  advised  him  not  to  ask  one  of  his  slaves'  to  kill  him,  but 
to  abstain  from  food ;  which  he  did  for  three  days,  with  such 
^  Ep.  XX  ix. 

=*  It  would  have  been  difficult  for  the  slave  to  prove  that  he  had  orders 
and  was  justified  in  acting  on  them.     Ep;  Ixxvii. 


15 


effect  that  he  rather  enjoyed  the  sensation  of  dying  in  a  warm 
bath.  Seneca  supports  his  testimony  by  his  own  experience 
of  the  pleasure  of  fainting. 

There  are  not  many  such  pieces  of  realism  in  the  corre- 
spondence. Mostly  Seneca  is  enforcing  the  commonplaces 
of  his  school  or  clearing  up  little  puzzles  of  such  an  order  as 
this  :  whether  the  virtues  are  animals,  and,  if  so,  whether  each 
of  them  is  an  animal ;  whether  irrational  animals  have  a  sense 
of  the  harmony  of  their  own  nature,  which  he  decides  in  the 
affirmative  ;  whether  we  apprehend  the  chief  good  by  reason 
or  by  sense.  Although  Seneca  feels  very  strongly  that  phi- 
losophy is  to  be  practical,  and  not  a  mere  compendium  of  ab- 
stract truths,  he  is  always  entangling  himself  in  casuistry,  for 
scruples  grow  up  fast  when  people  insist  on  suppressing  the 
strongest  of  their  natural  impulses,  and  the  artificial  estimate 
of  life  on  which  the  Stoics  laid  so  much  stress  as  a  guide  to 
right  conduct  required  to  be  guarded  by  an  immense  appa- 
ratus of  distinctions.  Seneca  distrusts  his  own  weakness  too 
much  to  be  independent :  though  he  is  always  fretting  at  the 
bondage  of  system,  he  never  emancipates  his  favorite  concep- 
tion oi  Bona  Mens  from  the  paradoxical  trammels  of  Zeno  and 
Chrysippus.  He  is  fascinated,  besides,  by  the  liberal  side  of 
their  teaching.  He  is  delighted  to  recognize  the  brotherhood 
of  man  in  slaves,  which  was  a  more  important  chapter  in  Ro- 
man Stoicism  than  in  Greek,  because  the  Roman  Stoic  had, 
for  the  most  part,  a  large  household  of  slaves ;  and  it  was  a 
practical  question  whether  he  would  treat  them  as  members 
of  his  family,  or  keep  them  at  a  distance,  and  enforce  dis- 
cipline by  mechanical  severity. 

Another  side  of  Stoicism  which  Seneca  develops  with  great 
zeal  is  the  thought  of  the  God  within,  and  of  the  unity  between 
the  spirit  of  the  wise  and  the  spirit  of  the  Most  High,  who  in- 
habits the  world  and  embraces  it  within  his  own  beinir  ;  al- 
though  this  is  not  yet  so  prominent  as  in  Epictetus  and  ALircus 
Aurelius.  On  the  other  hand,  he  is  more  occupied  than  we 
have  reason  to  think  his  predecessors  were  with  the  physical 
side  of  philosophy.  He  seeks  communion  between  the  spirit 
of  man  and  the  higher  spirit  of  nature  in  knowledge  :  he  echoes 


i6 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


the  tone  of  Lucretius  in  this,  and  he  anticipates  the  modern 
sentiment  of  the  bounty  of  nature  when  he  bids  us  despise 
earthly  riches  that  we  may  be  like  the  gods  (the  spirits  of  the 
stars  and  the  personified  forces  of  nature),  who  possess  noth- 
ing and  give  all  things.     It  is  a  sign  of  discontent  with  his 
school  that  his  seven  books  of  "  Natural  Questions  "  are  based 
upon  Aristotle ;  and  even  when  the  Stoics  are  right  in  their 
isolated  opinions,  he  shrinks   from  following  them.      So  he 
narrates  with  patronizing  scepticism  a  shrewd  suggestion  that 
the  cold  winds  of  spring  in  the  south  are  due  to  the  break-up 
of  ice  in  the  north,  and  the  sound  observation  that  half-melted 
snow  chills  the  feet  more  than  snow  that  is  crisp  and  hard. 
And  the  whole  tone  of  the  book  is  rather  sceptical.     The 
author  has  no  steady  hold  upon  the  elementary  truths  of  phys- 
ical science ;  telling  us,  for  instance,  as  one  of  the  glories  of 
his  study,  that  the  earth  is  part  of  the  subject  of  astronomy, 
which  has  to  discuss  whether  the  earth  is  round  or  flat,  whether 
there  is  air  all  round,  and,  if  so,  what  keeps  it  from  falling. 
All  these  questions  are  decided  rightly,  but  the  strange  thing 
is  that  they  should  have  to  be  asked.    Seneca  is  no  worse  than 
others:  the  elder  Pliny  and  Tacitus,  not  realizing  the  effect 
of  the  inclination  of  the  ecliptic  to  the  equator,  discuss  the 
long  summer  days  and  the  long   winter   nights  of  northern 
latitudes  in  language  that  leaves   it  uncertain  whether  they 
still  held   fast  their  knowledge   that  the   earth  was  round. 
Seneca  is  beyond  his  age  in  his  superb  faith  in  the  possibili- 
ties of  science :  here  at  any  rate  he  joins  hands  with  Bacon. 
He  feels  strongly  that  the  human  mind  has  never  had  fair 
play;  that  it  is  only  in  a  civilized  community  that  science  can 
advance  ;  and  that,  in  the  civilized  community  in  which  he  was 
living,  intellectual  energy  was  absorbed  in  material  interests 
and  frivolous  curiosity.     Seneca  is  quite  free  from  the  Stoic 
passion   for  the   miraculous.      He   reproduces,  for  instance, 
Aristotle's  optical  explanation  of  the  curious  phenomenon  of 
seeing  one's  self  in  the  open  air,  which  in  Germany  led  to  so 
much  gross  mysticism  about  Doppelgdnger  and  the  like.     On 
the  other  hand,  Seneca  is  given  to  moralize  in  season  and  out 
of  season:  he  has  no  conception  of  disinterested  knowledge, 


\ 


SENECA. 


17 


except  that  he  protests  against  science  being  subordinated  to 
industrialism.     He  is  not  given  to  explanations  based  upon 
an  optimistic  teleology,  which  is  worth  notice,  as  in  Cicero's 
treatise  "  De  Natura  Deorum  "  the  Stoic  builds  very  much 
upon  "the  argument  from  Design."     But,  although  Aristotle 
gave  final  causes  a  large  place  in  theory,  he  and  his  school 
generally  preferred  the  chemical  explanations  of  concrete  phe- 
nomena :  consequently  Seneca,  when  he  wishes  to  be  edifying, 
has  to  bring  in  the  edification  arbitrarily.    For  instance,  in  the 
midst  of  a  dissertation  upon  optics,  we  have  a  very  bitter  and 
outspoken  declamation  against  a  voluptuary  w'ho  had  a  room 
fitted  up  WMth  magnitying  mirrors  to  enjoy  himself  in,  besides 
much  sage  reflection  as  to  what  the  proper  use  of  mirrors  can 
be;  it  is  quite  clear  that  the  toilet  can  have  no  place  in  them: 
it  is  shocking  that  a  man  should  comb  his  hair,  or  trim  his 
beard,  or,  worst  of  all,  pluck  out  the  superfluous  hair  on  his 
face  at  a  mirror.     On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  a  <rood  thins: 
that  we  should  be  acquainted  with  our  own  appearance,  and 
it  is  clear  (though  Seneca  thinks  it  necessary  to  prove  it  from 
the  poets)  that,  without  natural  mirrors,  at  any  rate  this  would 
be  impossible.    So,  again,  the  discussion  of  snow  and  ice  is  in- 
terrupted by  a  declamation  against  the  fxshionable  passion 
for  iced  wine  and  iced  water.      Here  the  rhetoric  and  the 
science  have  a  sort  of  connection  :    the  paradox  that  men 
should  wish  to  heat  themselves  with  wine  and  then  cool  them- 
selves with  snow  is  like  the  paradox  that  snow  should  be 
colder  than  WMter,  when  it  seems  to  be  a  compound  of  the 
colder  element  water  with  the  warmer  element  air.^ 

The  subject  of  electricity  was  disproportionately  important 
to  a  Roman,  and  Seneca's  treatment  of  it  is  in  consequence 
rather  perverse.  Aristotle  and  Nigidius  Figulus  are  mixed 
up  in  equal  measure.     The  classification  of  different  sorts  of 

'"Nat.  QuDC-st."  IV.  xii.,  xiii.  The  paradox  was  perfectly  legitimate  at 
the  time  :  it  was  observed  that  water  expanded  in  taking  the  form  of  snow 
or  ice,  and  this  was  attributed  to  the  absorption  of  air ;  while  air  was  set 
down  as  warmer  than  water,  because  water  always  feels  colder  when  the 
flesh  is  thrust  into  it,  and  because  heat  converts  fluids  into  vapors,  mixing 
them,  as  it  then  seemed,  with  air. 


i8 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


thunderbolts,  and  the  meaning  to  be  attached  to  them,  inter- 
rupts the  speculation  as  to  their  origin,  and  the  discussion 
would  be  measfre  if  continuous.  On  the  other  hand,  earth- 
quakes  are  treated  in  quite  a  scientific  spirit :  the  writer  knows 
the  importance  of  water  in  producing  these  and  the  kindred 
phenomenon  of  volcanoes.  Another  point  where  Seneca  has 
the  highest  merit  a  literary  writer  on  scientific  subjects  can 
have,  is  that  of  being  in  advance  of  the  current  scientific  tra- 
dition of  his  time  on  the  important  question  of  comets.  Aris- 
totle apparently  had  mixed  them  up,  rather  unfortunately,  with 
meteors;  and  it  is  clear  from  Pliny  that  the  question  w^as  very 
much  as  he  had  left  it.  Seneca  argues  clearly  and  forcibly 
that  comets  belong  to  the  eternal  constitution  of  the  world.* 
His  merit  is  greater,  because  the  subject  was  one  on  which 
the  Stoics  were  peculiarly  perverse  :  they  wished  to  explain 
comets  away  into  atmospheric  phenomena,  like  the  "  torches 
and  trumpets  and  beams  and  other  signs  in  heaven,"  which 
we  should  now  think  were  probably  partly  due  to  the  aurora 
borealis  and  partly  to  excited  imaginations.  Seneca  observes 
that  comets  are  more  permanent  than  any  purely  atmospheric 
phenomenon :  and  as  to  the  theory  that  a  comet  is  a  flame 
burning  its  way  gradually  through  the  air,  such  flames  are 
quite  inadmissible  :  and  besides,  if  we  could  imagine  them,  we 
should  find  them  always  burning  downwards ;  but  a  comet  is 
no  nearer  the  earth,  where  air  is  densest,  when  it  is  lowest 
down  in  heaven.  Besides,  no  fire  burns  in  a  circle ;  and, 
whether  all  comets  move  in  a  circle  or  not,  two  which  had 
been  observed  in  Seneca's  own  time  did.  The  objection  that 
the  shape  of  the  comets  is  unlike  that  of  the  planets  really 
rests  upon  our  ignorance ;  so,  too,  does  the  objection,  which 
at  first  sight  looks  scientific,  that  their  paths  lie  outside  the 
zodiac.  Seneca  observes  that  the  paths  of  the  planets,  which 
from  the  geocentric  poiut  of  view  lie  within  the  ecliptic,  do  not 
all  lie  on  one  plane;  and  it  is  really  arbitrary  to  think  that 
heaven  is  pathless  in  all  regions  but  one,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
irreverence,  upon  which  Seneca  is  lengthy  and  eloquent,  of 
setting  limits  to  the  power  of  divine  beings  like  the  heavenly 

'  *'  Nat.  Quaest."  IV.  vii.,  xxii. 


SENECA. 


19 


bodies.  It  is  too  soon,  according  to  Seneca,  to  expect  a  de- 
finitive solution  of  the  subject.  Greece  had  only  counted  the 
stars  and  named  the  constellations  1500  years  (as  he  reck- 
oned) before  his  time.  There  were  many  parts  of  the  world 
still  where  the  sky  was  only  known  by  sight,  and  where  the 
cause  of  such  a  simple  phenomenon  as  the  eclipse  of  the 
moon,  or  its  waxing  and  waning,  was  still  unknown.  The 
whole  of  one  life  would  be  very  short  to  study  the  heavens, 
and  few,  if  any,  consecrate  even  half  a  life  to  knowledge. 
Consequently,  many  generations  will  have  to  leave  much  for 
posterity,  which  will  wonder  at  last  at  our  ignorance  of  the 
open  secret. 

Even  such  a  simple  question  as  the  apparent  retrograde 
motion  of  the  planets  had  only  been  recently  solved  when 
Seneca  wrote.  Characteristically,  he  does  not  give  the  solu- 
tion :  he  tells  us  eloquently  why  there  must  be  a  solution,  and 
then  lays  down  that  the  appearance  of  slowness  is  laid  upon 
them  by  their  meeting  the  sun  and  by  the  nature  of  paths  and 
circles  so  arranged  as  to  mislead  the  looker-on  at  certain  mo- 
ments.' A  reader  who  understood  the  theory  of  the  planetary 
movements  received  in  the  first  century  w^ould  be  able  to  de- 
tect an  allusion  to  it,  though  perhaps  with  some  doubt  as  to 
whether  the  author  could  have  given  a  clear  exposition  of  it. 
A  reader  who  knows  the  heliocentric  theory  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem no  better  than  Seneca  knew  the  geocentric  will  be  struck 
by  the  contrast  between  the  painstaking  explanations  of  Lu- 
cretius and  Manilius,  who  wrote  in  verse,  and  the  ruthless  way 
in  which  the  prose  of  Seneca  sacrifices  everything  to  terse- 
ness. Not  a  sentence  is  obscure,  but  the  subject  often  is ; 
whenever,  in  fact,  it  is  not  possible  to  pack  the  necessary  con- 
ceptions into  epigrams.  When  epigrams  will  do  for  explana- 
tion, Seneca  does  not  stint  them.  His  account  of  a  deluge  is 
quite  clear,  if  not  exactly  adequate  :  "  Nothing  is  difficult  to 
Nature,  especially  when  she  makes  haste  to  an  end.  To  be- 
gin things  she  makes  scant  use  of  her  strength,  and  ekes  out 
with  growth  too  slow  to  trace :  it  comes  suddenly  upon  de- 
struction, rushing  with  full  force.     What  a  long  time  it  needs 

^  "  Nat.  Quiest."  VII.  xxv.,  xxvi. 


20 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


SENECA. 


21 


for  an  infant  who  is  conceived  to  come  to  the  birth!  how 
much  labor  to  rear  it  while  tender !  what  diligent  nurture  to 
bring  the  body  to  youthful  prime  !  What  a  trifle  it  is  to  undo ! 
Cities  are  built  up  through  an  age,  undone  in  an  hour.  Ashes 
are  made  in  a  moment ;  a  forest  grows  slowly.  All  things 
stand  and  flourish,  thanks  to  great  diligence;  swiftly  and  sud- 
denly they  fall  out.  The  least  sway  or  change  in  this  settled 
order  of  nature  is  enough  for  the  destruction  of  mortals.  There- 
fore, when  that  inevitable  hour  arrives,  manifold  fate  stirs  up 
second  causes ;  so  great  a  change  is  not  accomplished  with- 
out a  convulsion  of  the  universe,  according  to  an  opinion  of 
Fabianus,  among  others.  First  rains  fall  out  of  measure,  and 
heaven  is  under  the  gloom  of  storm-clouds  without  a  ray  of 
sunshine  :  the  clouds  hang  without  a  break,  and  are  bred  of 
moisture  and  thick  darkness,  with  no  winds  to  dry  them.  So 
the  fields  are  tainted;  the  plants  wither  as  they  grow  up,  and 
bear  no  fruit.  All  that  is  sown  with  the  hand  is  marred,  and 
marsh  herbage  spreads  over  the  plains.  Soon  even  the  strong- 
er feel  the  hurt ;  for  when  their  roots  are  loosened  shrubs  and 
vines  fall  down ;  not  a  bush  can  hold  the  soil,  which  is  soft  and 
fluid ;  anon  it  can  bear  no  corn  nor  glad  pastures  for  the 
waters ;  men  are  in  distress  for  famine,  and  stretch  out  their 
hands  for  the  diet  of  ancient  days.  So  oak  and  ilex  are  shaken, 
and  every  tree  upon  the  hills  that  stood  fast  by  the  strength 
of  the  rocks.  Buildings  shake  and  soak ;  the  foundations 
sink  as  the  water  makes  its  way  right  under  them ;  all  the 
ground  is  turned  to  a  pool.  It  is  vain  to  try  to  stay  up  what 
totters  to  its  fall ;  for  every  foundation  is  laid  upon  a  slip- 
pery place,  and  upon  muddy  ground  is  no  stability.  After  the 
storms  descend  yet  more  vehemently,  and  the  snows  which 
are  heaped  with  mire  are  melted,  a  torrent  rolling  down  the 
highest  mountain  sweeps  away  the  woods,  which  have  no  more 
root,  and  rolls  along  the  rocks,  which  are  loosened  from  the 
overthrow  of  their  foundations.  It  washes  farmsteads  away, 
and  bears  off  flocks  of  sheep  in  their  midst,  and  first  tears 
down  the  lesser  buildings,  which  its  passage  sweeps  before  it, 
and  gathers  strength  to  break  upon  what  is  greater.  It  drags 
down  cities  and  peoples  entangled  in  their  own  walls,  won- 


■41 


dering  whether  to  bewail  their  shipwreck  or  their  ruin  :  so 
suddenly  comes  down  the  water  to  crush  and  drown  at  once ; 
then  it  goes  forward,  in  a  manner,  and  grows  by  the  torrents 
it  sweeps  into  itself.  Last  of  all,  it  overflows,  glorious  and 
laden  with  a  great  overthrow  of  nations. 

"  Rivers  of  their  own  nature  are  monstrous  things,  and 
when  tempests  sweep  them  up  they  leave  their  beds.  What 
think  you  of  Rhone  or  Rhine  or  Danube,  that  have  the  course 
of  a  torrent  even  in  their  proper  channel,  when  they  overflow 
and  make  themselves  new  banks,  cleave  the  ground,  and  quit 
their  bed  withal.^  With  what  headlong  speed  they  roll,  when 
the  Rhine,  as  he  flows  over  the  plains,  does  not  faint  or  slack 
for  all  that  space,  but  fills  up  wide  bounds  as  though  narrow 
for  his  waters  :  when  the  Danube  no  more  frets  the  roots  or 
slopes  of  the  mountains,  but  alarms  their  topmost  crests, 
bringing  with  him  the  soaking  flanks  of  mountains  and  crags 
he  has  overthrown,  and  headlands  of  great  regions  which,  as 
their  foundation  gave  v/ay,  have  parted  from  the  shore  !  Then, 
finding  no  issue  (for  his  gross  overflow  has  choked  up  all),  he 
turns  him  round  again  and  overwhelms  in  one  vortex  a  mighty 
compass  of  countries  and  cities.  And  still  the  storms  endure  : 
heaven  grows  heavier,  as  evil  gathers  upon  evil  by  delay. 
What  was  a  cloud  is  night,  a  horrible  dreadful  night,  shot 
through  with  light  of  terror.  For  lightnings  are  flashing  thick, 
and  tempests  stirring  the  sea.  Then  the  sea  also,  being  en- 
larged with  the  swellings  of  the  rivers,  is  straitened  in  him- 
self, and  ready  to  remove  his  shores  :  his  own  bounds  cannot 
contain  him,  but  the  torrents  will  not  let  him  forth,  and  drive 
his  billows  backward  ;  and  yet  most  part  thereof  is  banked  up 
into  a  pool,  as  though  their  mouths  restrained  them,  and  the 
fields  are  changed  to  the  fashion  of  one  great  lake.  Now  all 
that  is  in  sight  is  buried  under  water.  Every  swelling  is  hid- 
den in  the  deep,  and  unfathomable  abysses  are  everywhere 

only  upon  the  topmost  heights  of  the  mountains  there  are 
shallows.  To  those  highest  regions,  in  such  seasons,  they  fled 
with  wives  and  children,  and  drove  their  flocks  before  them. 
The  wretches  had  no  commerce,  no  communication  :  all  ways 
were  cut  to  and  fro,  since  whatever  lay  lower,  that  was  filled 


'ii 


t 


22 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


SENECA, 


23 


by  the  waves.  The  leavings  of  the  human  race  clung  to  the 
loftiest  points  :  in  the  extremity  they  were  come  to,  their  only 
comfort  was  that  their  terror  was  turned  into  astonishment. 
Wonder  left  no  room  for  fear;  even  grief  had  no  more  place. 
For  grief  loses  all  his  powder  upon  him  who  is  wretched  beyond 
sense  of  evil.  And  so  the  mountains  are  lifted  up  like  islands, 
and  are  numbered  with  the  scattered  Cyclades,  according  to 
the  excellent  saying  of  the  most  ingenious  poet,  who  still  keeps 
to  the  grandeur  of  the  business  when  he  says, 

Tlien  all  was  sea,  a  sea  that  lacked  a  shore  (Ov.  "  Met."  i.  292), 

if  only  he  had  not  brought  down  the  high  taste  of  his  wit 
and  his  matter  to  childish  trivialities — 

Tawny  lions  ride 
The  waves  where  wolf  and  Iamb  swim  side  by  side  (lb.  304). 

It  is  a  thing  hardly  sober  to  wax  wanton  when  all  the  earth  is 
swallowed  up."  '  Some  might  think  Ovid's  conceit  about  ani- 
mals forgetting  their  natural  enmities  in  a  common  peril  no 
worse  than  Seneca's  own  about  shipwreck  and  ruin,  or  the 
image  which  he  copies  from  Vergil,  turning  it  into  a  conceit  in 
the  process,  of  the  flood  that  sweeps  away  cattle  and  fold. 
However,  Seneca  will  not  allow  a  poet  to  think  of  dumb  ani- 
mals at  such  a  moment,  and  insists  that  it  is  impossible  to 
swim  in  a  flood.  Seneca  himself  forgets,  in  rebuking  Ovid, 
that  his  elaborate  description  is  a  sufficient  expansion  of  the 
theory  plainly  enunciated  at  starting,  and  returns  from  the 
digression  to  state  the  theory  anew. 

Besides  repeating  what  has  gone  before,  he  elucidates  the 
way  in  which  the  sea,  having  a  spherical  surface,  can  easily 
overflow  the  earth,  especially  because  the  earth  is  able  to  melt 
away  into  moisture.  He  shows  his  philosophy  by  insisting 
that  there  is  nothing  abnormal  in  these  catastrophes;  that 
they  come  by  the  law  of  the  universe,  as  summer  and  winter 
come.  He  is  tempted  by  the  theory  of  Lerosus,  that  periodi- 
cal deluges  arrive  when  all  the  planets  are  in  Capricorn, 
which  is  plausible,  because  in  the  northern  hemisphere  the 

»  "Nat.  Quaes't."  III.  xxvii. 


weather  is  wettest  and  coldest  when  the  sun  is  in  Capricorn. 
For  the  same  reason,  when  the  sun  is  in  Cancer,  the  peri- 
odical conflagration  arrives.  But  his  faith  is  without  hope. 
"  The  license  of  the  waves  is  not  forever.  When  the  de- 
struction of  the  human  race  is  accomplished,  and  beasts  are 
destroyed  together,  into  whose  nature  men  had  been  trans- 
lated, earth  will  drink  up  the  waters  again ;  nature  will  con- 
strain the  sea  to  be  still,  or  rage  within  his  own  bounds;  ocean 
will  be  driven  from  our  habitations  to  his  own  secret  places. 
The  old  order  will  be  restored.  Every  living  creature  will  be 
born  anew ;  and  earth  shall  receive  the  gift  of  man,  knowing 
nothing  yet  of  guilt,  born  under  happier  stars.  But  they  too 
shall  onlv  abide  in  innocence  while  the  breed  is  new.  Nau^hti- 
ness  creeps  up  apace  ;  virtue  is  difficult  to  find,  and  craves  a 
ruler  or  guide  ;  vices  are  learned  even  without  a  master." ' 

Pliny  the  Younger  quotes  Seneca  as  one  of  the  great  men 
who  condescended  to  literary  amusements  below  what  might 
have  been  thought  their  dignity.  A  respectful  posterity  has 
preserved  few  records  of  their  amusements.  The  epigrams  or 
eles^ies  on  his  exile  in  Corsica  are  doubtful  and  insi^rnificant. 
The  satire  on  the  death  of  Claudius  is  decidedly  more  spiteful 
than  witty.  The  title  'ATroaAoKiTrwTtr,  or  pumpkinification, 
has  little  point;  for,  although  it  rhymes  with  aTroQfw^rtr,  or  deifi- 
cation, one  does  not  see  why  poor  Claudius  was  bound  to  turn 
into  a  pumpkin  more  than  into  any  other  vegetable ;  unless 
the  author  intended  to  hint  at  a  dull  and  unsavory  joke  that, 
being  dead,  he  swelled  before  he  burst.  The  introduction  is 
better,  but  not  good :  he  tells  us  that  he  will  relate  what  hap- 
pened in  heaven  upon  the  faith  of  a  servile  visionary,  and  that 
unless  he  pleases  he  is  not  bound  to  give  any  evidence  at  all.  It 
is  a  fair  joke  to  compare  Claudius's  voice  and  movements  to  the 
bleating  and  the  gait  of  a  sea-calf;  but  it  is  less  edifying  to 
hear  that  Hercules  as  a  travelled  god  was  deputed  to  act  as 
interpreter,  and  canvassed  actively  to  promote  the  deification 
of  Claudius,  having  been  deified  himself;  while  Augustus,  who 
had  never  interfered  with  the  affairs  of  heaven  before,  came  for- 
ward to  protest  against  the  deification  of  the  relation  who  had 

'  "  Nat.  Quasst."  III.  xxx. 


i 


24 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


'A 


SENECA. 


25 


put  so  many  of  his  family  and  of  his  countrymen  to  death. 
The  hymn  recited  at  Claudius's  funeral,  setting  forth  how  he 
decided  heaps  of  cases  in  the  height  of  summer  upon  hearing 
sometimes  one  side  and  often  neither,  is  amusing,  and  so  is 
his  naive  surprise  when  he  finds  all  his  victims  ready  to  meet 
him  in  the  world  below.     His  final  damnation  to  play  dice 
with  a  box  with  no  bottom  is  hardly  severe  enough  :  and  we 
do  not  know  whether   he   is  better  or  worse   off  when  ad- 
judged as  a  slave  to  Caligula,  who  makes  him  over  to  one  of 
his  freedmen  to  exercise  jurisdiction  over  the  ghosts  of  his  (the 
freedman's)  household.      The  flattery  of  Nero  is  long  in  pro- 
portion to  the  shortness  of  the  work,  and  turns  upon  nothing 
better  than  his  voice  and  golden  hair.     He  succeeds  better  in 
drawing  inspiration  from  his  inexhaustible  contempt  for  Clau- 

_ 

dius,  who  is  very  nearly  deified  "  because  it  will  be  for  the 
public  good  that  there  should  be  somebody  in  heaven  to  bolt 
hot  turnips  with  Romulus."  It  is  surprising  to  find  that  one 
of  Claudius's  great  offences  was  his  zeal  in  spreading  the 
privileges  of  Roman  citizenship  \  for  apparently  Seneca  was 
quite  willing  to  recognize  men  of  all  conditions  as  brethren, 
without  the  least  desire  to  equalize  the  conditions.  We  need 
not  lay  too  much  stress  on  the  contrast  between  the  flattery  of 
Claudius  in  the  consolatory  letter  to  Polybius  and  the  satire 
of  the  'ATOk-oXok-^i'-wmr.  Claudius  wms  a  well-intentioned  but 
decidedly  ridiculous  person,  in  whom  it  was  easier  for  an 
exile  to  believe,  who  compared  him  with  Caligula,  than  for  a 
courtier  who  compared  him  with  his  own  expectations  from 
his  own  pupil  Nero.  Besides,  the  clumsy  cruelty  of  Clau- 
dius broke  out  after  Seneca  had  flattered  him. 

The  plays  which  have  reached  us  under  Seneca's  name  are 
commonly  thought  unworthy  of  his  reputation,  for  this  reason, 
among  others,  that  a  play  requires  organic  structure,  which  no 
works  of  Seneca  possess,  and  also  because  the  philosophical 
works  of  Seneca  ziXQSJii  gcficris,  while  the  tragedies  invite  com- 
parison with  the  works  of  the  great  Attic  period.  It  has 
always  been  doubted  whether  they  are  even  genuine,  although 
the  "  Medea"  is  quoted  as  Seneca's  by  Quinctilian,  and  there 
is  no  serious  reason  to  question  the  evidence  of  the  MS.,  ex- 


cept that  the  "Octavia"  contains  such  unmistakable  allusions 
to  the  fate  of  Nero  that  it  cannot  be  the  work  of  Seneca,  who 
did  not  live  to  witness  it.  There  are  metrical  points  in  the 
*'(Edipus,"  the  ''Hercules  CEtaeus,"  and  the  "Agamemnon" 
which  have  made  it  doubtful  whether  they  are  by  the  author 
of  the  rest.  It  is  difficult  to  maintain  any  system  of  strophes 
and  antistrophes  in  the  chorus,  and  the  anapaest  monometers 
are  apt  to  degenerate  into  adonics  oftener  than  in  the  other 
plays.  Of  course  it  is  possible  that  Seneca  may  have  grown  a 
little  careless,  and  otherwise  the  plays  are  very  like  him  in 
tone  and  spirit. 

Still  it  is  true  that  they  are  below  the  level  of  his  prose, 
though  they  had  merit  enough  to  influence  all  the  attempts  of 
the  Renaissance  at  the  revival  of  tragedy.  They  are  not  the 
expression  of  his  convictions;  they  are  not  founded,  like  the 
tragedy  of  iEschylus,  on  an  apprehension  of  religious  tradition 
which  seeks  at  once  to  deepen  and  to  soften  the  tradition  it 
has  received,  nor,  like  the  tragedy  of  Sophocles,  on  a  serious 
and  lofty  recognition  of  what  is  most  permanent  in  life  ;  nor 
even,  like  the  tragedy  of  Euripides,  on  an  anxious  discussion 
of  real  problems ;  but  are  an  elaborate  and  eloquent  protest 
against  things  in  general,  and  especially  against  the  inequali- 
ties of  fortune.  They  belong  to  the  literature  of  revolt,  and 
they  are  thrown  into  a  dramatic  form  because  the  author  does 
not  wish  to  take  the  responsibility  of  revolt  in  his  own  person. 
When  a  Stoic  is  quite  serious,  he  believes  in  duty  and  in 
providence,  but  these  are  the  weak  places  of  his  system  :  the 
strong  place  is  the  glory  of  virtue.  The  interest  of  the  "  Her- 
cules CEtaeus,"  the  longest  and  the  soberest  of  the  plays,  turns 
on  the  contrast  between  the  resignation  of  the  hero  and  the 
natural  complaints  of  his  mother ;  and  though  Hercules  ap- 
pears in  his  divine  glory  to  rebuke  her  lamentations,  yet  the 
narrative  of  his  sufferings  is  arranged  so  as  to  glorify  him  at 
the  expense  of  heaven.  So,  too,  in  the  "  Troades,"  the  main 
idea  is  the  cruelty  of  the  gods,  who  have  delivered  a  blame- 
less nation  for  the  sin  of  a  single  woman,  who  herself  escapes 
without  punishment.  Rather  than  acknowledge  that  the  gods 
can  have  revealed  that  Polyxena  is  to  be  sacrificed  to  the 

IT.— 2 


26 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


ghost  of  Achilles,  the  chorus  sing  a  musical  and  really  poeti- 
cal ode,  to  explain  that  they  do  not  believe  in  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  and  set  forth  that  death  would  be  no  good  if  it 
brought  no  end,  no  rest ;  and  this  is  exactly  in  the  style  of 
Seneca,  who  never  loses  an  opportunity  of  praising  death. 
Like  most  of  Seneca's  plays,  the  "Troades"  has  litde  action, 
and  much  bitter  wit :  the  nearest  approach  to  action  is  when 
there  is  a  scolding-match  between  Agamemnon  and  Pyrrhus, 
because  Agamemnon  objects  to  the  sacrifice  of  Polyxena;  but 
when  both  heroes  have  proved  they  know  how  to  be  insolent, 
Agamemnon  announces  he  will   ask  Calchas  and  give  way 
to  fate.     It  is  less  undramatic  when  Helen  gives  up  the  at- 
tempt to  deceive  Polyxena.    The  scene  in  which  Andromache 
hides  Astyanax  in  the  tomb  of  Hector,  and  then  gives  him  up 
rather  than  have  Hector's  ashes  outraged,  does  not  want  for 
action,  though  it  is  grotesque  enough  ;  for  Andromache  makes 
an  odd  figure  when  she  reflects  that,  if  she  allows  the  tomb 
to  be  destroyed,  her  son  will  be  buried  in  the  ruins.     Seneca 
shows  to  more  advantage  when  he  remarks  that  the  Greeks 
dared  to  show  their  sense  of  the  cruelty  of  their  chiefs  while 
the  conquered  Trojans  were  compelled  to  hide  their  tears. 
Even  when  Seneca  follows  a  really  dramatic  play  like  the  "  Me- 
dea" or  the  "  Agamemnon  "  pretty  closely,  he  ceases  to  be 
dramatic.     He  dislocates  the  connection  and  the  movement 
of  his  original  in  order  to  heighten  parts  which  are  not  highly 
flavored  enough  for  his  crude  eagerness.     So,  for  instance,  in 
the  "  Medea  "  we  have  a  discussion  in  which  Medea  convinces 
Jason  he  is  using  her  badly,  the  conventionalities  under  which 
he  escapes  in  Euripides  not  being  to  the  writer's  taste.   Again, 
he  gives  up  an  act  to  a  description  of  the  dreadful  enchant- 
ments by  which  Medea  prepares  her  revenge.     In  the  "  (Edi- 
pus  "  a  pompous  description  of  the  enchantments  of  Tiresias 
and  his  daughter  Manto  is  a  poor  substitute  for  the  irony  of 
Sophocles,  who  shows  us  an  unwilling  minister  of  fate  forced 
to  speak  by  the  stubborn  earnestness  of  the  king,  who  repays 
him  with  suspicion.     In  the  "Thyestes"  a  whole  act  is  de- 
voted to  the  evocation  of  Megaera  and  the  ghost  of  Tantalus, 
and  another  to  a  long  speech  of  the  messenger  who  describes 


SENECA. 


27 


the  solemn  sacrifice  and  cookery  of  the  children  of  Thyestes, 
interrupted  at  rare  intervals  by  the  chorus,  whose  questions 
serve  to  bring  out  some  new  horror.  After  this,  we  are  intro- 
duced to  Thyestes  feasting  and  trying  to  enjoy  himself:  his 
awe  would  be  impressive  if,  when  his  brother  comes  to  explain 
the  real  state  of  things,  Thyestes  did  not  hear  the  cry  of  his 
children,  whom  he  has  eaten,  sounding  within  him.  But  here 
and  elsewhere  Seneca  has  the  faults  of  his  qualities  :  he  is 
always  anxious  to  pile  up  the  agony  higher  than  the  Greeks 
have  piled  it  before  him.  It  is  rare  when  he  is  simply  cold, 
as  in  the  "  Hippolytus,"  where,  though  Phxdra  makes  a  for- 
mal declaration  of  her  passion  to  its  object,  as  in  the  first 
draught  of  the  great  play,  which  Euripides  was  compelled  to 
withdraw  by  the  Attic  sense  of  propriety,  she  moves  us  so  little 
that  we  are  not  seriously  affected  when  Hippolytus  delivers  a 
lecture  on  the  difterent  kinds  of  sporting  dogs. 

With  all  this,  it  must  be  owned  that  the  dialogue,  if  it  led  to 
anything,  is  extremely  brilliant.  The  scolding  scene  in  the 
"  Troades  "  is  wonderfully  clever,  apart  from  its  tame  conclu- 
clusion;  and  in  the  "Thyestes"  the  scene  between  Atreus 
and  his  henchman,  though  quite  unnecessary  for  the  action, 
contains  a  brilliant  theory  of  tyranny  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  tyrant  and  the  public  who  have  to  put  up  with  him. 
Tiie  scene  between  Ajramemnon  and  Cassandra  is  more 
nearly  dramatic,  and  worth  reading,  even  after  ^schylus : 

C.  Festus  et  Trojae  fuit. 
C.  Cecidit  ante  aras  pater. 
C.  Herceum  Jo\  em  ? 
C.  Et  Priamum  simul. 
C.  Ubi  Helena  est,  Troiam  puta. 
C.  Libertas  adest. 
C.  Mors  mihi  est  securitas. 
C.  At  magnum  tibi. 
A.  Victor  timere  quid  potest  ?  C.  Quod  non  timet. 

Here  we  have  the  Stoic  sentiment  that  popular  goods  are 
real  misfortunes,  which  is  quite  independent  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  blessedness  of  virtue ;  for  Hippolytus  and  even  Thy- 
estes appear,  like  Hercules,  as  innocent  victims  of  the  injus- 
tice of  destiny;  while  the  chorus  preaches  the  advantage  of 


A.  Festus  dies  est. 

A.  Veneremur  aras. 

A.  Jovem  precemur  pariter. 

A.  Credis  videre  te  Ilium? 

A.  Ilic  Troja  non  est. 

A.  Ne  mctue  dominam  famula, 

A.  Secura  vive. 

A.  Nullum  est  periclum  tibimet. 


28 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


separation  from  the  world.  All  the  really  mystical  elements 
of  Greek  tragedy  disappear,  and  are  replaced  by  common 
magic;  for  instance,  nothing  is  made  of  Hippolytus's  neglect 
of  Venus,  very  little  of  Phaedra's  passion. 

There  is  considerable  uncertainty  in  the  metres  of  some  of 
the  choruses,  owing  to  the  defective  state  of  the  MSS.,  which 
seem  to  have  been  copied— as  in  the  "  CEdipus,"  for  instance 
—by  a  scribe  who  did  not  know  the  metre  which  was  dictated 
to  him,  and  tried  at  random  in  the  same  ode  to  piece  out 
sometimes  sapphics,  sometimes  glyconics.  In  general,  the 
odes,  when  we  make  allowance  for  the  rarity  of  the  adonic, 
which  is  used  at  most  to  mark  strophes,  not  stanzas,  are 
fairly  pleasing  :  they  are  musical,  and  do  not  come  to  a  stand- 
still like  the  stanzas  of  Statins;  and  there  is  more  feeling  in 
them  than  in  the  speeches,  where  the  passion  is  too  commonly 
torn  to  tatters. 

Quinctilian  tells  us  that  his  own  contemporaries  were  much 
more  successful  in  tragedy  than  Seneca ;  he  mentions  espe- 
cially Pomponius  Secundus,  who  was  probably  tame  and  reg- 
ular, but  less  absurd.  Curiatius  Maternus,  one  of  Domitian's 
victims,  turned  his  tragedies  into  pamphlets,  and  appears  to 
have  enjoyed  a  succes  d'esiime  under  Vespasian :  he  is  known 
chiefly  by  "  The  Dialogue  on  Orators." 

LUCILIUS    JUNIOR. 

Seneca's  friend  Lucilius  Junior  accepted  a  post  as  procu- 
rator in  Sicily,  which  was  an  easy  provision  for  life,  if  the 
holder  resisted  the  temptation  to  act  as  a  magistrate,  as  Seneca 
rightly  trusted  Lucilius  would  do.  Part  of  his  leisure  was  de- 
voted to  an  elaborate  poem  on  ^tna,  which  has  reached  us  in 
a  very  imperfect  state.  The  interest  of  the  work  lies  chiefly 
in  the  author's  standpoint.  We  know  that  he  called  himself 
an  Epicurean,  and  he  still  maintains  the  Epicurean  protest 
against  mythology,  and  copies  Lucretius  discreetly  in  his 
metres;  but  he  does  not  trouble  himself  the  least  about 
atomic  physics,  and,  so  far  as  he  has  a  system,  tends  rather  to 
Stoicism.  Nature  he  thinks  ihe  great  artificer,  whose  work 
deserves  our  study  above  all  the   legendary  trophies  of  art. 


LUCILIUS  JUNIOR. 


29 


His  ideal  seems  to  be  science  rather  than  philosophy.  He  does 
not  criticise  the  objects  of  worldly  desire,  like  Lucretius,  or 
Horace,  or  Seneca;  he  does  not  argue  with  the  passions  or 
the  fears  thev  breed:  the  real  reward  is  to  know  what  the  nat- 
ure  of  earth  keeps  straitly  hidden.  Like  Socrates,  Lucilius 
wishes  to  bring  knowledge  down  from  heaven  :  it  is  a  sort  of 
disgrace  to  know  more  of  the  stars  than  of  the  earth  we  live 
upon,  and  still  worse  only  to  study  the  earth  in  a  utilitarian 
way  in  the  sordid  interests  of  agriculture  or  mining. 

He  has  very  little  of  the  feeling  of  Lucretius  for  simple 
pleasures,  or  for  the  elementary  pathos  of  human  life  :  he  feels 
the  difficulty  of  writing  more  than  the  difficulty  of  living:  he 
invokes  Phoebus  and  the  Muses  to  help  him  to  write  about 
something  quite  new  and  real :  it  is  a  safe  precaution  to  take 
Phoebus  for  a  guide  in  untrodden  ways.  All  mythological 
themes,  we  learn,  are  hackneyed;  and  the  writer  alludes  to 
each  in  a  way  to  make  us  thankful  he  did  not  treat  it.  Even 
when  he  has  announced  his  own,  we  are  not  quit  of  mytholo- 
gy ;  for  all  the  mythical  theories  of  volcanoes  have  to  be  enu- 
merated and  rejected,  ^tna  is  not  the  forge  of  Vulcan,  nor 
of  the  Cyclops,  nor  yet  the  burial-place  of  some  giant  who 
made  war  upon  heaven.  The  last  theory  seems  to  have  a  cer- 
tain attraction  for  Lucilius's  fancy  :  he  spends  over  thirty  lines 
in  developing  it,  and  nearly  twenty  more  in  apologizing  for 
the  liberties  that  poetical  genius  takes  with  nature  and  the 
gods.  On  the  other  hand,  he  is  very  much  shocked  that  it 
should  have  ever  been  thought  a  god  could  demean  himself  to 
work  at  a  forge,  or  that  Jupiter  could  be  dependent  for  his 
arms  upon  the  working  of  a  volcano.  Something  like  a  seventh 
of  the  poem  is  taken  up  with  this  exordium,  about  as  much 
with  a  peroration,  which  is  very  like  a  discarded  exordium, 
about  the  different  things  that  people  travel  to  see  and  find 
wonderful,  concluding  with  the  story  of  the  pious  brethren 
who  bore  their  parents  safely  through  an  eruption.  The  de- 
scription of  the  calamity  is  in  the  main  a  heavy  imitation  of 
Ovid,  with  something  of  his  ingenuity,  little  or  nothing  of  his 
sprightly  flow.  Here  and  there  is  a  line  that  reminds  us  of 
the  "  Georgics :"  "  the  fields,  tamed  by  tillage,  that  burn  with 


f 


fl  1 1 


30 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


their  lords  ;"  the  pious  brethren  find  their  father  and  mother 
sluggish  —  wearied  out,  alas  !  with  old-age,  and  their  limbs 
stretched  on  the  threshold.  Often  the  phrase  is  vague,  and 
one  feels  the  writer  is  not  sure  how  much  it  is  necessary  to 
say ;  for  instance, 

Nee  sanctos  juvenes  attingunt  sordida  fata  ; 

Sideioe  cessere  donius  et  jura  piorum  (vv.  643,  644)— 

"The  fate  of  meaner  spirits"  (literally,  mean  fate)  "does 
not  touch  the  holy  brethren  ;  the  starry  mansions  and  the  dues 
of  the  righteous  Adl  [to  their  portion]."  In  the  same  way, 
"  the  double  rites  that  smoke  from  one  burning  " '  is  quite  un- 
intelligible, till  we  remember  that  the  sons  of  CEdipus  were 
burned  on  one  pyre,  and  the  smoke  and  flames  from  their 
bodies  would  not  unite;  and  "the  sorrowful  figures  round  the 
altar  of  the  changeling  hind,  and  the  muffled  father,"'  is  an 
over-ingenious  way  of  describing  a  picture  of  the  sacrifice  of 

Iphigenia. 

The  didactic  part  of  the  poem  is  decidedly  better  written 
than  the  ornamental,  and  the  theory  is  ingenious  and  scien- 
tific as  far  as  it  goes.      It  turns  upon  the  subterranean  action 
of  water  upon  the  fire  supposed  to  be  latent  in  all  substances 
from  which  it  is  possible  to  strike  a  spark.     The  existence  of 
subterranean  cavities  on  an  adequate  scale  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  water  finds  its  way  underground  in  large  quantities. 
The  predominant  action  of  air  in  eruptions  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  large  masses  of  cinders  are  set  in  motion,  while 
flames,  though  always  in  motion  themselves,  have  no  power 
to  set  other  bodies  in  motion.     The  difficulty  that  exercises 
Lucilius  most  is  why  eruptions  only  come  now  and  then,  which 
he  feels  gives  a  sort  of  plausibility  to  the  profane  conjecture 
that  the  fuel  inside  ^tna  burns  out  and  has  to  be  renewed. 
"There  is  no  such  mean  poverty  in  the  things  of  heaven:  it 
[the  non-existent  poverty  ?]  does  not  beg  for  means  by  driblets, 
and  gather  alms  of  air." '     The   two   reasons  which  explain 
this   are,  that  winds   get   obstructed   in   their   underground 
course,  and  cannot  break  out,  especially  when  the  rocks  have 
»  V.  576.  '  vv.  595,  596.  '  vv.  371,  372. 


LUCILIUS  JUNIOR, 


31 


fallen  in  by  reason  of  a  previous  explosion  ;  and  that  heat,  as 
it  passes  into  moisture,  acquires  a  greater  power  of  acting 
upon  air.  This  refers  to  the  notion  that  everything  which 
melts  is  of  watery  nature,  and  it  has  been  already  explained 
that  the  pressure  of  moisture  can  drive  air  before  it,  as  water 
was  made  to  blow  the  Triton's  horn  in  the  Roman  circus. 

The  extension  given  to  the  principle  is  rather  startling :  it 
almost  appears  that  the  waves  drive  the  wind  instead  of  the 
wind  driving  the  waves,  or  else  Lucilius  is  comparatively  safe 
in  maintaining  that  such  action  as  water  has  on  wind  is  strong- 
est underground.     In  fact,  his  notion  of  a  volcano  is  a  furnace 
full  of  minerals  of  a  peculiarly  fiery  nature,  worked  by  hydraulic 
bellows.     He  spends  a  great  deal  of  pains  on  proving  that 
minerals  of  a  fiery  nature  are  not  enough  to  make  a  volcano 
by  themselves;  for  there  are  places  where  sulphur  is  so  plen- 
tiful as  to  be  collected  for  commercial  purposes,  and  yet  vol- 
canic action  is  in  abeyance  even  where  other  volcanic  rocks 
are  found  whose  significance  at  ^tna  is  duly  acknowledged. 
Of  course  the  discussion  is  confused  by  the  writer's  belief  in 
the  element  of  fire  held  to  be  specially  present  in  such  rocks 
as  would  retain  their  character  at  a  high  degree  of  heat.     A 
rock  that  melts  easily  is  said  to  have  a  nature  that  fears  fire; 
bat  if  it  can  retain  a  high  degree  of  heat  without  melting,  that 
proves  its  fidelity  as  a  custodian.     This  is  the  case  with  the 
hard  ^rit  which  Lucilius  thinks  the  most  characteristic  of  the 
rocks  of  ^tna,  though  he  is  very  much  struck  by  the  "  stones 
which   in    various  windings   flow   through   all   the  mountain, 
whereunto  the  more  fiiithful  charge  of  flame  is  given  " ' — in 
other  words,  to  the  veins  of  metamorphic  rock.     At  the  ap- 
proach of  an  eruption,  when  the  rocks  are  hot,  and  "  send  be- 
fore a  certain  presage  of  the  fire  to  come,  as  soon  as  the  north- 
west wind  moves  and  threatens  a  storm,  the  grit  flees  apart 
and  draws  the  ground  as  oars  draw  water,  and  under  earth  a 
heavy  murmur  gives   tidings  of  burning — then   it   is  well  to 
tremble,  and  flee,  and  make  way  for  the  holy  things :  you  may 
watch  it  all  from  a  safe  hill-top."^     Than  comes  a  description 
of  the  torrent  of  lava. 

*  vv.  399,  400.  *  vv.  461,  466. 


32 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


"  If  any  of  the  stones  have  crumbled  in  the  crust  of  fire, 
there  is  a  roughish  scum,  a  kind  of  lustreless  tinder,  like  the 
dross  we  see  purged  off  from  iron  ;  but  after  the  mass  of  sink- 
ing stone  has  heaved  and  bubbled  for  a  little  while,  the  liquid 
rises  to  a  narrow  crest  (as  when  stone  is  melted  in  a  furnace, 
and  all  the  moisture  rises  in  its  veins  as  it  is  utterly  burned 
out,  till  the  ore  is  gone,  and  there  is  only  light,  empty,  rotten 
stone  to  throw  away),  and  begins  to  boil  the  more,  and  press 
forward  in  fashion  of  a  gentle  river,  and  sends  its  wave  at 
last  down  the  tirst  hills.     Little  by  little  they  journey  twice  six 
miles;  for  there  is  nothing  to  check  them,  nothing  to  curb 
or  balk  the  fires,  no  bulk  to  make  a  bootless  stay  :  all  things 
fight  on  one  side.     The  woods  and  rocks  invite  the  weapons, 
and  the  soil  defrays  the  cost  of  the  war,  and  clothes  itself 
with  a  river  congenial  to  its  nature.     But  if  it  lingers,  and  is 
entangled  in  hills  or  vjilleys,  it  rolls  devouring  over  and  up 
and  down  the  fields ;  the  waves  grow  thick,  the  billows  are 
brought  to  a  stand,  and  roar  as  when  the  swift  sea  rolls  head- 
long in  a  winding  tide.     First,  a  thin  curving  wave  drives  the 
waves  in  front,  then  it  goes  forward  spreading  far  and  wide  ; 
the  streams  swell  up,  they  stiffen  to  their  banks,  and  harden 
in  the  cold  ;  little  by  little  the  fires  congeal,  and  the  harvest 
of  flame  is  gathered.     Then  they  put  off  their  former  f\ace  as, 
inch  by  inch,   they  stiffen :  the  mass   rises,  drawn  by  very 
weight ;  it  rolls  with  mighty  roar ;  when  it  dashes  headlong  on 
son^e  ringing  bulk,  it  shivers  with  the  shock  it  gives;   and, 
where  it  bursts,  a  swarm  of  blazing  sparks  leaps  from  the 
blazing  heart,  the  burning  stones  rush  out,  and,  see !  rushing 
far  and  ever  farther,  the  brands  rush  on  with  unabated  glow. 
But  if  the  torrent  of  fire  puts  on  the  visage  of  coal,  and  draws 
back  to  its  stream,  one  can  scarcely  part  it  by  driving  in  a 
wedge  ;  and  yet  the  piled-up  ruin  lies  for  twenty  days  with 

fire  alive  below."  ' 

The  chief  fault  in  the  language  is  that  nominatives  are  left 
unexpressed,  and  that  the  verbs  change  in  voice  and  number 
as  if  the  writer  had  no  definite  nominative  in  his  mind.  We 
may  notice  one  pretty  verb,  probably  a  coinage  of  Seneca's, 

*  vv.  474-508. 


''PANEGYRIC  ON  PISOr 


Z^ 


which  did  not  take  root  in  literature — ccrnulare,  to  express 
the  stoop  of  a  wave  ready  to  break.  Even  Valerius  Flaccus, 
with  his  delicate  perception,  does  not  use  it,  for  the  old  word 
/r^r/)>//^r^  expressed  as  much  as  the  Romans  in  general  cared 
to  notice. 


u 


PANEGYRIC    ON    PISO 


?) 


The  "  Panegyric  on  Piso,"  attributed  to  Saleius  Bassus,  must, 
if  his,  be  a  very  early  work.  It  has  none  of  the  rough  vigor 
that  Persius  and  Quinctilian  attribute  to  the  odes  of  his  man- 
hood and  old-age.  It  is  smooth  and  copious  and  diffuse. 
Piso  has  a  long  and  illustrious  pedigree,  duly  celebrated  by 
other  poets:  he  adorns  it  himself  by  the  peaceful  triumphs  of 
the  gown.  He  has  complete  command  over  the  courts  :  he 
surpasses  jVIenelaus  when  he  wishes  to  be  terse,  and  Ulysses 
when  he  wishes  to  be  convincing,  and  Nestor  when  he  wishes 
to  be  entertaining.  We  may  infer  from  the  compliment  that 
Saleius,  being  a  poet,  had  read  nothing  but  poetry.  Piso  was 
supposed  to  have  distinguished  himself  immensely  when  he 
delivered  the  enthusiastic  eulogy  upon  the  emperor  which  was 
expected- from  a  newly  appointed  consul.  When  nothing  is 
going  on  in  the  courts  or  the  senate,  Piso  amuses  himself  by 
declamation,  and  all  the  world  comes  to  listen  ;  he  exercises 
himself  at  ball,  or  fencing,  or  boxing,  and  all  the  world  leave 
their  own  exercises  to  look  on.  We  do  not  hear  whether  any 
one  was  admitted  to  Piso's  musical  exercises  :  he  was  obviously 
at  once  proud  of  his  accomplishments  and  half  ashamed  of 
them.  His  panegyrist  accumulates  mythological  precedents 
in  favor  of  practices  which  still  shocked  much  respectable 
opinion.  It  is  plain  that,  as  Tacitus  tells  us,  it  was  only  a 
question  of  degree  between  him  and  Nero.  Piso  was  behind 
the  age  in  another  point,  which  was  rather  to  his  credit  :  he 
respected  the  independence  and  judgment  of  friends  who  re- 
ceived material  help  at  his  hands,'  while  there  was  an  in- 
creasing tendency  to  treat  clients  as  paid  buffoons,  hired  to 
sacrifice  their  dignity  for  a  paltry  pittance.     The  poet  himself 

»  In  fact,  it  appears  that  dissolute  pensioners  were  among  the  principal 
members  of  his  conspiracy. 

11.-2* 


34 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


professes  to  be  poor,  but  not  to  want  Piso's  money  :  he  com- 
poses his  panegyric  in  the  hope  of  being  made  free  of  his 
patron's  house,  partly  for  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  so  excel- 
lent and  illustrious  a  person,  whom  he  will  be  able  to  celebrate 
better  when  he  knows  him  better,  but  chiefly  because  he  hopes 
that  if  Piso  will  take  him  up  he  will  become  known,  as  Vergil ' 
and  Varius  and  Horace  became  known,  thanks  to  Maecenas, 
though  the  poet  cannot  forget  that  Maecenas  gave  more  than 
praise.  For  himself,  he  Iiopes  to  find  a  new  Maecenas,  and  is 
prepared,  when  he  enters  his  gates  with  the  muse,  to  lay  aside 
the  gravity  of  the  forum— a  hint  that  he  knew  by  reputation 
how  voluptuous  Piso's  family  life  was,  and  was  ready  to  ad- 
mire it  the  more.  He  has  praised  Piso  already  for  being  able 
to  keep  up  the  most  magnificent  dignity  in  public  and  throw 
off  all  restraint  in  hours  of  amusement,  which  is  also  the  ideal 
of  a  Red  Indian. 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


35 


CHAPTER  H. 

LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 

The  poetry  of  the  Claudian  period  is  one  of  the  most  per- 
plexing phenomena  in  Latin  literature.  The  original  work  of 
the  time  is  the  "  Pharsalia,"  and  it  stands  in  no  intelligible  re- 
lation to  the  rest  of  the  literary  movement,  which  was  very 
active,  though  it  has  left  no  trace  except  some  sneers  and 
parodies  in  Persius  and  Petronius.  There  is  only  one  com- 
mon element  that  we  can  trace  throughout,  and  that  is  rather 
a  matter  of  intention  than  of  achievement.  The  whole  poetry 
of  the  reigns  of  Claudius  and  Nero  seems  to  have  been  am- 
bitious of  greater  metrical  smoothness  and  continuity  than  had 
been  attained  by  the  contemporaries  of  Augustus.  Persius 
himself  makes  Cornutus  tell  him  ^  that  his  skill  lay  in  close- 
fitting,  sharply  turned  phrases,  too  smooth  to  need  mouthing, 
though  he  sneers  at  the  profession  of  his  contemporaries  to 
have  found  metre  raw,  and  added  grace  and  coherence.  Cal- 
purnius,  if  he  belongs  to  the  period,  is  much  more  careful  to 
avoid  elisions  than  Vergil  in  his  "  Eclogues,"  though  he  is  less 
musical,  in  spite  of  his  care.  Lucan  is  much  more  careful 
than  Vergil  not  to  let  the  sense  end  with  a  line ;  he  never  fol- 
lows the  cadences  of  Vergil's  narrative  passages  for  long: 
what  attracts  him  is  the  serried  texture  of  Juno's  speeches, 
overloaded  with  metrical  and  rhetorical  emphasis,  in  which  no 
word  can  be  spared  or  its  place  altered. 

The  movement  which  Ovid  describes  in  his  last  letter  from 
Pontus  seems  to  have  kept  possession  of  the  field  till  the  time 
of  Persius.  Antiquarianism  and  sentimentalism  divided  the 
public,  and  left  no  room  for  good-sense.  When  Persius  wishes 
for  an  example  of  vicious  rhetoric,  he  turns  to  a  great  pleader 
of  the  age  of  Augustus,  whom  he  did  not  learn   to  satirize 

Persius,  "  Sat."  v.  13,  14.     lb.  i.  85. 


36 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


from  Horace  ;  when  he  speaks  of  the  themes  which  represented 
poetry  to  the  heirs  of  Romulus  as  they  lay  at  wine,  he  turns 
to  a  Phyllis,  a  Hypsipyle,  and  all  the  lamentable  poetry  of 
departed  bards.     This  reminds  us  of  Ovid  himself,  who  would 
hardly  have  been  grateful    for   the    inmiortality  implied    in 
having  his  verses  snuffled  through  the   nose  of  an   elderly 
voluptuary.     The  "  Iliad "  of  Macer  was   no  better   and    no 
worse  than  the  "  Iliad  "  of  Labeo,  and  Fonteius  on  the  loves 
of  the  Nymphs  and  Satyrs  was  probably  a  fit  link  between  the 
romantic  poetry  of  Catullus  and  the  romantic  poetry  of  the 
af^e  of  Nero.     It  is  clear  that  romantic  poetry,  when  Persius 
formed  his  taste,  was  the  kind  of  poetry  most  nearly  alive  ; 
and  this  goes  with  the  spurious  reputation  of  Marsus,  the  con- 
tinuator  of  Ovid,  whose  voluminous  work  upon  the  Amazons 
was  well  on  the  way  to  oblivion  in  the  days  of  Martial,  when 
Persius's  reputation  was  already  established.     Persius  treats  it 
as  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  write  of  Attis  and  the  Bac- 
chanals :  no  manhood  was  needed  to  feel  a  fictitious  hyster- 
ical enthusiasm  for  their  orgies,  and  the  expression  of  such 
feeling  came  as  easy  as  slobbering.     The  tenderness  and  the 
pathos  and  the  succession  of  distinct  and  vivid  pictures,  which 
were  the  glory  of  Catullus,  have  disappeared  with  the  endless 
alliterations  and  the  monotonous  rhythmical  structure  which 
seemed  obsolete.     The  type  of  poet  whom  Persius  caricatures  ' 
had  never  seen  or  heard  the  Maenads   at  their   revels,  like 
Catullus.     He  is  not  content  with  them  at    play  :    he  goes 
straight  to  the  wildest,  most  painful  aspect  of  things.     Instead 
of  a  group  of  male  revellers  playing  with  the  limbs  of  a  dead 
steert  which  is  horrible  enough,  we  have  the   figure   of  one 
woman  ready  to  tear  off  the  living  steer's  head  for  his  pride; 
and  we  know  that  the  steer  is  her  son.     There  is  a  crowd  of 
other  associations  besides  the  legend  of  Pentheus.    To  be  sure, 
Catullus  reminds  us  that  his  Sileni  came  from  Nysa,  but  he  is 
not  careful  to  inform  us  that  a  Maenad  may  be  regarded  as  a 
follower  of  Bassareus,  and  that  she  fills  her   horn   with   a 
Mimallonean  blast.     On  the  other  hand,  Catullus  is  clear  and 
grammatical ;  Vergil's  constructions  are  ambiguous,  but  there 

*  I.  99-102. 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


37 


is  always  a  grammatical  way  of  taking  them.  The  poet  of 
Persius  is  as  ambiguous,  but  there  is  no  grammatical  solution 
of  the  ambiguity.  A  Bassarid  and  a  Mcenad  filled  (plural) 
their  horns  with  a  Mimallonean  blast :  so  far  well,  but  then  who 
is  it  that  cries  "Evius  !"  again  and  again  ?  The  Maenad?  If  so, 
she  cannot  have  been  blowing,  and  the  Bassarid  might  have 
been  left  to  fill  her  horn  in  the  singular  by  herself.  Silly  as 
the  lines  are,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  for  nonsense-verses 
they  are  singularly  musical ;  and  the  same  may  be  said  of 
two  isolated  lines  quoted  before  (which  we  may  be  pretty  sure 
Persius  did  not  invent),  though  "a  dolphin  cleaving  the  azure 
god  of  seas,"  and  an  army  "  taking  off  a  rib  from  the  long  side 
of  Apennine,"  are  conceptions  rather  difficult  to  realize.* 

The  latter  proves  that  historical  poetry  was  still  cultivated 
a  little,  though  apparently  not  for  purposes  of  declamation. 
Hannibal  might  have  said  many  things  more  eloquent  to  his 
army  at  the  end  of  a  long  march  than  the  attempt  which  Per- 
sius has  recorded  to  set  a  sigh  of  relief  to  music.  In  fact,  it 
is  one  of  the  grievances  of  Persius  that  the  poetasters  of  the 
day  have  never  turned  out  a  decent  school  exercise  :  when 
they  had  to  write  about  the  country,  they  gave  a  catalogue  of 
the  contents  of  the  fiirmyard  and  the  hackneyed  associations 
of  the  farm  :  they  only  pleased  themselves  and  their  public 
when  they  got  into  an  element  of  morbid  romance. 

Lucan  cuts  rudely  into  all  this.  He  had  composed  mytho- 
logical poems,  and  had  a  reputation  in  that  way  which  rivalled 
Nero's  ;  but  his  great  work,  the  "  Pharsalia,"  stands  alone  in 
Latin  literature  for  its  resolute  rejection  of  mythology.  Even 
the  way  in  which  he  introduces  it  as  an  appendix  to  geography 
only  serves  to  measure  his  contempt  for  it.  When  he  describes 
a  region  which  has  a  legend,  he  tells  the  legend  with  the  pro- 
viso that  it  is  not  true;  and  the  motive  for  relating  a  legend 
that  he  finds  strongest  is,  that  it  is  an  incredible  explanation 
of  facts  for  which  no  credible  explanation  was  forthcoming. 
The  scientific  spirit  is  strong  in  Lucan,  but  it  is  unembodied ; 
he  is  curious,  and  he  knows  what  knowledge  is,  but  he  knows 

'  Qui  caeruleum  dirimebat  Nerea  Delphin.     Sic  costam  longo  subduxi- 
mus  Apennino. 


38 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


nothing;  perhaps,  if  there  had  been  anything  to  be  known  at 
the  time,  he  might  have  failed  to  learn  it.  Science  was  not 
then  in  a  condition  to  attract  clever  people  :  it  was  still  a  mis- 
cellaneous collection  of  disorganized  information,  converging 
perhaps  in  certain  directions  which  could  be  discerned  from 
the  elevation  of  an  Aristotle.  There  was  much  mental  exer- 
cise to  be  obtained  by  those  who  sought  it  in  the  comparison 
of  untested  plausibilities,  and,  for  those  who  found  this  too 
arduous,  there  was  the  simple  enumeration  of  conjectures,  in 
which  Lucan  was  always  ready  to  indulge. 

But  what  is  characteristic  of  him  is  that  he  declaimed  in 
verse  on  an  heroic  scale.      All  the  passionate  eloquent  inge- 
nuity, which  was  wasted  upon  an  audience  which  lived  to  find 
the  emotions  of  their  youth  ridiculous,  found  a  permanent  ex- 
pression in  Lucan,  which  has  always  found  its  echo  wherever 
there  have  been  strong  passions  forced  to  be  still.     In  the 
Middle  Ages  few  classical  authors  were  so  much  read  and 
praised  as\ucan,  which  is  the  more  noteworthy  because  in 
the  Middle  Ages  almost  every  reader  of  the  classics  was  a 
priest  or  a  monk.     It  agrees  with  this,  that  John  Foster  and 
the  Abbe  Gaume  both  think  Lucan  one  of  the  palmary  in- 
stances of  the   dangers  of  classical    literature   to   Christian 
piety.     There  are  fortunate  periods,  in  one  of  which  we  seem 
to  have  been  living,  when  nearly  all  the  passionate  energy 
which  exists  is  at  once  exercised  and  subdued  by  moderately 
successful  activity  ;  and  then  Lucan  seems,  what  Byron  per- 
haps  will  seem,  an  author  for  boys,  who,  if  they  read  and 
understand   him,  cannot  help    admiring,  although  they  look 
forward  to   agreeing  with  their  elders  and  betters,  who  find 
him  far  from  wholly  admirable. 

Lucan's  life  was  a  very  short  one :  he  was  born  a.d.  39, 
and  he  had  to  commit  suicide  a.d.  65,  in  consequence  of  his 
share  in  Piso's  conspiracy.  His  death  gives  us  exactly  the 
measure  of  his  character:  he  was  tortured  to  reveal  what  he 
knew  of  the  plot,  and  accused  his  mother,  who  had  been  on 
very  bad  terms  with  his  father.  When  he  knew  that  he  was 
to  die,  he  lay  down  to  a  hearty  banquet,  and,  thus  fortified, 
was  equal  to  reciting  his  own  poetry  while  he  bled  to  death. 


LUCAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


I 


39 


It  was  not  exactly  inconsistent  for  him  to  live  a  luxurious 
life,  though  professing  to  be  a  Stoic  :  the  austerity  of  Stoi- 
cism differed  from  the  austerity  of  monasticisin  in  not  aimins" 
at  externals.  A  good  Stoic  could  not  be  a  voluptuary:  he 
was  bound  to  satisfy  himself  that  his  heart  was  not  set  upon 
comfort  and  splendor;  but  when  he  had  satisfied  himself  (and 
he  was  sole  judge  in  his  own  cause),  he  might  live  in  as  much 
comfort  and  splendor  as  his  means  permitted,  and  as  he 
chose  to  think  his  station  required.  There  is  no  trace  in 
either  Seneca  or  Lucan  of  the  feeling  which  is  always  present 
in  Marcus  Aurelius,  that  habitual  self-denial  in  bodily  matters 
is  an  aid  to  self-control;  and,  in  fact,  to  a  man  who  wishes  to 
be  in  a  constant  state  of  eloquent  indignation  at  vice  and 
eloquent  aspirations  after  an  unattainable  virtue,  such  self- 
denial  is  a  hindrance  rather  than  a  help  :  patience  and  peace 
are  not  fiivorable  to  exaltation,  or  to  boaslfulness  over  one's 
attainments  or  ideals;  and  boastfulness  of  his  ideals,  and  re- 
grets that  the  general  force  of  things  is  against  them,  is  the 
deepest  source  of  Lucan's  inspiration. 

The  conflict  between  character  and  circumstance,  each 
always  victorious  on  its  own  ground,  is  the  subject  which  in 
endless  recurring  forms  gives  interest  and  dignity  to  the 
"jPharsalia,"  far  more  than  the  contest  between  law^and  am- 
bition, or  liberty  and  despotism.  The  poem  opens  with  an 
adulatory  invocation  of  Nero,  anticipating  his  apotheosis  in 
terms  borrowed,  with  much  exaggeration,  from  the  words  in 
which  Vergil  anticipates  the  apotheosis  of  Octavian,  and  ac- 
knowledging that  the  worst  evils  of  the  civil  wars  (which 
include,  it  seems,  the  death  of  Cicero)  were  not  a  heavy  price 
to  pay  for  the  blessings  of  the  reign  of  Nero,  whose  first  five 
years  were  ended  when  Lucan  was  twenty  years  old.  F:ven 
those  five  years  had  been  full  of  crimes  against  his  own 
household  and  against  the  strangers  who  met  him  when  he 
roamed  the  streets  at  night  to  amuse  himself  with  violence. 
There  may  be  something  in  the  repented  observation  of  an- 
cient and  modern  critics,  that  the  opening  of  the  "  Pharsalia"' 
owes  something  to  Seneca;  and  it  is  certain  that  the  poet  is 
not  at  first  so  violently  opposed  to  Caesar  as  he  becomes 


■^ 


40 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


afterwards.  He  is  even  able  to  recognize  that  the  war  was 
rather  of  the  seeking  of  Pompeius,  who  could  not  endure  an 
equal,  than  of  C^Esar,  who  could  not  endure  a  master.  But 
this  is  a  solitary  gleam  of  insight :  most  of  the  description 
of  the  causes  of  the  war  is  a  confused  and  turgid  declama- 
tion on  luxury  and  corruption  and  the  vastness  of  the  empire. 
It  is  true  that  Lucan  had  no  experience  of  the  corruption 
and  luxury  of  the  eighteenth  century,  which  was  not  incom- 
patible with  a  degree  of  political  stability  that  Rome  hardly 
retained  in  the  days  of  Scaurus,  or  recovered  in  the  days  of 
the  Antonines;  but,  even  allowing  for  this,  he  is  not  pene- 
trating :  he  attributes  everything  he  dislikes  to  everything  he 
denoimces,  and  does  not  get  beyond  his  antipathies. 

There  is  no   real    inconsistency  between   the  hyperboles 
which  he  or  his  uncle  lavished  upon  the  promise  of  a  reign 
that  ended  miserably,  and  even  the  bitterest  of  his  invectives 
against  Caesar,  as  a  monster  who  was  disappointed  whenever 
he  missed  a  crime.     It  was  characteristic  of  the  Stoics  to  be 
pessimists  in  detail  and  optimists  on  the  whole  ;  they  regarded 
the  general  order  of  things  with  unqualified,  not  to  say  exag- 
gerated, reverence,  because  this  reverence  for  the  power  and 
excellence  of  the  whole  was  the  ultimate  sanction  of  morality; 
and  as  they  placed  morality  in  a  purely  disinterested  act  of 
the  will,  and  as  the  will  was  most  clearly  disinterested  when 
everything   combined  to  hinder  it,  they   naturally  took  the 
darkest   view  of  the  surroundings  of  whatever  they  took  for 
virtue ;  the  greater  the  obstacles,  the  greater  the  virtue.     If 
Ccesar  had  not  been  a  criminal,  where  would  have  been  Cato's 
glory  in  resisting  Ccesar  to  the  last  ?     He  would  have  sunk  to 
the  level  of  the  troops  aboard  one  of  Caesar's  ships,  who  were 
stranded  within  reach  of  a  Pompeian  camp,  and  killed  one 
another    rather    than    accept    honorable    quarter.     Even    to 
Lucan,  the  passion  for   a   violent    death  seemed   less  than 
supremely  admirable  when  indulged  purely  for  its  own  sake, 
or  in  a  cause  which  he  could  not  approve. 

Quinctilian  says  that  Lucan  is  rather  an  historian  or  an 
orator  than  a  poet,  and  this  is  true  in  the  sense  that,  though 
the  world  into  which  Lucan  takes  us  is  unreal  enough,  it  is 


f 


LUCAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 

meant  to  be  real :  the  lurid  glare  by  which  we  see  everything 
is  not  meant  for  "the  light  which  never  was  on  sea  or  land.'' 
But,  after  all,  every  great  writer  in  verse  who  could  not  have 
written  better  in  prose  must  be  accepted  as  a  poet ;  and 
Lucan   is  certainly  not  an  historian.     When   we   know  the 
events,  we  see  that  he  has  related  them  pretty  faithfully;  and 
he  was  diligent  in  collecting  splendid  episodes  of  indiv'idual 
daring  or  endurance,  of  which  Livy  was  perhaps  more  prodi- 
gal than  Caesar.     But  it  would  be  much  harder  to  get  a  co- 
herent picture  of  the  Civil  war  from  Lucan  than  of*  the  Pu- 
nic wiy  from  Silius.     Lucan  is  very  loyal  to  one  precept  of 
Horace— he  passes  by  whatever  he  has  no  hope  will  shine 
under  his  handling.     The  whole  poem  is  made  up  of  orna- 
ments, linked  together  without  relief:  the  transition  from  one 
theme  for  declamation   to  another  is,  as  a  rule,  just  barely 
intelligible,  but  it  is  always  hurried.     For  instance,  the  cam"- 
paign  of  Dyrrhachium,  where  Cassar  attempted  to  blockade 
Pompeius,  and   ended    by  being  blockaded    himself,  is  one 
of  the    most   interesting   and    important  parts   of  the   war. 
Lucan  gives  it  three  hundred  and  ten  lines,  and  of  these  a 
hundred  and  nineteen  are  given  to  Sca^va,  a  centurion  who 
lost  an  eye,  like  three  others,  and  had  his  shield  pierced  by 
a  hundred  and  twenty  arrows,  in  the  course  of  a  series  of 
engagements   in  which   CiEsar  only  lost  twentv  men  killed, 
though  none  of  the  cohort  in  which  SciEva  served  escaped 
without  a  wound.     The  rest  of  the  narrative  is  shorter,  very 
much  shorter,  than  Caesar's;  and,  short  as  it  is,  a  great  many 
lines  are  spent  upon  similes  and  mythological  reminiscences 
and  regrets  that  Pompeius  did  not  follow  up  his  success  at 
Dyrrhachium  with  greater  vigor.      Nearly  five  hundred  and 
eighty  lines  are  spent  on  Cato's  march  from  Cvrene  to  Lep- 
tis,  which  had  no  particular  importance  in  proportion  to  its 
hardships.     Often,  too,  the  turning-point  is  obscured  where 
It  IS  not  omitted:  fbr  instance,  Cassar  quells  a  mutiny,  and 
he  calls  his  soldiers  Quirites,  but  the  connection  between  the 
two  is  not  brought  out.     Lucan  puts  all  his  strength  into  the 
complaints  of  the  mutineers,  which  are  immensely  ingenious 
and  inappropriate.     He  is  aware  that  they  rebelled  because 


1 


42 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


Ihey  were  disappointed  of  the  plunder  of  Rome,  but  he  can- 
not help  dilating  on  the  e^iormous  wickedness  of  Caesar,  who 
went  on  fighting  when  even  his  soldiers  wished  to  leave  off. 
So,  too,  the  battle  in  the  port  of  Marseilles  is  described  with 
immense  energy;  the  heroism  of  individuals  receives  some- 
thing more  than  justice  ;  but,  till  we  are  told  at  the  end  who 
won^it  is  impossible  to  see  how  things  were  going,  because 
the  acts  of  individual  prowess  which  Lucan  likes  to  declaim 
about  had  little  consequence  beyond  themselves. 

For   the  rest,  it  is  curious  how  completely  Lucan  fills  up 
what  Pliny  the  Younger  describes  as  the  regular  programme 
of  an  historical   poem,  such    as  he  thought  of  writing   him- 
self on  the  Dacian  war;  and  it  would  be  interesting  to  know 
whether  his  ideal  is  formed  upon  Lucan's,  or  whether  Lucan 
followed  precedents  set  by  Varius.     The  style  of  Lucan's  or- 
nament differs  a  good  deal  from  the  style  that  would  have 
commended  itself  to  Pliny  ;  but  the  subjects,  the  descriptions 
and  histories  of  little-known  places,  of  national  customs,  the 
characters  of  heroes,  battles,  sieges,  and  the  like,  are  all  the 
subjects  of  Lucan.    It  would  be  a  proof  that  the  Romans  had 
really    little    historical    sense   if  their  idea  of  an  historical 
poem  was  a  versification  of  history  with  the   connection  of 
events  left  out.     Much,  of  course,  is  due  to  the  custom  of  reci- 
tation.   No  two  poems  could  be  more  unlike  than  the  "Phar- 
salia"  and  the  "Metamorphoses;"    and  yet  the  structure  of 
both  is  alike,  because  the  poet  had  to  link  together  a  suc- 
cession of  brilliant  fragments,  each  of  which  in  its  way  would 
astonish  an  audience.    Ovid  describes  in  epigrams,  Lucan  de- 
claims   in    epigrams,  and    the    story    is    a   mere   vehicle    for 
description  or  declamation.     Ovid  is  the  more  natural  and 
rapid  of  the  two  ;  Lucan  is  terribly  tedious  by  comparison. 
Cato's  admirably  balanced  fimeral  speech  upon  the  death  of 
Pompeius  is  twenty-five  lines,  and  Lucan  thinks  it  is  only  a 
few  words.     On  the  other  hand,  Ovid  is  empty  and  insipid, 
and  Lucan,  where  most  unreal,  overflows  with  passion  and  a 
kind  of  earnestness.     As  has  been  said,  he  is  too  much  in 
earnest  for  mythology  ;   though  once,  in  sight  of  the  legen- 
dary garden  of  the  Hesperides,  he  breaks  out  into  impatience 


I 


LUCAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


43 


at  the  spite  which   would   hold   a  poet  to  bare  truth.     His 
objection  to  mythology  is  not  exactly  rationalistic.    He  admits 
the  ghastly  supernatural  ism  of  witchcraft  with  an  eager  ap- 
petite for  all  its  horrors.     He  does  not  appear  to  have  the 
least  suspicion  of  how  the  Thessalians  managed  their  famous 
trick  of  bringing  down  the  moon  from  heaven;  he  ascribes 
their  success  to  incantations,  which  no  doubt  had  iheir  use  in 
steadying    the  witch's  nerves   and  fixing    her   attention,  and 
perhaps  diverting  the  attention  of  her  dupe,  as  she  adjusted 
and  readjusted  the  imperfect  apparatus,  the  principle  of  which 
she  did  not  understand.    One  traces  the  Stoical  preoccupation 
with  the  higher  traditional  forms  of  divination  in  the  episode 
of  Appius  and  the  Pythia,'  which  is  so  obviously  written  in 
rivalry  with  the  episode  of  ^:neas  and  the  Sibyl.     The  supe- 
riority is  not  all  upon  the  side  of  the  original.    Vergil's  picture 
of  the  ecstasy  of  the  prophetess,  his  report  of  her  wild  shrill 
utterance,  are  not  exactly  unsympathetic  or  disrespectful  :  he 
has  far  too  much   tact  to  make  her  compromise  her  dignity 
and   his   own    by   making  her   knock   over   the    tripods^like 
Lucan's  Pythia  in  her  frenzy;  but  he  is,  after  all,  a  little  ex- 
ternal and  conventional  in  his  reverence,  as  if  he  were  hang- 
ing draperies  on  a  consecrated  doll.     Lucan's  execution  Ts 
bizarre  ;  his  Appius  resorts  to  vulgar  violence  to  compel  the 
Pythia  to  place  herself  under  the  influence  of  the  true  inspira- 
tion ;  and  this  is  the  more  regrettable  because  his  previous 
speculations  as  to  the  silence  of  the  oracles  treat  the  mysti- 
cal vapor  in  a  very  materialistic  spirit.     But,  in  spite  of  this, 
Lucan's  Pythia  is   not  a  mere  lay  figure  :  if  the  conception 
strikes  us   before  the  execution,  it  will  probably  seem  both 
thoughtful  and  powerful.     The  shrinking   reluctance  of  the 
priestess  to  be  dragged  out  of  the  limits  of  wholesome  natural 
life,  and  the  helpless  perplexity  of  her  finite  spirit  gazing  upon 
the  unveiled  abyss  of  infinite  truth,  are  really  effective  and 
singularly  modern:  and  the  curt,  meagre,  unmeaning  oracle 
is  less  disappointing  than  the  tame  ravings  of  the  Sibyl  in  the 
"x^ilneid,"  because  it  does  not  profess  to  satisfy  the  expectation 
which  has  been  raised.    The  disappointment' of  Appius  is  the 

^  "Pharsalia,"  v.  120-227. 


r 


44 


LATIN-  LITERATURE. 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


45 


justification  of  Cato's  refusal  to  turn  aside  to  test  the  oracle 
of  Ammon,  on  the  ground  that  a  virtuous  man  has  within  him 
all  the  light  that  he  needs.     One  criticism  of  oracles  which 
we  might  expect  we  do  not  find :  Lucan  does  not  trouble 
himself  with  the  objection  that  it  is  useless  to  foresee  what 
cannot  be  averted.     Here,  as  elsewhere,  we  seem  to  see  Stoi- 
cism breaking  up  in  his  poem :  he  has  no  more  faith  in  Fate 
than  in  Providence  :  he  turns  aside  repeatedly  to  point  out 
what  small  feasible  changes  would  have  deranged  the  whole 
order  of  events.       Pompeius,  indeed,  when  he  fights  at  Phar- 
salia  against  his  judgment,  recognizes  the  purpose  of  destiny 
in  the  taunts  of  Cicero ;  but  Lucan  speaks  from  his  heart  in 
the  line  (v.  823)  which  tells  us  how  Curio's  desertion  changed 
the  balance  of  the  world.    We  are  more  than  half-way  to  the 
reflection  of  Pascal,  who  was  in  theory  a  predestinarian,  that 
if  Cleopatra's  nose  had  been  half  an  inch  shorter  the  history 
of  the  world  would  have  been  different.     In  this  connection 
we   may  notice  the  extravagant  pleasure  with  which  Lucan 
amplifies  all  the  tales  of  the  power  of  witches  to  set  aside  the 
laws  of  nature  ;  the  reign  of  the  gods  is  a  reign  of  law,  and 
Lucan  is  more  than  half  willing  to  believe  that  in  Thessaly 
witches  can  find  drugs  which  make  them  too  strong  for  the 
gods.     His  faith  in  the  gods  practically  reduces  itself  to  two 
articles,  that  they  dwell  in  hearts  like  Cato's,  and  that  they 
can  be  trusted  to  avenge  the  world  upon  the  Caesars ;  in  both 
it  rested  upon  experience,  the  experience  of  an  unfortunate 
time  reflected  in  a  heated  and  rebellious  mind,  too  impatient 
to  idealize  the  sober,  unobtrusive  prosperity  which  thoroughly 
sound  and  modest  natures  attain  under  the  most  unfavorable 
conditions.     Consequently  Lucan  makes  the  prosperity  of  the 
wicked  a  reproach  to  Providence,  as  well  as  a  glory  to  the 
heroic  spirits  who  could  be  true  through  all,  and  prize  upright- 
ness the  more  for  its  cost,  because  the  plain,  well-meaning 
people,  who  have  not  courage  for  this,  suffer  without  compen- 
sation.    The  particular  suffering  that  rouses  his  indignation 
most  is  the  loss  of  liberty,  of  which  he  has  a  much  correcter 
notion  than  most  of  his  critics.'    What  he  understands  by  it  is 
simply  the  absence  of  a  master,  and  it  is  quite  true  that  in 


this  sense  Rome  still  retained  its  liberty  till  Ccesar  destroyed 
it.     Cato  correctly  remarks  that  under  Pompeius  liberty  had 
been  rather  a  fiction,  active  politicians   had   all    been    sub- 
servient under  tolerably  strong  pressure;  but  the  community 
at  large  had  not  a  sense  of  being  under  the  orders  of  a  single 
person  :  and  this  would  apply  even  to  the  provincials,  who 
were  certainly  better  off  under  the  Empire.     But  this  did  not 
prevent  their  having  been  freer  under  the  Republic  in  tjje  an- 
cient exact  sense  of  freedom.     Ccesar  was  a  good  master;  he 
guaranteed  the  provincials  from  oppression  more  completely 
than  the  laws  or  their  patrons  had  done,  but  he  exacted  much 
more   homage   (willingly  paid)    than   the  senate  had  done. 
Cato  almost  congratulates  his  troops  on  the  death  of  Pom- 
peius, because  their  victory  will  re-establish  the  authority  of 
the  laws,   instead  of  that  of  a  leader   who    respected   them. 
He  does  not  promise  them  self-government  or  good  govern- 
ment, but  liberty— that  is,  freedom  from  personal  rule.     He 
joins  Pompeius  with  a  view   of  coercing   him,  and    advises 
Brutus  to  do  the  like;  although  the  Pompeius  of  Lucan  is 
very  different  from  the  Pompeius  of  Cicero.     There  is  a  con- 
stant protest  against  the  idea  that  he  was  cruel,  and  that  his 
victory  would  have  been  bloodier  than  Caesar's,  while  Csesar's 
clemency  is  systematically  ignored  and  his  motives  perverted; 
his  plausibility  is  recognized,  but   not   his  real   placability' 
while  his  character  is  much  falsified  by  the  lengthy  rhetoric 
which  Lucan  invents  for  him.      Instead  of  the  well-known 
*Fear  not,  you  carry  Caesar  and  his  fortunes,'  we  have  fif- 
teen lines  of  bombast,  which  show  how  much  it  must  have 
cost  Lucan  to  make  his   fisherman   set   forth  a  condensed 
summary  of  all  the  practical  signs  of  foul  weather  in  com- 
paratively simple  language.    When  Ccesar  condescends  at  last 
to  recognize  the  danger,  his  first  thought  is  to  imitate  the 
dying  speech  of  Dido.      Pompeius  is  less  egregiously  falsi- 
fied :  there  are  two  traits  of  the  real  man  which  Lucan  sees 
clearly— that  he  was  living  upon  his  reputation,  and  that  he 
wished  to  rule  under  the  forms  of  the  constitution,  which 
was  violated  even  when  a  popular  leader  overruled  the  sen- 
ate by  a  legal  popular  vote.       Cato,  on  the  other  hand,  is 


46 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


47 


not  himself,  but  Paetus:  a  model  of  mild  gravity  and  the 
enthusiasm  that  needs  no  hope.  The  only  trait  in  common 
between  the  two  was  a  generous  forbearance  and  consid- 
eration for  others :  for  the  rest,  the  real  Cato  was  an  honest, 
impracticable  pedant,  who  became  a  political  personage  by 
reason  of  his  dauntless  courage  and  his  sharp  tongue,  which 
was  useful  in  keeping  backsliders  who  wished  to  pass  for 
aristocrats  to  their  colors.  Perhaps  the  grotesque  scene 
where  Marcia  comes  back  in  mourning  to  be  married  again 
to  her  first  husband,  which  is  meant  to  be  sublime,  and  suc- 
ceeds in  being  pathetic,  may  be  accepted  as  characteristic. 

It  is  certain  that  Lucan  understands  the  woman's  side  of 
marriage  best ;  he  is  better  able  to  idealize  the  devotion  of  a 
wife  than  the  tenderness  of  a  husband,  which  he  is  apt  to  con- 
ceive as  almost  a  weakness.     Pompeius  is  ashamed  to  have 
Cornelia  with  him  in  the  crisis  of  a  civil  war,  as  well  as  anx- 
ious for  her  sake  ;  while  her  feeling,  if  not  her  language,  is  as 
true  as  Andromache's.     Of  course  there  are  subtleties  which 
are  only  possible  to  a  later  age.    After  Pharsalia,  when  every- 
thing is  over,  though  Cornelia  does  not  know  it,  Lucan  re- 
proaches her  with  wasting  her  time  in  alarms  when  she  might 
be  lamenting  already.     The  hurried  parting  is  better:  after 
conjuring  Pompeius,  if  beaten,  by  no  means  to  come  to  Les- 
bos, the  first  place  where  the  enemy  will  seek  him,  Cornelia 
springs  wildly  from  bed,  too  miserable  to  put  off  her  anguish 
for  an  instant ;  she  cannot  bear  to  hold  her  sorrowing  lord  to 
her  bosom  or  to  hang  upon  his  neck  in  sweet  embrace  ;  they 
lose  the  last  rich  moments  of  their  long  love ) '  they  hurry  to 
their  mournful  separation  ;  as  they  draw  apart,  neither  has 
strength  to  say  farewell.     The  first  night  that  Cornelia  sleeps 
alone,  restless  as  she  is,  she  does  not  venture  to  lie  for  an  in- 
stant in  Pompeius's  place. 

Most  of  the  other  characters  are  shadowy,  except  that  one 
or  another  of  the  rank  and  file  on  Coesar's  side  are  illuminated 
for  a  moment  by  Lucan's  passion  for  death,  which  grows  upon 
him  rapidly  after  the  first  two  books  ;  while  upon  the  Pom- 
peian  side  devotion  was  confined  to  men  of  rank  like  Domi- 

>  Which  lasted  about  six  years. 


li 


tius,  who  was  pardoned  at  Corfinium,  and  after  the  defeat  of 
Pharsalia  died  in  his  flight,  glad,  Lucan  tells  us,  not  to  have 
been  pardoned  twice.  The  rank  and  file,  even  according  to  a 
Pompeian  poet,  were  lukewarm  in  the  cause  ;  and  such  in- 
terest as  they  took  hi  it  did  not  go  beyond  personal  loyalty  to 
Pompeius,  so  that  when  he  was  dead  it  was  a  great  achieve- 
ment for  Cato  to  keep  his  troops  to  the  republican  standard. 
Lucan  has  obviously  no  sense  of  loyalty  to  a  leader,  though 
he  can  imagine,  by  a  great  strain  upon  his  imagination,  some- 
thing of  what  we  understand  by  loyalty  to  a  legitimate  sover- 
eign. But  such  loyalty  as  that  of  Caesar's  soldiers  or  par- 
tisans is  simply  an  offence  to  him  :  he  cannot  help  seeing  it, 
but  it  strikes  him  as  simple  infiituation  that  men  should  go 
through  so  much  simply  to  give  themselves  a  master.  The 
phenomenon  is  so  monstrous  that  he  cannot  keep  from  dwell- 
ing upon  it  :  he  even  recognizes  that  Caesar  represented  him- 
self as  the  organ  of  his  followers,  and  professed  himself  willing 
to  sacrifice  the  repose  of  a  private  station  (which  they  could 
believe  him  capable  of  enjoying)  for  the  most  invidious  func- 
tion, in  order  that  they  might  reap  the  fruits  of  his  usurpation; 
but  this,  too,  is  given  only  as  one  more  proof  of  his  hypocrisy, 
like  his  regret  for  the  murder  of  Pompeius. 

In  truth,  Lucan  is  a  systematic  pessimist.  He  lives  in  the 
shadow  even  while  he  bears  witness  to  the  light.  He  is  al- 
ways ready  to  blaspheme,  and  to  venerate  the  patience  of  Cato 
as  a  rebuke  to  blasphemers.  He  has  the  Platonic  admiration 
for  simplicity  of  life  which  is  common  to  almost  all  Roman 
poetry;  the  fisherman  who  fails  to  carry  Caesar  across  the 
Adriatic  is  blessed  because  he  can  hear  Caesar  knock  at  his 
cabin  and  not  be  afraid  ;  but  this  feeling  does  not  make  him 
ashamed  of  the  riches  of  the  camp  of  Pompeius,  though  he 
would  like  us  to  believe  that  the  nobles  brought  their  wealth 
there  chiefly  to  provide  the  sinews  of  war.  The  contrast  be- 
tween his  own  life  of  ostentation  and  indulgence  and  his  ideal 
of  freedom  and  dignity  was  itself  enough  to  engender  a  good 
deal  of  that  spurious  ferocity  which  is  the  natural  outcome  of 
characters  which  (by  their  own  fault  or  that  of  circumstances) 
are  condemned  to  express  such  energy  as  they  possess  by 


48 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


\ 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


49 


words  rather  than  deeds.     One  may  say  of  Lucan,  as  cer- 
tainly  as  of  Bvron  or  Keats,  that  his  genius  depends  upon  his 
intensity,  and   his    intensity  upon   morbid  concentration   of 
thought  and  feeling.     Any  one  of  the  three  would  have  been 
better  and  happier  for  the  discipline  of  practical  work.     Would 
any  one  of  the  three  have  left  such  splendid  literary  work 
behind?     It  is  onlv  well-balanced  natures  which  can  give  a 
good  direction  to  all  their  impulses,  and  the  discipline  which 
strengthens  good  impulses,  when  they  have  less  than  the  aver- 
age strength,  does  not  transform  unwholesome  influences,  but 
controls  and  mortifies  them  till  they  cease,  first  to  be  splen- 
did temptations,  and  then  to  be  temptations  at  all.     The  edu- 
cation of  Lucan  was  such  as  to  carry  him  quickly  and  surely 
to  the  utmost  limit  of  his  faculties  ;  it  is  probable  that  if  he 
had  known  his  iliults  he  would  have  hugged  them  like  Ovid ; 
many  of  his  worst  extravagances  would  have  seemed  beauties 
to  himself  and  to  his  contemporaries,  and  the  same  swift  sus- 
tained impetuosity  which  produces  them  produces  what  we 
admire  also.     If  one  faculty  be  kept  perpetually  on  the  strain, 
its  owner  cannot  pick  and  choose  between  what  it  brings  him. 
Selection  implies  repose  ;  Tacitus's  splendid  epigrams  are  un- 
alloyed by  preposterous  conceits  like  Lucan's,  because  he  was 
many  things  besides  an  historian.     He  was  an  advocate  in 
large  pract^ice  (Nero  would  not  allow  Lucan  to  speak  in  pub- 
lic,''even  for  a  client) ;  he  was  an  administrator  at  home  and 
abroad;  he  began  to  write  after  he  had  reached  middle  life; 
his  reflections  and  sarcasms  stand  out  from  a  large  background 
of  dull  facts  recorded  quite  simply  and  tersely,  like  flowers  in 
a  tropical  forest ;  while  Lucan's,  which  have  no  background, 
are  like  a  hot-house  full  of  tropical  flowers,  which  even  in  their 
own  climate  would  not  grow  so  lavishly  or  luxuriantly  in  the 

open  air. 

Lucan's  reputation  was  immediate,  and  not  transitory. 
Statins,  after  he  had  published  the  "Thebaid,"  speaks  of  the 
*'  Pharsalia  "  as  the  second,  if  not  the  first,  work  of  Latin 
poetry,  sets  Lucan  above  Horace  and  Ovid,  and  hints  that 
Vergil' has  no  reason  to  challenge  a  comparison.  The  author 
of  the  "  Dialogue  on  the  Decline  of  Eloquence/*  writing  prob- 


ably a  little  earlier,'  makes  one  of  his  speakers  quote  as  a 
sign  of  progress  that  orators  are  expected  to  fetch  their  poeti- 
cal ornaments  from  the  sanctuary  of  Vergil,  Horace,  or  Lucan, 
where  Cicero  and  his  contemporaries  were  content  with  frowsy 
old  Ennius  and  Accius.  Martial  is  aware  of  the  existence  of 
critics  who  would  not  acknowledge  a  poet  in  Lucan,  but  he 
very  properly  appeals  to  the  bookseller,  who  could  attest  that 
after  thirty  years  or  more  he  still  had  a  sale  as  a  poet. 

STATIUS. 

But  the  strongest  testimony  to  Lucan's   influence  is   the 
"  Thebaid  "  of  Statins.    There  is  practically  a  whole  generation 
between  the  two  poets.     The  birth  of  Statius  till  lately  was 
assigned  to  a.d.  6i,  one  year  before  the  death  of  Persius,  four 
years  before  the  death  of  Lucan.     The  "  Thebaid  "  is  sener- 
ally  supposed  to  have  been  completed  in  a.d.  96,  after  twelve 
years  of  labor ;  and  the  "  Thebaid  "  certainly  owes  as  much  to 
Lucan  as  to  Antimachus.     Statius,  one  might  almost  say,  owes 
such  inspiration  as  he  has  to  Lucan,  while  he  owes  his  plan 
and  general  arrangement  to  the  Alexandrian  poet,  whom  he 
doubtless  labored  to  surpass  by  the  aid  of  the  ingenuity  and 
finish  which  were  all  his  own.     The  training  of  Statius  had 
been  in  a  certain  way  as  stimulating  as  Lucan's.     His  father 
(to  whom  he  was  so  devotedly  attached  that  for  three  months 
after  his  death  he  was  unable  to  write)  was  a  distinguished 
grammarian,  though  not  in  the  front  rank  of  his  profession; 
and  this  accounts  for  the  overpowering  mythological  learning 
of  Statius,  which  is  real  learning  in  its  way.     He  has,  or  has 
had,  the  ins  and  outs  of  every  form  of  every  legend  by  heart; 
and  he  uses  his  knowledge  with  perplexing,  tantalizing  mas- 
tery.    He  alludes  to  legends  which  we  can  barely  trace  in  a 
way  that  we  arc  prepared  for  in  the  commonplaces  of  mythol- 
ogy; and  he  himself  is  so  familiar  with  them  that  he  always 
finds  them  the  easiest  explanation  of  the  actions  of  gods  and 
goddesses,  and  of  heroes  too,  though  here  human  motives  are 
available.     Lucan  is  learned,. too,  in  a  sense,  and  his  learning 
IS  wider  in  range,  but  it  is  not  real ;  one  feels  that  he  has 
>  The  dialogue  professes  to  be  held  A.D.  75. 

n--3 


50 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


picked  up  everything  and  knows  nothing,  whereas  Statius 
knows  and  has  digested  what  he  has  learned.     For  one  thing, 
Statius  had  not  the  same  distractions  as  Lucan.     Statius  is  a 
slave's  name,  and,  though  it  is  borne  by  men  of  good  family 
among  the  South  Sabeliians,  we  hear  nothing  of  the  poet's 
grand'father ;  so  it  is  natural  to  conclude  that  the  family  had 
not  long  emerged  from  the  ranks  of  libertini,  especially  as  their 
home  was  Naples,  and   the  towns   of  the    Campanian   coast 
were  a  great  haunt  of  freedmen,  as  we  know  from  Petronius. 
The  Anncei,  on  the  other  hand,  had  been  rich  for  a  genera- 
tion, although  the  scandalous  wealth  of  Seneca  was  due  to  his 
favor  at  court.     The  early  efforts  of  Lucan  were  celebrated 
from  the  first,  whereas  Statius  only  gradually  found  his  way  to 
notoriety  as  an  improvisatore,  who  could  turn  off  elaborate 
hexameters  by  the  dozen  as  quickly  as  another  could  make 
an  epigram  in  two  or  three  distichs.     The  Flavian  emperors, 
and  especially  Domitian,did  much  to  encourage  literature  by 
periodical  competitions,  which  gave  the  winners  great  tempo- 
rary distinction,  and  brought  a  sufficiently  substantial  prize  to 
encourage  the  illusion  that  poetry  was  a  remunerative  pro- 
fession.    Statius  did  not  find  it  so;  he  retired  to  Naples  after 
the  completion  of  the  "  Thebaid,"  each  instalment  of  which 
was  hailed  with   enthusiasm  when  publicly  recited  ;  and,  if 
Juvenal  is  to  be  trusted,  he  had  to  maintain  himself  in  the  in- 
terval by  writing  librettos  for  mythological  ballets,  to  be  sold 
to  a  class  who  were  particular  in    stipulating  for  exclusive 
possession  of  what  tliey  purchased.     Lucan  had  written  sal- 
ticcBfabuhE,  but  this  was  doubtless  a  compliment  to  Nero,  and 
Lucan  had  less  need  to  husband  his  gifts  than  Statius. 

It  is  impossible  to  read  the  "  Thebaid  "  without  weariness. 
It  is  perhaps  the  most  fiuiguing  work  of  its  scale  in  Latin  lit- 
erature ;  it  is  very  far  from  being  the  dullest.  The  attention 
of  the  reader  who  can  go  on  reading  is  always  kept  awake, 
only  it  is  never  rewarded  unless  by  a  growing  appreciation  of 
the  excellence  of  workmanship  which  is  hardly  ever  enjoy- 
able. The  passion  and  fervor  of  Lucan  are  replaced  by  in- 
o-enuity ;  the  conceits  have  no  indignation  in  them;  the  ex- 
ao^crerations  have  no  elevation,  no  heat  even  of  feeling,  to  alone 


LUCAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


51 


for  them.     The  effect  of  the  whole  is  like  Chinese  fireworks  : 
all  the  points  of  the  situation  are  made  to  sparkle  before  us 
in  a  sort  of  multiplying  mirror,  but  the  light  by  w^hich  they 
sparkle  is  pale  to  the  lurid  glow  of  Lucan,  which  is  so  unmis- 
takably brighter  than  mere  daylight,  though  it  throws  deeper 
shadows.     One  reason  of  this  is  that,  unreal  as  Lucan's  pas- 
sion is,  the  unreality  was  not  contracted  simply  by  passing 
through  his  imagination.     Brutus  and  Cato  and  the  rest  were 
as  unreal  as  their  poet ;  and  the  unrealities  which  have  played 
a  great  part  in  the  actual  world  are  never  uninteresting.     But 
the  unrealities  of  Statius  are  invented  in  cold  blood.     When 
Bacchus  '  appears  in  all  his  pomp  to  invite  the  nymphs  to 
withhold  the  springs  from  the  rivers,  that  an  Argive  army  set 
in  motion  by  his  stepmother's  hatred  against  Thebes  may  suf- 
fer from  thirst,  one  is  really  glad  that  at  least  one  Latin  poet 
consigned  the  puppets  of  Olympus  to  the  lumber-room.    And 
this  feeling  is  stronger  for  the  odd  medley  of  science  and  my- 
thology in  the  council  of  the  gods.    There,  we  learn,  the  rivers 
are  kindred  of  the  clouds,  and  the  gods  meet  in  council  above 
the  shifting  halls  of  heaven  in  the  inner  pole,  where  east  and 
west  are  seen  at  once  in  light.     Jove  towers  above  his  coun- 
cillors as  he  comes  into  their  midst,  his  calm  gaze  shakes  the 
world  as  he  takes  his  seat  upon  his  starry  throne.'     We  can 
see  the  intention  to  be  more  sublime  than  Homer;  but  the  nod 
which  shakes  heaven  and  earth  in  the  "Iliad  "  is  an  idealiza- 
tion of  the  sky  bowing  itself,  as  it  were,  upon  the  thunder-cloud 
and  of  the  peal  that  shakes  the  whole  horizon.     Of  what  is 
the  calm  gaze  which  shakes  the  world  an  idealization.?     Of 
the  shivering  awe  of  Statius  as  he  came  out  of  his  study,  or 
the  hall  where  he  had  been  reciting,  under  the  deep  Italian 
sky  ?     Then  what  is  the  starry  throne  that  is  set  above  the 
shifting  halls  of  heaven  }    The  starry  sky  in  general  may  very 
well  be  the  throne  of  the  Most  High;  but  if  the  planetary 
spheres  are  halls,  which  is  probably  what  Statius  meant  to 
mean,  what  is  the  starry  throne  set  above  them }     And  all 
this  parade  serves  absolutely  no  purpose.    Eteocles  was  quite 
ready  to  refuse  to  abdicate  at  the  end  of  his  year,  even  if 

>  "  Theb."  iv.  652  sqq.  »  I.  197  sqq. 


52 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Jupiter,  to  punish  the  sons  of  men  in  general  and  Argives  in 
particular  by  the  Theban  war,  had  not  resolved,  in  spite  of 
the  protests  of  Juno,  to  raise  the  ghost  of  Laius ;  but  then, 
perhaps.  Statins  was  moved  to  bring  out  the  religious  aspect 
of  the  legend,  when  "  Pierian  fire  fell  upon  his  spirit  that  he 
should  unroll  the  guilt  of  Thebes,  and  brother  in  array  against 
brother,  and  the  unholy  hate  that  tried  out  the  right  to  reign 

in  turn  by  battle." 

The  wild  horror  of  the  subject  is  its  great  attraction  to  him. 
The  stain  of  guilt  cleaves  in  greater  or  lesser  measure  to  all  the 
characters  except  Adrastus  and  Amphiaraus,  who  is  doomed 
to  perish  because  he  cannot  act  upon  his  own  clear  knowl- 
edge. In  Lucan  the  sympathy  with  heroism  passes  readily 
into  blasphemy.  In  Statius,  who  is  quite  correct  in  his  own 
feelings  and  opinions,  it  is  the  heroes  themselves  who  are 
blasphemous,  and  the  tame  poet  gets  some  stir  out  of  the 
contemplation  of  their  wickedness. 

In  this,  as  in  much  else,  Statius  is  a  contrast  to  Vergil, 
whom  he  studied  so  reverently.  In  the  "^neid,"  upon  the 
Trojan  side  all  is  virtue ;  and  Turnus  and  Dido,  though  the 
poet  takes  a  severer  view  of  their  faults  than  the  reader,  are 
saints  compared  to  Tydeus,  and  there  is  little  to  choose  be- 
tween Tydeus  and  Mezentius,  the  bugbear  of  the  ".^ineid." 
Another  contrast  is  that  Vergil  is  too  artistic  to  give  the  least 
countenance  to  the  Roman  superstition  that  all  kings  were 
monsters  of  splendor  and  wickedness,  which  sprang  partly 
from  a  corrupt  exaggeration  of  late  Attic  tragedy,  and  partly 
from  a  jealous  republicanism  deeper  and  steadier  than  existed 
at  Athens.  Statius  is  learned  enough  to  know  that  in  the 
heroic  age  kings  had  not  the  temptation  of  wealth ;  but  he 
treats  this  as  an  aggravation  of  the  wickedness  of  the  Theban 
brothers,  who  could  commit  fratricide  for  so  little.  But,  in 
spite  of  the  difference  of  spirit,  the  "  Thebaid  "  is  modelled 
upon  the  "  ^neid  "  in  this  sense,  that  there  is  an  evident 
anxiety  to  reproduce  the  effects  of  Vergil.  The  horrors  of  the 
last  nisht  at  Lemnos,*  when  the  women  slew  the  men,  are  ob- 
viously  a  reminiscence  of  the  last  night  at  Troy;  the  desertion 

>  V.  195  sqq. 


LUCAN  AND   HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


53 


of  Hypsipyle  is  a  reminiscence  of  the  desertion  of  Dido :  on 
the  first  day  that  Tydeus  and  Polynices  spend  at  the  court  of 
Adrastus,^  the  Argives  are  keeping  the  festival  of  their  de- 
liverance from  a  woman  with  snaky  hair  whom  Apollo  has 
sent  against  them  ;  because,  when  ^neas  seeks  the  help  of 
Evander,  he  and  his  subjects  are  keeping  the  festival  of  their 
deliverance  from  Cacus.'*  Again,  Adrastus  boasts  of  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  sorrows  of  Thebes,  as  Dido  boasts  of  her  knowl- 
edge of  the  sorrows  of  Troy,  though  Statius  does  not  quite 
forget  that  the  sorrows  of  Troy  were  glorious,  and  that  Adras- 
tus ought  to  anticipate  Polynices's  story,  simply  to  spare  him 
the  pain  of  telling  it.  So,  too,  there  are  games  for  Archemo- 
rus,  which  perhaps  have  a  shade  more  to  do  with  the  story 
than  the  funeral  games  for  Anchises  ;  and  Lacon  is  famous 
as  the  pupil  of  Pollux,  because  Dares  had  been  famous  as  the 
rival  of  Paris.  So,  too,  ParthenopxHis  is  throughout  a  pen- 
dant to  Camilla,  and  not  at  all  an  uninteresting  pendant, 
though  some  of  the  details  border  upon  the  burlesque.  The 
picture  of  Atalanta  turning  pale  as  her  son  drops  on  one  knee 
to  receive  the  rush  of  the  boar  on  his  spear,  and  then,  as  she 
fears,  is  all  but  thrown  down,  till  a  shaft  from  her  bow  de- 
spatches the  boar,^  is  pretty  and  touching,  all  the  more  be- 
cause, like  most  of  the  pretty  pictures  of  Statius,  it  is  given  in 
a  remote,  enigmatical  way,  as  if  it  had  been  thought  out  rather 
than  seen.  But  when  she  tells  him  he  is  a  boy  hardly  ripe 
for  the  bowers  of  the  Dryads  and  for  the  wrath  of  the  nymphs 
of  Erymanth,  one  feels  that  Statius  has  a  little  too  much  faith 
in  mythology.  The  same  remark  applies  to  the  bacchic  frenzy 
which  seizes  the  queen*  (because  a  similar  frenzy  had  been 
feigned  by  Amata  in  the  "yEneid"?).  She  goes  about  sadly 
with  bloodshot  eyes,  splitting  pine-trees  into  three  pieces  with 

*  I;  553  sqq. 

'  The  temper  of  the  two  episodes  is  entirely  different :  Hercules  has 
wrought  the  deliverance  of  pure  grace ;  Phoebus  has  simply  consented  to 
spare  an  innocent  people  whom  he  persecutes,  first  to  avenge  the  death 
of  a  maiden  whom  he  seduced  and  deserted,  and  then  to  avenge  the  death 
of  a  monster  sent  to  destroy  the  children  of  the  Argives  because  a  child 
of  Phoebus  had  been  destroyed. 

*  IV.  321  sqq.  4  IV.  377.405. 


54 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


her  bare  hands,  and  throwing  the  fragments  hither  and  thither, 
and  fills  the  city  with  shouts  of  dismay  as  she  invokes  the 
omnipotent  father  of  Nysa,  who  is  shaking  Ismarus  with  a 
thyrsus  of  iron,  or  bidding  the  vineyard  to  steal  over  Lycurgus 
with  its  foliage,  or  rushing,  red-hot  with  triumph,  through  the 
dwellings  of  Ganges  or  the  farthest  bounds  of  red  Tethys  and 
the  halfs  of  the  East,  or  bursting  in  gold  from  the  fountains 
of  Hermus,  while  neglected  Thebes  is  involved  in  a  guilty 
war ;  and  bids  him  set  her  amid  everlasting  frosts,  and  be- 
yond Caucasus  that  rings  with  the  war-whoop  of  Amazons, 
rather  than  bid  her  prophesy  of  the  coming  fratricide. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  plenty  of  ingenuity  in  the  de- 
scription of  the  first  rumors  of  the  war  at  Thebes.  One  tells 
how  the  horsemen  of  Lerna  are  roving  on  the  banks  of  Aso- 
pus;  another  says  the  plunderers  are  on  Theumesus  and  on 
CithiEron,  Bacchus's  haunt ;  yet  another  has  tidings  that  the 
watch-fires  of  Plataea  are  glowing  through  the  shades  of  night; 
as  for  the  sweat  upon  the  household  gods  from  Tyre,  and  the 
blood  that  flowed  from  Dirce,  and  the  monstrous  births  and 
the  voice  of  the  sphinx  heard  again  on  her  rocks,  whoever 
liked  misrht  know  such  tales  and  have  seen  such  sights.'  One 
sees  that  the  poet  has  lived  through  an  Italian  revolution,  and 
studied  the  morbid  curiosity  which  it  is  unsafe  to  gratify  in 

quiet  times. 

Indeed,  all  the  political  part  of  the  "  Thebaid  "  is  good. 
Statins  was  a  clever  man,  and  his  observations  are  sound  so 
far  as  they  go,  and  they  are  not  too  numerous  or  too  complex, 
so  that  there  is  little  danger  of  anachronism.  If  an  emperor 
was  more  likely  to  resent  plain-speaking  than  a  king  of  Thebes, 
it  was  still  true  that  Eteocles  had  every  reason  to  resent  plain- 
speaking,  and  that  an  old  man  would  be  most  likely  to  brave 
his  resentment,  and  the  limits  within  which  public  feeling 
could  assert  itself  against  Eteocles  are  pretty  accurately  felt. 
There  is  nothing  of  the  tendency  which  we  find  in  the  Greek 
drama  to  treat  him  as  the  less  guilty  of  the  two,  who  falls  at 
least  in  defence  of  his  native  land.  For  Statins  he  is  always 
the  gloomy,  suspicious  tyrant,  roving  about  with  the  looks  of 

1  IV.  369, 377- 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


55 


a  wolf  who  has  just  been  robbing  a  fold ;  while  Polynices,  if 
it  were  not  for  his  fatal  position  as  a  predestined  fratricide, 
would  be  interesting  as  a  gallant  adventurer,  driven  into  exile 
without  his  fault,  and  frank  and  loyal  to  the  comrades  to  whom 
he  looks  for  aid  in  the  recovery  of  his  rights. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  fighting  is  decidedly  bad ;  there  is 
very  little  movement  or  progress  in  a  battle  of  Statins,  and 
the  horror  of  the  carnage  or  the  prowess  of  individuals  is  less 
effectively  brought  out  than  in  Lucan.  In  fact,  the  workman- 
ship is  really  as  perfunctory  as  it  is  conscientious:  each  of  the 
seven  has  to  meet  his  traditional  fate,  and  this  is  to  be  made, 
if  possible,  effective  by  a  description  of  his  previous  exploits. 
This  part  of  the  matter  is  generally  the  least  unsuccessful ; 
the  reader  is  half  tricked  into  an  expectation  that  each  in  turn 
is  going  to  take  Thebes,  and  then  rubs  his  eyes  and  discovers 
that  the  hero  is  dead,  perhaps  simply  by  the  difficulty  his 
friends  have  in  recovering  his  body  for  burial.  To  be  sure, 
there  is  no  uncertainty  as  to  the  death  of  Tydeus,  but  even 
here  there  is  an  anticlimax :  his  exploits  are  considerable 
enough  to  take  him  out  of  the  catalogue  of  lay  figures,  and 
Statins  has  taken  great  pains  to  make  it  imaginable  that  such 
a  hero  should  gnaw  the  head  of  his  enemy  while  he  lay  a-dying; 
but  Minerva's  refusal  to  heal  such  a  savajie  does  not  need  ex- 
planation,  and  so  the  catastrophe  is  allowed  to  fall  flat.  The 
end  of  Amphiaraus,  who  goes  down  aliv-e  into  hell,  is  one  of 
the  most  labored  parts  of  the  poem  :'  the  opening  horrors  of 
the  underworld  are  detailed  at  length,  and  we  are  allowed  to 
forget  that  the  whole  must  have  been  the  affair  of  a  moment. 
The  whole  scene  would  have  been  very  impressive  if  it  had 
been  shorter,  although  most  of  the  detail  which  overwhelms 
it  is  tolerably  well  invented,'  if  only  Statius  or  Antimachus, 
who  had  to  invent  it  all,  could  have  refrained  from  proving 
how  much  there  was  to  invent.  There  is  more  justification 
for  piling  up  the  agony  over  the  single  combat  between  the 
brothers,  which  is  the  chief  reason  for  the  poem  to  exist,  for 

-  VII.  690-viii.  133. 

^  An  exception  is  the  tedious  horror  of  Pluto  at  daylight  being  let  in 
upon  his  dominions. 


M 


56 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


there  is  more  to  be  made  of  it  in  narrative  than  can  possibly 
be  made  in  a  play.  Even  here  there  is  a  good  deal  that  is 
simply  grotesque.  CEdipiis  wishes  elaborately  and  eloquently 
that  he  had  his  eyes  again  in  order  to  tear  them  out  at  the 
sight  of  his  son's  wickedness — an  hyperbole  that  could  only 
be  tolerable  if  it  had  the  look  of  being  quite  simple  and  un- 
premeditated. The  scenes  between  the  brothers  and  the 
women  are  less  objectionable,  and  the  situations  themselves 
are  so  pathetic  that  they  cannot  be  spoiled  by  a  little  ex- 
cessive wordiness  and  shrill  ingenuity.  In  general,  Statins 
gives  a  more  distinct  impression  of  women  than  of  men;  at 
least,  his  women  are  more  natural.  Hypsipyle  is  touching 
and  dignified  in  her  captivity;  Argia,  a  frank,  heafty  wife  and 
true  helpmate;  Jocasta,  a  good  mother,  under  complicated 
difficulties  ;  Antigone  and  her  sister  appear  very  much  as  in 
Sophocles,  with  the  advantage  that  Antigone  has  a  better 
chance  of  trying  her  powers  as  good  angel  to  her  fiivorite 
brother. 

The  burial  of  Polynices  is  treated  in  a  romantic  spirit,*  like 
the  whole  episode  of  Hypsipyle:  the  exchange  of  stately  cour- 
tesies between  the  mourning  wife  and  the  mourning  sister, 
which  turn  to  rude  contentions  for  the  exclusive  honor  of 
disobedience  which  will  be  rewarded  by  death  upon  the  arri- 
val of  the  guards;  and  then  the  eagerness  of  the  royal  ladies 
to  thrust  their  hands  into  chains  and  to  hurry  their  captors  be- 
fore the  judge,  all  remind  us  of  the  Countess  of  Pembroke's 
"  Arcadia;"  and  when  we  remember  how  many  pages  Sidney 
would  have  made  of  it,  we  see  that  even  in  Statius  Latin 
literature  is  classical. 

After  the  publication  of  the  "Thebaid,"  he  began  the  pub- 
lication of  his  occasional  pieces,  which  are  now  the  least  un- 
readable of  his  works,  and  have  suggested  a  wish  that  he  had 
renounced  his  ambition  as  an  epic  poet.  It  is  quite  certain 
that  the  "Silvae"  would  not  have  reached  us  alone:  their 
value  to  contemporaries  was  that  they  were  the  lighter  works 
of  a  celebrated  poet.  Their  value  to  us  is  that  they  tell  us 
a  good  deal  about  the  life  of  a  court  poet,  and  something  of 

»  XII.  309-463. 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


57 


the  incidents  of  fashionable  life;  one  of  the  most  curious  is 
the  tone  of  feeling  in  the  poems  of  condolence  to  masters 
who  had  lost  favorite  slaves  with  whom  they  had  been  more 
than  half  in  love.     The  poet  likes  to  dwell  on  the  free  spirit 
and  modesty  of  the  departed,  even  more  than  upon  his  beauty; 
and  the  rest  of  the  poem  is  filled  up  with  the  beneficence  of 
the  master,  and  the  duty  of  proffering  consolation  as  soon  as 
the  mourner  can  be  made  to  see  the  wisdom  of  accepting  it. 
There  is  deep  and  genuine  feeling  in  the  lamentation  over 
the  death  of  the  poet's  own  father;  though  we  may  smile  at 
the  picture  of  the  Muses  standing  round  and  wondering  why 
Statius  is  idle.     The  author  is  quite  right  in  regarding  the  ad- 
dress to  his  wife  *  as  prosaic  :  the  justification  for  writing  it  in 
verse  is  that  it  is  much  easier  and  less  stiff  than  the  prose  of 
the  dedication  to  each  successive  book  of  the  "  Silvan."     The 
poems  in  praise  of  villas  of  the  poet's  friends,  and  of  the  mag- 
nificence  of  Domitian,  are  ingenious  exercises  in  the  art  of 
describing  by  dint  of  a  series  of  exclamations,  and  varying 
within  a  very  narrow  compass  the  points  to  be  exclaimed  at! 
Now  and  then  we  come  on  a  phrase  or  two  that  are  really 
poetical,  like  the  description  of  the  calm  reach  of  the  Anio, 
by  the  villa  of  Vopiscus,  as  though  the  headlong  river  feared 
to  break  in  upon  Vopiscus's  calm  musical  days  and  slumbers 
full  of  song.'' 

The  praise  of  Domitian  is  interesting,  because  it  is  obvi- 
ously sincere,  and  because  Statius  himself  was  a  thoroughly 
respectable  character,  and  free  from  any  strong  cupidity; 
otherwise  he  would  not  have  postponed  writing  on  the  cam- 
paigns of  Domitian,  first  to  the  "Thebaid,"  and  then  to  the 
"  Achilleid,"  which  he  did  not  live  to  finish.  The  truth  is, 
that  Domitian  laid  himself  out  very  successfully  to  appeal  to 
the  loyalty  of  the  educated  classes,  whose  official  position  was 
not  high  enough  to  make  them  acquainted  at  first  hand  with 
the  scandals  of  the  court,  or  to  dispose  them  to  sympathize 
with  the  complaints  of  his  first  victims  ;  and,  in  such  a  po- 
sition, candid  persons  would  judge  a  ruler  by  the  whole  of  his 
public  acts.     For  instance,  no  one  reproaches  the  contem- 


»  St.  "  Sil."  III.  V. 


II.-3* 


I.  iii.  23. 


n 


58 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


poraries  of  Louis  XIV.  with  their  veneration  for  him,  though 
even  in  his  early  years  he  treated  Fouquet  and  Louise  de  la 
Valliere  badly  enough.  Of  course  where  loyalty  to  Louis 
XIV.  was  religious,  loyalty  to  Domitian  was  idolatrous;  but 
Statins  writes'of  his  "piety"  as  if  he  found  an  honest  comfort 

in  it. 

The  lyrics  are  mostly  hendecasyllables,  which  do  not  in 
the  hands  of  Statins  suggest  the  laureate's  criticism,  "  So 
fantastical  is  the  dainty  metre;"  but  they  are  vigorous  and 
flowing,  and  decidedly  superior  to  the  experiments  in  alcaics 
and  sapphics  which  occur  in   the  fourth  book,  and  are  not 
repeated.     There  is  an  ode  in  alcaics  to  Severus,  and  one  in 
sapphics  to  Maximus:   in  both  we  are   told,  what   Horace 
never  tells  us,  that  the  poet  is  trying  a  new  metre;  and  in  the 
sapphic  the  information  takes  three  stanzas— one  to  tell  the 
Muse  that  she  will  have  less  room  than  in  an  epic,  one  to 
hope  that  the  "  Thebaid  "  is  a  title  to  the  blessing  and  aid  of 
Pindar,  and  one  to  explain  in  a  figure  that  the  poet  hopes  to 
do  his  best.     Each  stanza  by  itself  is  decidedly  a  clever  copy, 
though  a  stiff  one,  of  the  style  of  Horace ;  but  after  each  the 
poet  has  to  pause,  and,  after  all  his  labor,  never  succeeds  in 
ffettinjT  out  of  prose.     The  same  may  be  said  of  most  of  the 
hendecasyllables;  but  these,  at  any  rate,  are  not  labored,  and 
the  ode  for  Lucan's  birthday  is  musical  and  eloquent.     It  is 
addressed  to  his  widow,  Polla,  who  was  the  sister  of  Pollius.' 
One  noticeable  point  is  that,  though  Lucan  has  gone  to  the 
starry  heaven.   Statins  admires  Polla  for  not  professing  to 
worship  him  as  a  god,  as  if  it  were  almost  a  distinction  to  keep 
out  of  the  hypocritical  fashion. 

The  "  Achilleid,"  which  was  the  last  work  of  Statins,  is 
decidedly  pleasanter  reading  than  the  "  Thebaid,"  or  perhaps 
the  "  Silv^."  It  is  hardly  a  triumph  of  imagination,  but  there 
is  decidedly  more  imagination  in  proportion  to  the  ingenuity 
than  in  anything  else  he  has  written,  and  it  is  a  relief  to  find 
a  poet  whose  own  nature  was  innocent  dispensing  at  last  with 

»  A  friend  with  whom  Statins  was  more  closely  connected  than  with 
most  of  his  other  literary  acquaintances,  in  virtue  perhaps  of  a  villa  which 
PoUius  had  at  Surrentum. 


LUCAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS.  59 

the  feverish  excitement  of  the  "Thebaid."  The  plan  of  the 
poem  is  not  unhappy,  especially  when  we  consider  the  nature 
of  Statius's  talent.  He  could  elaborate  single  scenes,  and  he 
could  not  tell  an  interesting  story;  and  therefore  it  suited 
him  better  to  go  through  the  whole  career  of  a  hero  than  to 
treat  of  a  single  action.  He  intended,  no  doubt,  to  collect 
and  adorn  with  his  own  invention  the  scattered  beauties  of  a 
large  range  of  Greek  literature:  Achilles  and  Penthesilea,  for 
instance,  would  have  suited  Statins  exactly;  and  the  pictu- 
resque apparatus  of  mythology  and  ethnology  with  which  he 
would  have  introduced  the  doomed  son  of  the  morning  would 
have  attracted  him  much,  although  we  might  have  thought  it 
tedious.  He  only  lived  to  carry  the  story  as  far  as  the  ar- 
rival of  Ulysses  and  Diomed  at  Scyros,  and  their  discovery  of 
Achilles,  and  the  poem,  if  ever  completed,  would  have  been 
longer  than  the  "  Iliad."  Thetis  is  a  lonsr  time  revolvino-  all 
possible  and  impossible  alternatives— how  to  keep  her  son  out 
of  sight  for  a  while,  before  she  decides  to  take  him  to  Scyros, 
and  then  wonders  whether  she  shall  carry  him  through  the  sea 
or  through  the  air ;  and  at  last  decides  to  have  out  her  best 
pair  of  dolphins,  with  sharp  whelks  for  bits.  But  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  sleeping  boy  and  his  waking  at  the  unknown  island, 
where  he  hardly  ventures  to  recognize  his  mother  till  she  "  pre- 
vents" him  with  her  caresses,  is  exceedingly  pretty  and  true  ; 
and  so  are  his  struggles  against  being  disguised  as  a  girl, 
which  get  fainter  and  fainter  as  he  looks  at  Deidamia,  and 
thinks  that  in  disguise  he  can  be  with  her.  The  points  are 
of  a  kind  that  in  later  literature  easily  become  trivial;  but  a 
sort  of  praise  is  due  to  the  poet  who  introduces  such  things 
first;  just  as  we  admire  Tintoret  for  the  ass  browsing  palm- 
leaves  in  the  picture  of  the  "  Crucifixion,"  though  in  a  modern 
sacred  print  the  device  would  be  cheap  enough. 

Then  when  Deidamia  has  avowed  her  love,  and  been  for- 
given and  received  her  father's  blessing  upon  her  baby,  and 
has  had  her  husband  with  her  for  one  night  before  he  sails, 
one  gets  a  picture  quite  worthy  of  Thackeray  ;  only  Thackeray, 
while  elaborating  the  same  prettinesses  with  the  same  sympa- 
thetic ingenuity,  would  have  set  himself  outside  his  own  handi- 


60 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


work,  and  laughed  frankly  at  the  result ;  while  Stalius  remains 
simply  and  patiently  within  the  limits  of  his  conventional  lit- 
erary ideal.     After  the  day  is  spent  in  feasting,  and  the  cove- 
nant is  sure  at  last,  and  Night,  who  always  knew  their  secret, 
joins  the  lovers,  who  need  tremble  no  more,  the  untried  battle 
and  Xanthus  and  Ida  and  the  Argive  galleys  dance  before 
his  eves  ;  her  thoughts  are  already  upon  the  billows  and  her 
fears  for  morn ;  melting  on  her  new  husband's  darling  neck, 
she  lets  her  tears  flow  already,  and  clings  to  his  limbs  while 
he  is  still  there  to  hold  him  fast.     "  Shall  I  see  thee  again, 
child  of  ^acus,  and  lay  me  on  this  breast  ?     Wilt  thou  deign 
once  more  to  be  father  of  babe  of  mine  ?  or  will  the  household 
gods  of  Troy  and  the  spoils  of  her  citadel  puff  thee  up,  till  it 
irks  thee  to  think  of  the  days  when  thou  wast  hidden  among 
maidens  ?     Ah  me!  what  to  pray  for  or  fear  for  first,  or  what 
charge  to  give  in  my  alarm,  when  there  is  scarcely  leisure  to 
weep  !    But  now  one  night  has  given  me  thee,  and  grudged  the 
gift.     Is  this  the  season  for  our  bower  of  bliss,  this  the  free- 
dom of  wedlock  ?     O  the  sweetness  of  our  fears  and  frauds 
when  we  met  by  stealth!     Poor  I  lose  when  I  have  leave  to 

love. 

"  Go  (who  am  I  to  stay  the  mighty  armament  ?)— go ;  be 
wary.     Remember,  Thetis  had  some  cause  to  fear  :  go,  be 
happy.     Come  back  mine  ;  poor  wanton  me  to  ask  so  much  ! 
The  maids  of  Troy  will  eye  thee  soon  ;  how  it  will  become 
them  to  weep  and  beat  the  breast !  how  fain  they  will  be  to 
throw  their  arms  round  thy  neck,  and  take  thy  bed  for  father- 
land !  or  the  daughter  of  Tyndareus  herself  will  find  grace. 
They  overpraise  her,  since  she  was  shameless  enough  to  be 
stolen.     But  I  shall  be  nothing  but  a  tale  for  handmaids  of 
^  the  first  boyish  fault,  or  be  disowned  and  out  of  sight.     Come, 
now,  take  me  with  you  ;  why  should  I  not  bear  the  ensigns  of 
Mars  at  your  side  ?     You  and  I  have  had  wool  weighed  into 
our   hands  together ;  you  have  carried   the   holy  thyrsus  of 
Bacchus  with  me :  poor  Troy  will  find  that  hard  to  believe. 
Ah  !  but  this  boy,  whom  you  leave  me  for  a  sorry  com  tort — 
this  boy  cherish  in  your  heart  when  I  am  forgotten.    Grant  me 
but  one  boon  at  my  prayer — let  your  barbarian  spouse  be 


L 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


61 


childless  ;  let  no  unworthy  spawn  of  a  captive  call  Thetis 
grandam."  Achilles  consoled  her  ;  such  words  moved  even 
him;  he  swore  to  be  true,  and  plighted  his  tears  to  what  he 
swore,  and  promised  her  stately  handmaids  and  the  captivity 
of  Troy  when  he  came  back,  and  gifts  from  Priam's  treasure- 
house.     The  windy  storms  swept  his  bootless  words  away.* 

After  all,  the  "  Achilleid  "  has  lasted  nearly  eighteen  cen- 
turies, which  would  be  a  long  life  for  Thackeray's  sequel  to 
"Ivanhoe."  In  the  same  way,  the  modest  boastfulness  of 
Achilles  may  remind  some  readers  of  the  "  Prince  of  Pen- 
den  nis  and  Marquis  of  Fair  Oaks."  Chiron  used  often  to  bid 
him  tread  on  rivers  when  but  just  benumbed,  and  trip  so 
lightly  that  his  heel  never  broke  the  ice  :  that  was  a  feat  for  a 
boy.  As  he  grew  up,  Chiron  never  allowed  him  to  follow  a 
lynx — there  is  no  fight  in  a  lynx — upon  the  trackless  wilds  of 
Ossa,  or  fell  a  timid  deer  with  his  lance;  he  bade  him  rouse 
the  sulky  bear  from  her  lair,  and  the  headlong  swine,  and  seek 
where  the  giant  tigress  might  be  found,  or  the  cave  where 
the  lioness  has  laid  her  litter  behind  some  shelterins:  ridire. 
Then  he  learned  how  all  the  savages,  as  far  as  the  Danube, 
and  the  slingers  of  the  Spanish  isles,  handled  their  weapons ; 
he  learned  to  enter  a  burning  cottage,  and  to  stay  the  flight 
of  four  steeds  on  foot ;  and  to  stand  against  the  current  of  a 
flooded  river,  where  it  would  have  been  hard  for  his  master  to 
keep  his  ground  on  all  four  feet.  Still,  Achilles  stayed  there  till 
bidden  to  come  out ;  the  heights  of  glory  had  such  power  upon 
him,  and  no  labor  was  hard  under  Chiron's  eye.  As  for  hurl- 
ing up  the  Spartan  discus  till  it  was  hidden  in  the  clouds,  and 
twining  the  supple  limbs  in  the  wrestler's  ring,  or  lashing  out 
with  the  caestus,  that  was  play  and  rest  to  him  ;  it  cost  him  no 
more  pain  than  when  he  shook  the  sounding  chords  with 
Apollo's  quill  in  wonder  at  the  worship  of  men  of  old." 

The  supremacy  of  Statins  was  unquestioned  among  his  con- 
temporaries. He  was  the  one  serious  artist  among  a  crowd  of 
dilettanti :  he  complains  himself  of  the  want  of  encouraire- 
ment  to  poetry,  and  is  thankful  to  amateurs,  who  will  cultivate 
it  themselves,  to  save  it  from  absolute  neglect.  It  is  almost 
*  "  Ach."  ii.  250-285.     .  2  lb.  402-446. 


62 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


surprising  that  any  of  their  works  have  come  down  to  us 
probably  we  have  to  thank  their  own  vanity,  which  saw  tha 
ihe  public  Ubrary  duly  received  a  copy  of  their  writnigs,  and 
the  dihgence  of  literary  grandees  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  centu- 
ries who  took  out  one  classic  after  another,  and  went  through 
it  with  the  most  distinguished  scholars  of  their  acquaintance. 
This  was  the  origin  of  the  archetype,  copies  of  which  gradu- 
ally 20t  multiplied  as  one  monastic  school  after  another  be- 
came desirous  of  literary  reading-books,  and  then  dwmdled 
away  whenever  the  scriptorium,  with  its  demand  for  parch- 
ment or  legends  and   breviaries,  became   a  more  important 
department  of  the  monastery   than   the   school ;    and  disap- 
peared almost  entirely  when,  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the 
hierarchv,  scholasticism,  legal  and  theological,  absorbed  all 
the  intellectual  energy  of  the  learned:  till  at  last  the  omniv- 
orous curiosity  of  the  scholars  of  the  Renaissance  gathered 
lo-elher  everything  that  had  survived  the  wreck,  or  sometimes 
supplemented  their  discoveries  by  their  inventions.     Perhaps 
this  was  the  case  with  Earth,  who  professed  to  make  many 
discoveries   of  MS.  fragments  which   no   scholar  has   seen 
since  •  among  them  were  some  pretty  and  fragmentary  ascle- 
piads  about  independence  of  fortune  and  contentment  in  pov- 
erty which  are  ascribed  to  Pomponius  Sabinus,  a  friend  of 
the  youn^-er  Plinv's,  whom  he  esteemed  as  an  example  of  an 
honorable  and  happy  old-age.     They  are  plausible  imitations 
of  the  second  best  manner  of  Horace  ;  and  if  they  are  by 
Pliny's  friend,  who  had  been  high  in  office  all  his  life,  there  is 
a  little  exao-o-eration  in  his  affectation  of  poverty.     Nor  do  any 
of  the  fragments  correspond  to  Pliny's  description  of  a  certain 
vein  of  Platonic  naughtiness,  which  reminds  us  of  Lamb,  who 
took  pleasure  in  imagining  much  that  he  was  too  right-minded 
to  do      The  other  quotations  which  Pliny  gives  us  from  the 
lyrical  poetry  of  his  time  go  back  beyond  the  Augustan  age  to 
Catullus,  copying  even  his  rudeness,  because  it  was  felt  that 
to  £^et  the  appearance  of  primitive  strength  and  delicacy  of 
feehng  it  was  necessary  to  accept,  perhaps  one  should  say  to 
affectrthe  primitive  conditions  of  expression, 


K 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


63 


; 


L 


SILIUS. 


The  typical  poet  of  the  class,  however,  who  perhaps  stood 
out  from  it  more  because  of  his  diligence  than  because  of  his 
talent,  was  Silius  Italicus,  whom  Pliny  does  not  seem  to  ad- 
mire particularly,  although  Pliny  had  a  great  talent  for  admir- 
ing his  contemporaries,  and  does  not  in  the  least  underrate  the 
actual  position  of  Silius  as  a  wealthy  nobleman  whose  taste  and 
good-nature  placed  him  among  the  foremost  men  of  the  state, 
without  exposing  him  to  the  ill-will  which  was  always  the 
shadow  of  tangible  power  at  Rome.  In  fact,  his  position  was 
not  unlike  Lord  Lansdowne's  in  his  later  years,  though  politi- 
cal life  under  Nero,  when  Silius  was  an  active  politician,  was 
of  course  very  different  from  parliamentary  life  in  England. 
Silius,  however,  was  not  content  with  his  reputation  as  a  patron 
of  art  and  literature  :  he  was  a  poet,  and  venerated  Vergil;  an 
orator,  and  venerated  Cicero.  He  possessed  the  estates  of 
both,  and  Martial  thought  that  their  domains  could  not  be  in 
\vorthier  hands.  More  independent  judges  were  perhaps  shy 
of  the  recitations  whereby,  as  Pliny  puts  it,  he  tested  public 
opinion  now  and  then.  The  verdict  was  that  his  genius  was 
less  than  his  pains.  But  if  we  had  lost  the  third  decade  of 
Livy,  it  is  probable  that  the  "  Punica  "  would  have  commanded 
a  large  share  of  respect.  It  is  certainly  a  rest  to  turn  to  it 
after  the  "Pharsalia"  or  the  "Thebaid;"  the  reader  may  be 
wearied,  but  he  is  never  irritated  or  disgusted ;  even  the  pict- 
ure of  Laevinus,  who  had  lost  his  weapons  in  the  press,  gnaw- 
ing the  Nasamonian  Tyres  to  death,  is  not  worse  than  the 
mutilated  ghost  of  Deiphobus  in  the  '^^neid,"  or  the  ghastly 
episode  of  the  Harpies.  Another  distinction  of  the  "  Punica" 
is  that  it  is  exceedingly  clear:  the  writer  says  his  say  quite 
simply  and  unaffectedly,  without  tiring  the  reader  by  an  end- 
less succession  of  hinted  points.  There  is  a  certain  tendency 
to  diffuseness,  because  the  writer  has  never  energy  enough  to 
be  rapid,  and  is  always  at  leisure  to  do  his  best.  Towards  the 
end  he  begins  to  be  afraid  that  he  will  never  finish  ;  we  ought 
to  have  had  twenty-fogr  books  at  least  by  the  scale  upon  which 


64 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


LUC  AN  AND   HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


65 


the  story  is  told  up  to  the  fall  of  Capua.     But  the  narrative 
does  not  move  any  the  faster  because  the  poet  is  in  a  hurry; 
he  recapitulates  rather  than   narrates  ;  he  introduces  fewer 
episodes;  but,  when  he  narrates,  he  narrates  in  the  old  long- 
winded  wav.     On  the  other  hand,  he  is  always  dignified  and 
often  pathetic ;  he  comes  nearer— much  nearer— to  the  noble 
grace  of  Vergil  than  any  other  Roman  poet,  and  it  cannot 
fairly  be  said  that  he  is  a  servile  copyist.     The  direct  imita- 
tions   are   not  so  very  numerous,  probably  not   much    more 
numerous  than  Vergil's  direct  imitations  of  Homer,  though 
Vergil,  of  course,  has  a  much  wider  range  and  culls  his  sweets 
front  many  flowers.     Silius,  on    the  contrary,  is   throughout 
Vergilian  :  he  invents  in  the  spirit  of  Vergil,  and  with  such 
succ°ess  as  to  make  us  say  that  the  gleaning  of  the  grapes  of 
Mantua  is  better  than  the  vintage  of  Neapolis. 

The  fighting,  if  we  once  grant  that  it  is  to  be  Homeric,  is 
really  exceedi'ngly  well  managed.    After  all,  in  the  Punic  war, 
it  was  still  not  unnatural   or  astonishing  for  generals  to  be 
killed  in  hand-to-hand  combat,  and  therefore  it  is  not  an  un- 
pardonable poetical  license  that  they  should  sometimes  kill 
a  daring  foe  who  came   too  near  and  sought  their  life  too 
boldly.     Silius  falsifies  his  battles  not  in  what  he  inserts,  but 
in  what  he  omits.     His  descriptions  are  clear  in  themselves, 
but  they  leave  the  thing  described  obscure.     For   instance, 
the    account  of  the   cavalry  skirmish   at  Ticinum,  in   vyhich 
Scipio  was  wounded,  is  very  confused,  because  the  poet  is  oc- 
cupied, not  with  the  movements  of  the  Roman  and  Cartha- 
ginian cavalry,  but  with  the  adventures  of  real  and  imaginary 
cavaliers.     So,  too,  in  the  battle  of  Cannae,  the  decisive  ma- 
noeuvres of  Hannibal  are  described  at  less  length  than  the 
despairing  heroism  of  Paullus  and  the  stubborn  rashness  of 
Varro.     But  when  we  have  once  resigned  ourselves  to  the 
belief  that  individuals  are  more  poetical,  at  least  more  man- 
ageable, than  masses,  the  individuals  are  really  well  sketched  ; 
the  obituary  notices  of  a  centurion  or  tribune  who  falls  in  the 
vielee  are  as  well  imitated  from  Homer  as  anything  in  Macau- 
lay's  "Lays  of  Ancient  Rome."     Italians,  Gauls,  Africans, 
all  come  with  the  little  touch  of  detail  which  makes  them 


11^ 


credible ;  though  the  Italians  are  treated  best— the  Gauls  are 
all  a  little  too  apt  to  fall  back  upon  the  sack  of  Rome.     Han- 
nibal is  a  sort  of  historical  Mezentius,  a  despiser  of  all  relig- 
ion true  and  fiilse :  he  breaks  treaties  sworn  by  the  true  gods 
of  Rome,  he   refuses  his  children  to  the    impure  altars  of 
Carthage  ;  while  the  righteous  Regulus,  who  has  sworn  by  the 
Juno  of  Tyre,  keeps  the  promise  to  the  sorrow  of  all  at  Rome. 
Even  Regulus  is  not  wholly  righteous:  he  makes  war  upon 
the  sacred  serpent  of  Bagrada  to  avenge  a  comrade  who  has 
perished  in  his  rashness,  and  thereby  brings  a  curse  upon  his 
army.     There  are  few  digressions,  in  the  tolerably  extensive 
literature   where   digressions  are   deliberately  introduced  for 
effect,  more  skilful  and  more  interesting  than  the  episode  of 
the  young  Regulus  who  takes  refuge  with  Marus,  an  ancient 
subaltern  of  his  fiither,  after  the  slaughter  of  Trasimene.    Of 
course  there  are  chronological  difficulties:  Regulus  can  hardly 
have  been  so  young  as  he  is  represented,  considering  the 
length  of  the  peace  between  the  first  and  second  Punic  wars. 
Of  course,  too,  Regulus  must  have  known  all  the  story,  but 
Marus  may  very  well  have  been  as  anxious  as  Silius  to  tell  it 
all;  and  the  way  that  the  old  soldier  makes  a  fetich  of  his 
lance  contrasts  well  with  the  stately  pathos  of  the  return  of 
Regulus,  which  has  nothing  at  all  theatrical  about  it.     There 
is   something    refreshing    in    a   hero  who  does   not  declaim 
nor  speak  in  epigrams.     And  with  all  this  we  have  the  pret- 
tiest imitations  of  Vergil :  one  is  reminded  now  of  the  serpent 
that  devoured  Laocoon,  now  of  Anchises  longing  to  be  left  to 
die,  and  now  of  the  complaint  of  Dido.      Ateina  asks  Regu- 
lus, as  Dido  asked  ^neas,  for  whom  he  leaves  her  for  a  prey. 
So,  too,  the  lines   in   which   Silius  dismisses  Paullus  are  a 
reminiscence  of  the  lines  in  which  ^neas  dismisses  Priam  : 
it  is  a  proof  of  Silius's  good  taste  that,  though  he  is  very  long 
upon  his   own   account,  he   always   shrinks   from   amplifying 
Vergil :  "  So  Paullus  ended  :  the  lofty  heart,  the  powerful  hand 
are  laid  low.     If  it  had  been  granted  to  him  to  sway  the  war 
alone,  he   might  have  been,"  perchance,  a  peer  for    Fabius; 
now  his  flair  death  is  one  more  boast  for  Rome,  and  lifts  the 
name  of  the  hero  to  the  stajs.'"     Vergil  says:  "So  Priam's 

»  "  Pun."  X.  305-8. 


66 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


fates  ended :  this  lot  bore  him  from  among  men,  with  Troy  in 
flames  before  his  eyes,  and  her  citadel  in  ruins  He  reigned 
once  over  many  folk  and  many  lands  and  all  the  pride  of 
Asia,  and  now  he  lies  a  huge  trunk  on  the  shore,  a  head 
shorn  from  the  shoulders,  and  a  nameless  body."^  ^^ 

The  mvthologv  is  decidedly  the  weak  point  of  the  "  Punica, 
and  Lucan  had  pointed  out  a  better  way.    Probably,  however, 
Silius  simply  sank  deep  in  the  rut  which  was  first  traced  by  the 
li-hter  wheels  of  Ennius  ;    and  here,  too,  Vergil  was  a  mis- 
le^adino-  cruide.     The  worship  of  the  "Queen  of  Heaven"  at 
Carthage  made  it  plausible  in  the  "/Eneid  "  to  anticipate  the 
Punic  war  as  the  revenge  of  Juno  as  well  as  of  Dido,  and  in 
a  mythological  poem  it  is  possible  to  make  the  action  depend 
upon  the  caprices  of  a  goddess.    But  in  Silius  a  god  intervenes 
simply  to  give  dignity:  Juno  tries  to  persuade  Paullus  to  lly 
at  Cann^E ;  then  she  appears  in  another  shape,  to  persuade 
Hannibal  to  slaughter  the  Romans  in  some  other  part  of  the 
field.     When  the  battle  is  won,  she  invokes  the  aid  of  Sleep 
to  warn  off  Hannibal  from  an  attack  upon  Rome,  which  she 
knows  would  cut  short  his  career  of  conquest;  but  her  chief 
activity  is  in  appearing  to  him  by  night  to  give  him  lessons  in 
creo-raphv,  because  Silius  thinks  that  his  own  erudition  will  be 
more  impressive  when  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  deity:  perhaps 
the  absurdity  culminates  when  Hannibal  is  warned  in  a  dream 
where  to  land  in  Africa,  when  compelled  to  evacuate   Italy. 
Perhaps  this  may  be  regarded  as  a  fault  of  haste  and  weari- 
ness, of  the  same  kind  as  those  which  made  the  author  miss 
so  many  opportunities  in  the  Spanish  and  Sicilian  wars,  and 
turned  the  description  of  the  battles  of  Metnurus  and  Zama 
into  an  anticlimax;    though  it  should  be  fairly  remembered 
that,  in  all  the  narratives  of  the  Punic  war,  from  Livy  s  down- 
wards, the  interest  steadily  increases  till  it  culminates  at  Can- 
nfE,  and  after  that  decreases  harmoniously  till  the  recapture 
of  Capua,  after  which  the  war  seems  to  become  a  thing  of 
shreds  and  patches— for  this  reason,  among  others,  that  Han- 
nibal had  come  to  the  end  of  the  army  he  had  brought  from 
Spain,  and  was  dependent  upon  deserters  and  such  levies  as 
he  could  raise  in  the  most  backward  parts  of  Italy. 

»'^^n."ii.  554.  555- 


« 


\ 


LUCAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


67 


VALERIUS    FLACCUS. 


If  Statins  takes  us  back  to  Lucan  and  Silius  to  Vergil,  Va- 
lerius  Flaccus  takes  us  back  to  Ovid,  although  he  is  the  most 
independent,  and,  perhaps  it  should  be  added,  the  least 
popular,  of  the  three,  as  well  as  the  earliest  in  date.  He  is 
more  of  a  poet  than  the  others,  though  it  would  be  wrong  to 
call  him  a  greater  writer.  Statins  is  immensely  cleverer  and 
more  brilliant;  Silius,  upon  the  whole,  has  more  dignity  and 
pathos ;  but  still  Valerius  is  more  of  a  poet,  because  he  has 
more  power  of  resting  in  an  aesthetic  contemplation  of  his 
subject  for  its  own  sake,  without  turning  it  into  a  means  of 
excitement  and  display  like  Statins,  or  a  means  of  edification 
like  Sihus.  He  was  apparently  a  gentleman  in  easy  circum- 
stances,* and  better  able  to  indulge  his  imagination  than  a 
grandee  like  Silius  or  a  professional  man  of  letters  like  Sta- 
tius.  Perhaps  he  was  careless  of  fame  ;  at  any  rate,  he  missed 
it:  the  only  ancient  writer  who  mentions  him  expressly  is 
Quinctilian,  who  gave  almost  a  solitary  proof  of  insight  by 
pronouncing  that  Valerius  Flaccus  was  a  great  and  recent 
loss.  He  left  his  poem  unfinished  at  one  of  its  most  exciting 
points,  just  where  Jason  is  to  be  won  over  to  aid,  half  con- 
sciously, in  Medea's  plan  to  slay  Absyrtus.  When  he  died  we 
do  not  know:  he  invokes  Vespasian  at  the  beginning  of  his 
poem,  and  implies  that  Domitian  was  at  that  time  exclusively 
occupied  with  poetry,  and  had  given  up  his  velleities  of  set- 
ting up  as  a  rival  to  his  father  and  brother,  which  developed 
themselves  after  he  had  stood  a  siege  upon  the  Capitol,  and 
received  disproportionate  homage  as  the  only  member  of  the 
imperial  house  at  Rome.  The  poet  himself  is  supposed  to 
have  held  office  as  one  of  the  fifteen  keepers  of  the  Sibylline 
books,  since  he  appeals  to  the  pure  tripod  in  his  house  which 
knows  the  secrets  of  the  prophetess  of  Cumae.  He  was  a  na- 
tive, if  we  are  to  trust  Martial,  of  Patavium,  and  we  know  no 
other  Flaccus  who  was  a  poet  at  the  time.    We  may  explain 

*  If  we  could  apply  to  him  all  the  epigrams  which  Martial  addresses  to 
Flaccus,  in  circumstances  which  were  more  than  easy. 


68 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


69 


the  name  of  Setiniis  which  the  MSS.  give  him  by  supposing 
his  family  connections  went  back  to  the  clays  when  the  colo- 
nies beyond  the  Po  were  restricted  to  Latin  rights. 

One  special  interest  of  his  poem   is  that  we  are  able  to 
compare  it  with  the  Greek  original  of  Apollonius  Rhodius. 
Apollonius  carries  the  story  down  to  the  return  of  Argo  to 
Pagas^  in  four  books:  the  eight  of  Valerius  Flaccus,  which 
contain  nearlv  200  fewer  lines,  break  off,  as  has  been  said,  be- 
fore the  slaughter  of  Absyrtus.     But  the  portion  of  the  poem 
of  Apollonius  which  has  no  equivalent  in  Valerius  does   not 
much  exceed  1200  lines,  so  that  the  copy,  even  if  completed, 
would  not  have  been  much  longer  than  the  original.     In 
truth,  the  later  poet  is  quite  as  anxious  to  abridge  his  exposi- 
tion as  to  amplify  his  subject.    Apollonius  asks  nothing  better 
than  to  tell  his  story  in  its  simplest  form ;  Valerius  is  full  of 
all  kinds  of  emotions  and  reflections  which  come  out  of  it. 
Even  more  than  the  *' Thebaid  "  the  "Argonautica  "  has  the 
interest  which  we  are  used  to  look  for  not  in  poetry,  but  in  es- 
says upon  poems.     And  from  this  point  of  view  one  is  struck 
by  the  soundness  as  well  as  the  fertility  of  the  author's  imagi- 
nation.    There  is  never  quite  enough  freedom  or  fulness  of 
feeling,  and    so  there   is   never   the   charm   of  spontaneous 
poetry.'    We  feel  as  if  we  were  turning  over  a  collection  of 
dried  flowers,  where  everything  is  stiff  and  pale,  though  there 
is  always  a  suggestion  of  the  grace  of  nature,  and  sometimes 
a  lingering  touch  of  the  fragrance  of  May.     For  instance,  the 
Stoic^al  conception  of  the  righteous  man  as  a  spectacle  to  the 
gods  is  transformed  into  something  much  blither  and  more 
human  when  applied  by  Valerius  to  the  heroic  age,  when  the 
gods  in  the  dawn  of  civilization  look  to  the  opening  work  of 
their  children.^     The  same  thought  runs  all  through  the  story 
of  "  Sigurd  the  Volsung  and  the  Fall  of  the  Niblungs,"  where 
the  pure  delight  of  the  heroic  age  in  activity  for  its  own  sake 
is  dwelt  upon  with  the  genial  spontaneity  which  is  just  what 
we  miss  in  Valerius,  whose  imagination  runs  to  seed  in  in- 
genuity.   Thus  he  gravely  reflects  that  if  there  had  been  wild 
beasts  in  Greece,  Pelias  would  not  have  had  to  send  Jason  to 

*  Arg.  I.  498-502. 


K 


Colchis  to  get  rid  of  him,  and  that  Hercules  had  killed  the 
worst  of  the  monsters.  It  is  rather  a  flat  conceit,  but  how 
many  who  were  capable  of  the  conceit  would  have  thought 
of  the  turn  Valerius  gives  to  it?  "Alcides  had  his  temples 
framed  already  in  the  grinning  jaws  of  the  lion  of  Cleonae.'" 
Even  in  a  paraphrase  the  line  is  picturesque;  in  the  terse 
original  it  is  a  picture,  or  rather  the  literary  ghost  of  one. 

Valerius  has  a  better  right  to  dilate  upon  the  perplexity  of 
Jason  when  he  first  learns  that  he  has  to  cross  the  sea,  and 
inculcate  in  every  possible  way  that  the  voyage  of  the  Argo 
is  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  human  history — a  motive  of 
which  Apollonius  makes  no  use  whatever,  perhaps  because  he 
was  on  his  guard  against  the  inconsistency  of  supposing  that 
the  Greeks  of  Lemnos  were  carrying  on  a  maritime  war  against 
Tiirace  at  a  time  when  the  Greeks  of  Thessaly  had  still  to 
build  their  first  ship,  which  the  barbarians  of  Colchis  w^ere  to 
pursue  with  a  numerous  fleet.  x\gain,  Apollonius  cares  little 
or  nothing  for  Herodotus's  legend  of  the  series  of  raids  of 
Asia  upon  Europe,  and  Europe  upon  Asia,  culminating  in  the 
Persian  war.  But  for  Valerius  the  prophecy  of  Mopsus  is  the 
chief  motive  which  decides  the  jMinyoe  to  sacrifice  Medea  to 
save  the  fleece.  It  is  noteworthy  that  Mopsus  is  the  meaner 
of  the  two  prophets  who  accompany  the  voyage:  his  foresight 
always  disquiets  him,  while  the  insight  of  Idmon,  who  knows 
he  is  to  perish  before  the  fleece  is  won,  fills  him  with  calm 
and  enables  him  to  calm  others.  The  contrast  is  one  of  the 
points  where  Valerius  improves  upon  Apollonius,  who  makes 
Idmon  sail  simply  because  he  is  afraid  of  being  jeered  at  if 
he  stays.  There  are  other  variations  which  are  not  improve- 
ments j  as,  for  instance,  the  list  of  the  Argonauts  comes  in 
Apollonius  at  the  natural  place,  when  they  first  assemble; 
whereas  Valerius  waits  till  he  can  tell  in  what  order  they  took 
their  seats  on  board.  Now  and  then  he  changes  a  name  to 
bring  in  one  that  is  more  celebrated,  although,  as  the  legend 
says  nothing  of  Tydeus,  he  does  not  profit  much  by  introduc- 
ing him.  In  general,  he  is  anxious  to  extend  the  legend  as 
much  as  possible.  Thus,  where  Apollonius  only  gives  the 
'  Cleonaso  jam  tempora  cl^usus  hiatu. — Alcides^  i.  34,  35. 


\ 


70 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


farewell  of  ^son  and  Alcimedes  to  Jason,  allowing  room  for 
the  legend  of  .^Eson's  renewed  youth,  Valerius  follows  this  up 
with  I-  Roman  suicide,  with  the  guards  of  the  tyrant  arriving 
too  late,  when  everything  is  over.  As  we  are  in  the  heroic 
age,  the  suicide  is  committed  by  bull's  blood,  and  the  farewell 
curses  are  perhaps  a  reminiscence  of  Dido's.  It  is  character- 
istic of  Valerius  himself  that,  when  he  solemnly  dismisses  the 
illustrious  ghosts  to  Elysium,  he  recapitulates  the  joys  of  the 
Pindaric  age,  and  says  the  blessed  inherit  these,  and  all  where- 
in the  people  take  delight  no  more.' 

Throughout   the  episode   of   Medea  we   are   reminded,  of 
course,  more   forcibly   of  Dido;    although  we    are   reminded 
more   by   differences   than    resemblances.     Throughout    Va- 
lerius is  more  concerned  with  his  knowledge  of  the  heart  of  a 
maiden  than  with  Medea's  passion  :  or  perhaps  we  should  say 
that  he  studies  the  situation  as  a  French  novelist  might  study 
it:  the  picture  of  passion,  pure  and  simple,  had  no  longer  any 
novelty.      The    "Ariadne"   of  Catullus    had   shown    pretty 
nearly  all  that  was  possible  in  the  expression  of  simple  grief; 
the  Dido  of  Vergil  had  shown  all  that  was  possible  in  the  ex- 
pression of  growing  passion,  and  the  struggle  of  dignity  and 
resentment;  and  Ovid  had  shown  very  nearly  all  that  inge- 
nuity could  do  in   playing  upon   all   the  legendary  circum- 
stances of  each  deserted  heroine  so  as  to   make  as  many 
sparkling  points  as  possible.      Apollonius  was  in  quite  a  dif- 
ferent position.     The  Greek  drama  had  treated  very  little  of 
womanly  passion,  and  hardly  treated  of  maidenly  passion  at 
all ;  so  when  Apollonius  treated  of  the  growing  passion  of 
IVIedea  for  Jason,  which  had  at  first  no  obstacles  but  maiden- 
ly reserve,  he   was   practically  upon  virgin   ground,  and  his 
imagination  worked  freely  and  happily.      He  had  no  need  to 
work  his  intelligence:  such  subtlety  as  there  is  is  quite  spon- 
taneous, as  when  he  makes  Medea  wonder,  when  she  has  her 
casket  of  poisons  open,  whether  to  take  enough  to  kill  her, 
instead  of  taking  out  the  drugs  necessary  to  protect  Jason 
from  the  fire-breathing  bulls.  In. fact,  his  Medea  is  very  little  of 
a  sorceress;  at  least,  her  own  inner  nature  is  quite  unaffected 

i  I.  835-846. 


r 


LUC  AN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS, 


71 


by  her  magic  skill;  and  this  holds,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  the 
Medea  of  Valerius,  although  one  of  her  savage  lovers  is  at- 
tracted to  one  who  is  famous  for  her  maidenhood  and  for 
poisons  like  his  own.'  But,  in  the  main,  Medea  is  an  innocent 
girl  who  has  a  wonderful  serpent  to  i^^^^  which  she  is  quite 
ashamed  to  rob  of  the  fleece  that  it  guards.  When  she  has 
once  put  it  to  sleep,  she  characteristically  flies  to  the  other  ex- 
treme, and  suggests  that  Jason  should  climb  up  the  serpent's 
body  to  reach  the  tree  where  the  fleece  hangs.  Throughout, 
in  spite  of  her  shrinking  from  love,  it  is  she  who  is  in  love 
with  Jason,  not  Jason  with  her ;  indeed,  in  all  ancient  poetry 
which  deals  with  love  this  is  the  rule,  but  Valerius  is  as  often 
singularly  fresh  and  modern,  in  what  follows,  when  the  lovers 
have  exchanged  warnings  and  pledges.  "  After  all  is  said, 
each  stands  there  still,  fixed  to  the  ground;  and  now  they  lift 
up  their  faces,  glad  with  the  daring  of  youth  ;  and  each  face  at 
once  snatches — how  often  ! — the  sweetness  of  the  face  it  sees. 
Then  sick  shame  casts  down  their  countenance,  and  there  is 
pause  again  for  speech,  and  the  maiden  sets  herself  once  more 
to  affright  Jason." '■*  There  are  touches  here  to  which  we  can 
find  few  parallels  before  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury ;  and  we  should  have  to  come  to  mediaeval  romance  to 
find  parallels  to  the  chivalry  of  Jason,  who  is  loath  to  owe  so 
much  to  a  maiden.  It  is  true  that  her  ointment  saves  him 
from  the  breath  of  the  bulls  of  ^etes  (who  boasts,  with  a 
frank  audacity  which  does  the  author  great  credit,  of  the 
trouble  he  had  with  them  himself  at  Jason's  age),^  but  Jason 
masters  them  by  main  strength  ;  and  when  the  armed  men 
start  up,  he  rushes  to  engage  them,  though  he  has  drawn 
back  a  little  to  his  comrades  when  the  seed  is  sown  :  he 
knows  that  the  enchanted  helmet  which  Medea  has  jjiven  him 
is  his  one  chance  of  victory,  even  of  safety  ;  but  he  only  throws 
it  among  them  out  of  sore  necessity,  against  his  will.  The 
desperate  daring  of  Stirus,  who  throws  away  himself  and  his 
ship  and  crew  in  the  vain  attempt  to  capture  Medea  and 
avenge  his  disappointed  love,  is  another  trait  of  the  same 
kind.*  But  the  chivalry  is  not  carried  through:  Jason  yields 
.     »  VI.  156,  157.      2  VII.  511-51,5.      '  VII.  62-64.       *  VIII.  328  sqq. 


7^ 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


LUC  AN  AND   HIS  SUCCESSORS. 


73 


to  the  Argonauts  when  they  propose  to  give  up  Medea  on  con- 
dition of  being  allowed  to  carry  home  the  golden  fleece,  as  he 
waits  for  their  verdict  that  she  deserves  the  honor  before  he 
decides  to  marry  her.     Probably  the  resolution  to  surrender 
her  is  a  little  earlier  than  Apollonius.     In  the  primitive  legend 
Absyrtus  was  a  helpless  child  instead  of  a  formidable  warrior, 
upon  whose  achievements  in  the  Scythian  war  Valerius  is  care- 
ful to  dwell ;  he  was  lured  on  board  the  Argo  as  soon  as  she 
was  overtaken,  or  else  Medea  carried  him  with  her  in  her 
flight,  and  made  very  little  more  conscience  of  cutting  him  in 
pieces  and  scattering  the  mangled  remains  for  her  father  to 
collect   than  she  made  of  putting  the  dragon  to  sleep.     But 
the  Medea  of  Valerius  is  a  virgin  priestess  with  a  tender  con- 
science, and  the  picture  of  this  is  so  elaborated  that,  when 
the  poet  has  to  explain  her  first  serious  crime,  he  halts  upon 
the  threshold  and  proceeds  no  further:  although  he  has  laid  a 
promising  foundation  for  any  amount  of  deterioration  in  her 
dcemoniac  passion,  which  is  no  part  of  her  natural  wholesome 

life.  .        . 

We  are  reminded  of  Lucan  (and  it  is  one  of  the  merits  ot 
Valerius  that  he  does  not  remind  us  often  of  him)  in  the  sav- 
age Scythian  who  has  killed  his  own  father,  and  eaten  him,  as 
the  highest  act  of  filial  duty,  and  appeals  to  this  as  an  answer 
to  a  sitppliant  who  asks  to  be  spared  to  his  aged  father.     The 
ferocity  is,  however,  only  one  element  of  the  description  :  even 
in  dealing  with  the  extremest  savagery,  Valerius  always  feels 
more  curiosity  than  excitement,  and  such  excitement  as  he 
feels  is  more  fanciful  than  passionate.    The  father  knows  that 
his  time  has  come  when  the  familiar  bow  is  stubborn'  to  its 
master's  failing  arm;    the   son   is  anxious  to   hold    his  arm 
steady,  as  the  father  presses  upon  the  sword.    One  feels  much 
more  strongly  that  the  customs  of  the  race  are  strange  and 
romantic  than  that  they  are  awful:  there  is  no  jar  in  passing 
to  such  details  from  the  peaceful  picture  of  the  family  on  its 
travels,  with  the  children  running  along  the  pole  and  bran- 
dishing their  darts. 

»  No  one  English  word  will  do  for  the  refutat  of  the  original ;  the  bow 
quietly  puts  the  old  man  in  the  wrong  when  he  claims  to  pull  it  as  he  used. 


cr 


\ 


■     Valerius  succeeds  decidedly  better  with  manners  and  cus- 
toms than  he  does  with  battles.   It  is  always  puzzling  to  make 
out  upon  which  side  his  warriors  fall,  and  it  is  hopeless  to  ex- 
tract from  him  a  general  view  of  the  outline  of  even  a  day's 
fighting;  while  the  fighting  itself  is  not  original  in  its  details, 
for,  with  all  his  passion  for  abridgment,  Valerius  finds  room 
for  a  tame  copy  of  the  death  of  Sarpedon.'     In  general,  the 
poem  suffers  from  an  endeavor  to  grasp  too  much :  the  writer 
is  discursive  and  fragmentary,  because  he  can  never  abandon 
himself  to  a  single  fruitful  train  of  feeling.     Besides  the  main 
interest  of  the  book,  the  first  enterprise  of  navigation,  the 
passion  of  Medea,  the  romantic  scenery  of  the  eastern  coast 
of  the  Black  Sea,  we  have  the  legend  of  Helle,  who  rises  from 
the  strait  that  bears  her  name  to  make  a  pretty  speech  to  the 
avenger  of  her  brother;  we  have  an  unmistakable  hankering 
after  any  and  every  legend  connected  with  an  Argonaut;  and, 
in  the  case  of  Hercules  and  Castor  and  Pollux,  this  is  carried 
so  far  that  his  return  to  his  main  story  is  almost  as  violent  a 
transition  as  any  in  the  *'  Metamorphoses,"  where  the  poet  has 
to  get  as  he  can  from  one  legend  to  another  that  has  no  con- 
nection with  it.     Valerius  reminds  us  of  Ovid  in  his  eye  for 
the  picturesque,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  that  Ovid  antici- 
pates Valerius,  for  the  latter  is  above  all  Latin  poets  in  his 
power  of  direct  fragmentary  perception  of  visible  fact.     Ovid, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  above  Valerius  in  flow  and  copiousness; 
and  though  his  romanticism  is  heartless,  it  is  always  entertain- 
ing, which  is  more  than  can  be  said  of  Valerius,  one  of  the 
most   estimable    and    ingenious   and    wearisome  of  authors. 
Another  point  of  resemblance  is  their  cosmopolitanism  :  dis- 
tinctively Roman  interests  are  little  to  either,  and  both  are 
more  disinterestedly  literary  than  most  Latin  writers,  and  have 
less  of  the  hortatory  element.     Of  the  two,  it  may  be  thought 
that  Valerius,  as  the  more  serious,  is  also  more  open  to  im- 
pressions from  contemporary  life.      All  the  Scythian  episode 
is  much  more  largely  developed  than  in  Apollonius,  and  it  is 
at  least  suggestive  that  he  should  have  lived  and  written  just 
before  the   Romans  had  to   undertake   the  conquest  of  Da- 

^  VI.  <32i  sqq. 
II.— 4 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE. 
74 

cia  •■  for  the  whole  country  between  the  Danube  and  the  Cau- 
casus was  practically  one  political  and  geographical  system, 
as  the  country  between  the  Rhine  and  the  Vistula,  known  as 
Germany,  was  another. 

.  The  wars  of  Domitian  proved  that  it  was  impossible  to  retain  the 
Danube  as  a  frontier. 


\ 


PART  V. 

ROMAN   SATIRE   FROM   NERO  TO   HADRIAN. 


CHAPTER  I. 

GENERAL  ASPECTS. 

Satire  was  a  very  subordinate  part  of  the  literature  of  the 
Augustan  age.  All  the  poetry  of  the  Claudian  and  Flavian 
age  which  modern  critics  quite  approve  is  satire ;  for  even 
Martial,  though  quite  as  ingenious  in  flattery,  is  read  for 
his  trenchant  wit  rather  than  for  his  courtliness  or  his  rare  and 
delicate  sentiment.  This  fiict  is  a  decisive  condemnation  of 
the  literature  of  the  time;  and,  oddly  enough,  it  tells  most 
decisively  against  the  literature  which  was  most  copious  and 
most  conscientious  and  prosperous,  for  Lucan,  after  all,  is  read 
for  pleasure,  while  Persius  is  read  as  a  part  of  education,  be- 
cause his  Latin  is  as  difficult  as  his  sense  is  good.^ 

There  is  a  certain  resemblance  between  the  position  of 
Persius  and  Lucilius:  both  are  independent  gentlemen  with- 
out ambition,  and  satisfied  with  their  social  standing,  although 
the  social  standing  of  Lucilius  was  decidedly  higher.  Strictly 
speaking,  neither  was  a  Roman.    Persius  lived  mostly  on  his 

»  As  far  back  as  the  clays  of  St.  Jerome,  Persius  had  become  unintelb'gi- 
ble  ;  but  neither  Martial  nor  Quinctilian  hints  at  this  defect,  and  it  is  only 
lately  that  critics  have  generally  been  struck  with  the  extreme  obscurity  of 
much  of  Shakespeare.  Probably  the  same  explanation  is  to  be  given  in 
both  cases:  the  great  poet  and  the  small  used  without  reflection  the  ordi- 
nary dialect  of  their  time,  condensing  it  a  little  under  a  weight  of  meaning 
which  did  not  puzzle  their  contemporaries,  who  had  no  need  to  have  a 
methodical  knowledge  of  the  basis  of  their  style. 


1 


76 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


GENERAL  ASPECTS. 


77 


estate  in  Etruria,  and  Lucilius,  though  he  was  the  friend  of 
Scipio,  was  liable  to  be  treated  as  almost  a  provincial  by  other 
nobles.    Both  come  at  the  end  of  a  period  of  literary  activity. 
Lucilius  is  the  contemporary  of  Accius,  and  Persius  is  the 
contemporary  of  Lucan.     Juvenal,  according  to  the  received 
chronology,  comes  at  the  end  of  the  period  of  Flaccus,  Silius, 
and  Statkis.     Martial,  on  the  contrary,  lived  in  the  midst  of 
the  movement;   he  writes  upon  the  same  Hercules  Epitrape- 
zius  as  Statins,  he  joins  in  extolling  the  magnificence  of  Do- 
mitian;  he  has  compliments  for  all  the  heroes  of  the  age,  for 
Silius  and  for  Pliny,  for  Quinctilian  and  for  Statins,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  writers  whose  reputation  only  flourished  among 
those  who  had  to  court  them— like  Regulus  and  Stella.     But 
his  general  judgment  on  the  literature  of  his  age  is  very  severe 
because  it  is  not  bitter.     He  admires  the  times  heartily  and 
almost  without  reserve:  his  admiration,  no  doubt,  was  inter- 
ested; and  under  Nerva  and  Trajan,  if  not  before,  he  shows 
that  the  constant  attitude  of  adoration  which  he  had  main- 
tained towards  Domitian  was  somewhat  burdensome.     But  a 
man  about  town  who  had  not  to  make  his  way  by  his  wits 
might  very  well  imagine  that  the  Rome  of  Domitian,  in  arts 
and   arms'  and  laws,  was  more  splendid  than  the  Rome  of 
Augustus,  and  this  is  exactly  the  position  of  Martial.     But, 
this  being  so,  he  wonders  innocently--and  he  was  obviously 
only  stating  a  popular  problem— why  the  Rome  of  Augustus 
was  illustrated  by  immortal  poets;  and  nobody  knew  better 
than  iVIartial  that  a  great  many  of  his  clever  contemporaries 
had  no  chance  of  immortality,  that  a  book  might  show  plenty 
of  ingdniiim  and  yet  be  safe  to  go  straight  to  the  cooks,  who 
bought  up  remainders  then  as  trunk-makers  did  fifty  years 
ajro,  and  that  the  immortalitv  of  a  book  depends  upon   its 
having  a  genius  of  its  own. 

ThJs  is  a  great  advance  upon  Horace's  dictum  that  poets 
cannot  afford  to  be  mediocre;  but  the  science  of  criticism 
was  still  in  its  in^incy.  Martial  explains  the  inferiority  of 
his  contemporaries  by  the  fact  that  there  was  no  Maecenas 
among  the  courtiers  of  Domitian.  All  the  great  poets  of  the 
Augustan  age  had  been  made  easy  for  life  (if  they  needed  it) 


!Pi 


I* 

t 


\ 


as  soon  as  their  genius  declared  itself;  whereas  Statins  was  in 
difficulties  all  his  life,  and  Martial  himself  was  always  begging 
for  the  necessities  of  a  gentlemanly  existence:  he  imagined 
that  if  he  only  had  been  made  independent  when  he  came  to 
Rome  he  could  have  done  as  well  as  Marsus,  and  that  other 
poets  would  have  risen  up  equal  to  Vergil  if  they  had  found 
their  Maecenas.  One  of  his  intimates,  Stella,  w^as  in  very 
easy  circumstances ;  and  when  Martial  wished  him  to  come  to 
dinner,  the  inducement  was  that  under  no  provocation  would 
Martial  recite  anything,  not  even  though  Stella  recited  his  own 
poem  on  the  Giants'  wars:  it  is  obvious  that  Martial's  ad- 
miration for  the  poetry  of  Stella  was  insincere  compared  with 
his  admiration  of  the  majesty  of  Domitian. 

Juvenal  makes  the  same  complaint  that  poetry  is  a  bad 
profession,  and  hints  a  little  more  strongly  than  Martial  that 
the  profession  was  spoiled  by  amateurs.  He  gives  another 
ground  for  the  absence  of  first-rate  poetry,  that  all  subjects 
were  exhausted.  He  means,  of  course,  all  mythological  sub- 
jects: and  Greek  poetry  never  got  quite  free  from  mythology; 
and  Roman  poetry,  which  was  less  vigorous,  could  hardly  be 
expected  to  accomplish  more,  although  the  need  of  doing  so, 
if  possible,  had  been  evident  as  far  back  as  Vergil's  day. 
But  he  is  also  quite  alive  to  the  seamy  side  of  Roman  society 
as  a  whole,  which  Martial  is  not.  Martial  always  puts  himself 
in  the  position  of  holding  up  this  or  that  specimen  of  a  ridicu- 
lous type  to  the  admiration  of  a  distinguished  society.  When 
he  goes  further,  he  only  points  out  that  existing  social  arrange- 
ments bear  hardly,  without  any  good  reason,  upon  himself 
and  those  like  him.  But  Juvenal  attacks  society  as  a  whole  : 
everything,  according  to  him,  is  a  mistake,  from  the  prosperity 
of  the  wicked  to  the  insecurity  of  the  streets.  His  view  of 
the  matter  is  that  poetry  and  literature  in  general  are  dying 
out;  and  small  wonder,  since  even  if  a  man  of  letters  makes 
a  sacrifice  which  no  man  of  letters  ought  to  be  called  upon  to 
make,  and  turns  schoolmaster,  he  will  be  grossly  underpaid, 
and  not  able  even  then  to  recover  his  fees.  He  has  no  per- 
sonal objection  to  the  particular  form  which  literary  ambition 
took  at  the  time — the  pretension  to  make  every  word  exquisite 


78 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


GENERAL   ASPECTS, 


79 


and  felicitous,  which  disgusted  Martial  as  it  had  disgusted 
Persius.  On  the  other  hand,  he  agrees  with  Martial  that  one 
of  the  worst  plagues  of  the  time  was  the  pretension  to  au- 
sterity of  those  who  were  incapable  of  common  probity  and 

manliness. 

The  position  of  Juvenal  was  in  some  ways  the  least  satis- 
factory of  the  three.     He  had  a  start  in  life  good  enough  to 
justify  him  in  expecting  a  considerable  success,  with  the  talents 
of  which  he  was  doubtless  conscious ;  but  he  carried  on  his 
preparation   too  long,  and   found   himself  railing  at  a  world 
which  did  not  want  him  and  immortalized  the  railing.     Prob- 
ably the  rich  freedman  whose  heir  he  was  admired  the  world 
in  which  he  had  made  his  own  way.    Persius  judges  the  world 
severely,  but  not  bitterly:  he  admires  nothing  except  Cornutus 
and  philosophy,  and  he  complains  of  the  world  just  because 
he  is  unworldly.      He   has  stood  too  much  aloof  to  notice 
much  real  injustice  or  hardship:  he  finds  enough  to  horrify 
him  in  the  fdct  that  men   actually  dare  to  turn  their  secret 
wishes  into  prayers,  that  politicians  undertake  to  govern  the 
world  with  no  knowledge  of  transcendental  morality,  and  that 
young  men  neglect  their  characters  and  drift  down-hill  faster 
than^hey  know.     These  reflections  are  not  very  painful  to 
him ;  he  is  splenetic  and  contemptuous  towards  others,  but  his 
own'  short  life  was  virtuous  and   prosperous ;  and  he  writes 
like  a  man  at  peace  with  himself.     It  is  more  surprising  that 
Martial,  after   being   the   satellite   of    Domilian's   satellites, 
should  have  gone  home  to  Bilbilis  so  little  soured  by  a  very 
tantalizing  life,  which  had  been  full  of  cheap  indulgences  and 
ignoble  compliances.     Persius   is  the   only  one  of  the  three 
who  had  much  ambition  to  write  on  other  subjects.      He  be- 
gan an  epic  and  an  imitation  of  the  journey  to  Brundusium, 
and  wrote  other  miscellaneous  verses,  including  a  comedy; 
all  of  which  Cornutus  prudently  burned  when  he  edited  the 
"  Satires."  Martial  tells  us  of  certain  trifles  of  his  youth  which 
one  of  his  friends  had  been  at  the  pains  to  cherish:  they  may 
perhaps  have  been  the  same  as  the  short  volume  of  distichs 
to  accompany  New-year's  gifts  which  is  now  reckoned  the 
fourteenth  of  his  collection.      Juvenal  did  nothing   but  de- 


\ 


f9< 


claim  and  write  satires;  for  the  tradition  that  he  wrote  a  bal- 
let for  an  actor  only  rests  upon  a  misunderstanding  of  a  line 
in  his  own  poem  and  a  note  of  one  of  his  biographers.  Na- 
tional pride  sustains  Juvenal,  as  the  conceit  of  his  Stoical 
training  sustains  Persius,  and  a  temper  naturally  cheerful  sus- 
tains Martial. 


i 


80 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


PERSIUS. 


81 


CHAPTER  11. 

FERSIUS. 

When  we  come  to  analyze  Persius,  the  first  thing  that 
strikes  us  is  that  he  repeated  Horace,  so  far  as  could  be  done 
without  knowledge  of  life.  All  the  topics  seem  to  be  taken 
from  him.  There  is  the  same  complaint  at  the  unreasonable 
preference  for  antiquity,  the  same  application  of  comedy  to 
edification,  the  same  appeal  to  Stoical  commonplace;  the 
same  warning  against  wasteful  expenditure,  and  the  same  pro- 
test against  sordid  economy;  the  same  reference  to  dropsy  as 
a  disease  that  punishes  neglect  of  the  body,  as  the  passions 
punish  the  neglect  of  the  soul ;  the  same  jests  even  at  the 
pretentiousness  of  municipal  dignitaries;  there  is  the  same 
contrast,  a  good  deal  amplified,  between  the  tastes  of  the  big 
centurions  and  their  big  sons  and  those  of  philosophers  and 
their  pupils.  On  the  other  hand,  Persius  omits  all  Horace's 
jests  at  the  pedantry  of  the  Porch.  He  is  indifferent  to  the 
question  of  prudence,  which  is  so  important  for  Horace.  When 
he  protests  against  extravagance,  it  is  because  it  is  foolish,  not 
because  it  is  ruinous.  All  the  types  of  actual  life  in  Horace 
are  only  represented  by  casual  allusions.  The  minor  morals, 
again,  have  much  less  importance  for  Persius,  to  whom  the 
necessary  knowledge  came  by  good-nature  and  good-breed- 
ing; whereas  Horace  had  to  consider  his  behavior,  being  of 
an  irritable  temper,  and  living  with  men  of  higher  station, 
and  being  exposed  to  all  sorts  of  surprises  and  annoyances 
by  his  ambiguous  position.  Horace,  for  the  same  reason,  is 
full  of  the  question  of  promotion  from  the  ranks.  Persius  is 
content  to  rebuke  the  empty  pride  of  birth.  Another  point 
on  which  Horace  is  full  and  Persius  silent  is  the  inconsist- 
ency of  men  who  can  never  be  content  or  stick  to  their 
choice:  this  is  more  remarkable  if  we  trust  the  tradition  that 


»« 


t- 


1 


Persius  himself  had  hesitated  between  the  life  of  a  man  of 
letters  and  a  soldier;  for  in  his  case  it  would  have  been 
rather  a  caprice  to  enter  either  profession.  His  connections 
were  not  high  enough  to  carry  him  far  in  the  army,  and  he 
was  not  vain  enough,  or  earnest,  or  even  serious  enough,  to 
carry  his  literary  pretensions  far.  The  attraction  of  his  book 
is  that  he  jests  at  himself  soberly  without  a  spark  of  levity, 
and  therefore  he  was  not  fitted  for  copious  comic  writing. 
He  finds  the  world,  not  amusing,  like  Horace,  but  ridiculous, 
and  feels  that  life,  upon  the  whole,  is  a  sorry  thing. 

His  whole  tone  is  much  sharper,  and,  one  might  add,  more 
ill-natured,  than  Horace's;  and  this  is  curious,  because  we 
know  Horace   was  decidedly   irritable,  whereas  all   the  de- 
scriptions of  Persius  dwell  upon  his  sweetness  and  purity. 
Something  must  be   set   down   to   the   Pharisaism   of  youth, 
something,  perhaps,  to  the  pride  of  victory  over  temptation. 
It  would  not  be  a  rash  inference  IhatCornutus  "saved  "  him: 
he  was  the  first  teacher  to  whom  he  owed  anything.    He  tells 
us  nothing  of  his  schoolmasters,  and  speaks  very  slightingly 
of  the  usual  literary  education ;  and  thinks   that   it   is   quite 
natural  for  boys  to  shirk  their  first  declamation  lessons,  and 
that  their  master,  who  applauds  their  recitation  of  his  own 
composition,  is  more  unreasonable  than  they.    He  has  a  keen 
sense  how  dangerous  the  first  taste  of  liberty  might  be,  and 
he  did  not  value  himself  upon  his  original  propensities.     The 
great  happiness  he  knew  with  Cornutus  was  the  happiness 
of  a  mind  under  the  pressure  of  reason  laboring  to  be  con- 
quered.    We  trace  an  echo  of  the  exhortations  of  Cornutus 
in  the  lecture,  in  the  third  satire,  to  the  well-born,  well-pro- 
vided simpleton,  who  has  no  idea  in  the  world  but  to  saunter 
through  life  without  a  mark  to  aim  at,  or  a  well-strung  bow 
and  well-filled  quiver  to  shoot  at  it  with,  pelting  crows  with  pot- 
sherds that  are  just  good  enough  to  take  a  cock-shot  with,  and 
with  mud  that  is  no  use  even  for  that.    If  Persius  himself  had 
been  converted  by  the  threat  that  he  would  be  contemptible 
if  he  persisted  in  the  course  of  self-indulgence  natural  to  a 
man  without  ambition,  he  would  think  this  threat  more  effectual 
than  it  is.     To  the  last  he  had  a  clear  perception  that  though 

n.— 4* 


82 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


PERSIUS. 


^2> 


>, 


i 


Tove  (who,  he  reminds  us,  is  ahnighty)  might  punish  tyrants 
quite  adequately  with  such  a  sight  of  virtue  as  would  make 
them  pine  away  because  they  had  forsaken   her,  yet  a  cen- 
turion  with  no  particular  sin  upon  his  conscience  will  always 
think  his  breakfast  more  important  than   discussions  about 
nothino-  coming  from  nothing  and  the  like.     There  is  none  ot 
the  bitterness  in  his  description  of  the  centurions  which  there 
is  in  his  description  of  the  fashionable  poet  and  his  audience, 
nothing  like  his  contempt  for  the  spruce  citizen  who  plumes 
himself  on  his  performances  in  breaking  unfair  measures  in 
the  market  and  has  an  itch  for  jesting  on  a  philosopher  for 
his  Greek  clogs.     The  worst  he  has  to  say  of  the  centurions 
is  that  their  veins  stand  out,  and  that   their   profession  is 
rather  unsavory:  what  he  gives  them  to  say  against  the  phi- 
losophers is  far  more  damaging  than  anything  he  says  against 
them;  and  it  would  not  be  unlike  Persiusto  have  seen  through 
the  affectations  of  philosophers  and  to  have  been  half  ashamed 

of  his  discernment. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  his  Stoicism  has  no  trace  of  the 
famous  paradoxes  about  the  wise  man  and  the  all-sufficiency 
of  virtue.      Now  and  then  we  get  hints  that  all  the  world  but 
the  wise  are  slaves;  but  this  resolves  itself  into  illustration  of 
the  sober  thesis  that  the  passions  are  hard  masters.     The  list 
of  duties  which  Persius  invites  backsliders  to  learn  for  their 
own  peace  is  startling  from  its  simplicity  and  from  the  entire 
absence  of  any  harsh  demands  upon  natur&<  he  never  presses 
self-conquest  up  to  the  point  at  which  it  will  be  painful.     His 
model  students  are  remarkable  for  their  immense  appetite  for 
pearl  barley,  as  well  as  for  their  short  hair  and  their  sleepless- 
ness.    As  for  Persius  himself,  he  insists  upon  the  right  and 
duty  of  having  his  greens  well  oiled  every  day,  and,  generally 
speaking,  thinks  it  unbecoming  and  miserly  not  to  live  up  to 
his  income;  all  extraordinary  expenses  being  met  out  of  capi- 
tal, at  the  expense,  it  is  assumed,  of  the  heir,  who  must  not 
crrumble  unless  he  wishes  to  be  disinherited.     He  is  not  the 
feast  shocked  at  the  idea  of  seeing  gladiators,  for  he  thinks 
that  as  often  as  a  victory  is  gazetted  every  man  of  property  is 
bound  to  exhibit  them.     It  might  even  be  thought  that  it  was 


r» 


i\m 


a  part  of  wisdom  to  know  when  to  begin  to  indulge  one's  self, 
although  Persius  does  not  say  so  plainly;  one  great  lesson  is 
how  to  turn  softly  round  the  goal,  and  where  to  start  for  the 
turn.  The  poet  is  probably  thinking  of  the  Greek  chariot  race 
in  Homer,  which  was  there  and  back,  rather  than  of  the 
Roman,  which  was  round  and  round  the  circus.  He  would 
think  also  of  Plato,  who  more  than  once  alludes  to  the  divis- 
ion of  the  race  of  life  into  two  halves,  which  have  each  a  law 
and  a  chance  of  their  own.  After  asking  the  question  where 
and  when  to  turn  the  goal,  the  next  question  Persius  bids  us 
answer  is.  What  fortune  ought  a  man  to  make?  Vv'hat  is  the  use 
to  be  made  of  m.oney  fresh  from  the  mint?  how  much  ought 
to  be  bestowed  on  the  public  and  the  family?  It  is  quite  of  a 
piece  with  this  that  the  main  object  of  studying  philosophy  is 
to  provide  for  a  cheerful  old-age.  Most  old  men  whom  the 
satirist  knew  struck  him  as  peevish  and  ridiculous;  they  were 
simply  miserable,  as  they  lived  upon  the  scanty  satisfactions 
that  the  courtesy  of  their  juniors  still  vouchsafed  to  their  van- 
ity. A  philosopher  like  Cornutus  can  teach  a  young  man  how 
to  take  precaution  betimes  against  this  wretched  lot ;  it  is 
only  needful  to  study  the  duties  of  his  station  methodically, 
and  fulfil  them  steadily.  He  is  not  to  overrate  his  importance 
or  to  take  too  much  upon  himself;  he  is  to  consider  what  his 
station  is  in  the  race,  what  share  he  is  to  take  in  the  common- 
wealth of  man.  The  important  thing  is  not  to  fret  at  seeing 
your  neighbors  get  on  quicker  than  you  do,  and  not  to  over- 
rate the  value  of  the  well-stocked  storeroom  of  an  advocate  in 
good  country  practice.  It  is  noticeable  throughout  that  Per- 
sius's  ideas  of  wealth  are  modest.  Both  Juvenal  and  Horace 
have  ideas  of  magnificent  extravagance  which  are  quite  beyond 
him :  rnarble  villas,  costly  banquets,  and  wasteful  profusion 
are  unknown  to  him ;  the  worst  extravagance  that  strikes  him 
as  possible  is  taken  from  Horace  at  second-hand.  A  man  may 
beggar  himself  in  largesses  of  vetches  and  beans  that  old  men 
may  remember,  as  they  sun  themselves,  what  a  Feast  of  Flow- 
ers they  had  when  he  was  aedile.  The  life  that  he  seems  to 
understand  is  the  life  of  Roman  dinner-parties  and  recitations, 
of  which  he  had  glimpses  enough  to  fill  him  with  contempt; 


84 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


I 


there  is  not  a  hint  of  the  plague  of  morning  visits  to  grandees 
of  which  Martial  and  Juvenal  are  full.     All  that  he  has  to  say 
is  that  a  bold  poet  runs  the  risk  of  being  coldly  received  when 
he  calls,  and  that  a  student  of  philosophy  must  not  pride  him- 
self on  being  able  to  call  on  a  censor  cousin  any  more  than 
on  his  long  Tuscan  pedigree.     But  what  he  knows  best  is  the 
life  of  a  rich  thrifty  f^rrmer.   He  is  at  home  with  Ventidius,  who 
has  a  Sabine  flrrm,  to  be  sure,  but  one  that  it  would  tire  a  kite 
to  fly  over ;  who  groans  as  he  says  grace  at  his  harvest  home, 
and  sups'  the  mothery  lees  of  spoilt  vinegar,  while  his  hinds 
fare  better  than  he.     The  country  to  Persius  is  always  "teem- 
ing:" he   has  no  feeling   for  the   cottage  farms  over  which 
Horace,  and  even  Juvenal,  are  so  enthusiastic ;  he  just  conde- 
scends to  recollect  that  bad  poets  were  apt  to  remember  the 
furrows  where  Serranus  was  sowing  when  they  made  him  dic- 
tator.    He  has  a  good  deal  of  humor,  which  is  seen  to  as 
much  advantage  in  the  prologue  as  anywhere  ;  he  laughs  at 
Ennius  with  his  vision  of  Homer  and  Parnassus,  and  at  his 
contemporaries  who  had  their  busts  finished  with  ivy  wreaths, 
and  liked  to  be  told  they  had  got  pale  with  their  draughts  of 
Pirene.     For  himself,  he' is  but  half  a  brother  of  the  starveling 
guild,  who  are  trained  by  hunger  just  like  so  many  parrots 
and  pies,  who  would  turn  poets  too  if  they  had  w^it  enough  to 
be  duped  by  the  prospect  of  being  paid  for  their  strains. 
The  description  of  the  husbandman's  prayers  who  ruins  him- 
self in  sacrifices  is  racy;'    and  so  is  the  description  of  the 
pious  grandam  who  sanctifies  the  baby  with  her  spittle  be- 
fore she  proceeds  to  bless  it;  while  for  himself  the  poet  begs 
that  Jupiter   will   refuse   to   hear  the   prayers  of  grandam 
or  nurse,  although  she  may  have  dressed  in  white  to  make 

them.' 

It  has  been  noticed  by  Professor  Conington  that,  while  we 
can  trace  a  very  close  parallelism  to  Horace  in  subject  and 

^  Persius  is  rather  fond  of  this  word  sorbere:  he  uses  it  three  times  (iv. 
l6,  iv.  32,  V.  112)  when  fotare  would  be  quite  as  convenient ;  probably  be- 
cause the  latter  was  a  little  hackneyed,  and  having  got  hold  of  a  word  that 
he  hopes  is  picturesque,  he  keeps  to  it,  and  never  uses  either  of  the  com- 
mon words  for  drink  at  all. 
MI.  44sqq.  MI.  39,  40. 


PERSIUS. 


85 


r< 


\    'I 


treatment,  all  the  traditions  we  have  tell  us  much  more  of  Per- 
sius's  imitations  of  Lucilius,  to  whom  perhaps  we  owe  Bestius 
with  his  regrets  for  the  good  old  times  before  Romans  knew 
Greek  or  had  an  idea  of  philosophy.'  As  an  imitator,  who  re- 
produced the  last  book  he  had  read  which  suited  him  with  an 
air  of  genuine  originality,  Persius  may  remind  some  readers  of 
Keats;  though  Keats  has  of  course  much  more  power  and 
charm,  to  say  nothing  of  his  wider  range.  Persius,  one  can 
see,  limited  his  range  voluntarily.  He  enjoyed  the  Bay  of 
Spezzia,  and  Statins  or  Vergil  would  have  taken  the  opportu- 
nity of  a  pretty  description:  all  that  Persius  tells  us  is  that 
"  the  Liguriau  coast  is  warm  round  him,  and  his  dear  sea 
spends  winter  with  him  where  the  rocks  spread  their  giant 
sides  and  the  shore  draws  back  into  a  deep  valley."  But  this 
is  not  enough  to  do  justice  to  his  feeling,  so  he  flies  off  to 
quote  Ennius,  who  had  praised  the  place  before  him;  and 
condescendingly  assures  us  that  the  old  poet  had  recovered 
his  senses  by  then.  The  union  of  7tatvcte  and  scornfulness 
and  feeling  is  characteristic.  It  is  characteristic  in  another 
way,  that  Persius  takes  for  granted  the  principle  of  suiting 
your  dinner  to  your  company,  which  scandalizes  Martial  and 
Juvenal.  He  thought  it  just  as  obviously  absurd  to  set  turbots 
before  freedmen  as  to  train  one's  own  palate  to  the  point  of 
knowing  a  hen  thrush  by  her  flavor  from  a  cock:  and  both 
were  as  bad  as  to  buy  brine  by  the  cupful  for  a  birthday 
dinner,  and  then  make  it  a  substitute  for  oil  instead  of  an 
addition  to  it ;  though  all  decent  people  had  a  jar  of  brine 
in  stock,  and  oiled  their  greens  every  day,  and  flavored  them 
with  brine  when  they  had  a  mind.'  It  is  to  be  noticed  through- 
out that  Persius  has  nothing  of  the  fitful  asceticism  which  we 
find  in  Seneca.  He  speaks  of  how  he  and  Cornutus  used 
to  enjoy  supping  together  after  the  day's  work  was  over, 
and   go   on    into    the   night,  which  was   not   the    custom    of 

*  VI.  37.  Which  can  hardly  have  kept  their  vigor  unimpaired  for  two 
hundred  years  and  more  ;  for  Juyenal  does  not  complain  of  Greek  doc- 
trines, but  of  the  personal  intrusion  of  individual  Greeks,  whose  numbers 
and  intrigues  were  too  much  for  any  ordinary  Roman. 

'VI.  19-24. 


gg  LATIN  LITERATURE. 

ordinary  revellers,  who  began  early  and  were  sleepy  when 
night  came  on;  so  that  Persius  claims  credit  for  temperance 
as  well  as  for  geniality.  Nero  and  his  courtiers,  to  be 
sure,  revelled  till  midnight  and  later,  but  this  was  excep- 
tional. 


T 


PETRONIUS. 


87 


CHAPTER  III. 
PETRONIUS. 

Petronius  Arbiter  was  a  contemporary  of  Persius,  who 
made  his  reputation  out  of  his  courage  in  turning  day  into 
night,  and  night  into  day.  He  did  not  neglect  his  business 
like  other  voluptuaries;  he  did  not  arrange  his  time  to  suit 
the  engagements  of  other  respectable  people,  but  slept  all 
day  and  worked  and  played  ail  night,  and,  being  clever  and 
capable  (for  he  governed  Bithynia  well),  had  a  great  name 
among  the  intimates  of  Nero,  who  gave  him  the  title  oi  arbi- 
ter elegaiitiaruju.  He  was  driven  to  suicide  a.d.  66  by  the 
jealousy  of  Tigellinus  ;  and,  like  most  of  his  contemporaries  in 
that  case,  decided  to  bleed  to  death,  amusing  himself  during 
the  process  as  well  as  he  could,  and  sometimes  stopping  the 
bleeding  for  a  time  when  he  found  the  trivial  conversation 
most  interesting.  Before  dying  he  sent  Nero  a  satire  upon 
his  vices,  and  destroyed  two  murrhine  vases  which  the  em- 
peror coveted.  He  is  generally  admitted  to  be  the  author  of 
a  long  novel  of  which  we  have  a  few  fragments  from  the  later 
books.  To  judge  from  these  the  plan  was  very  curious:  it 
combined  a  series  of  shabby  adventures  of  the  kind  which  Le 
Sage  affects,  only  with  much  more  love,  or  what  did  duty  for 
it,  with  a  pretty  complete  criticism  of  contemporary  literature. 
The  travellers  pass  from  one  scrape  to  another,  and  from  one 
low  scene  of  debauchery  to  another,  and  are  always  ready  to 
lecture  upon  the  decay  of  letters  and  to  supply  specimens  of 
how  subjects  ought  to  be  treated.  There  is  never  any  trace 
of  irony  in  these  disquisitions,  and  we  must  suppose  that 
Petronius  of  all  people  wished  to  place  his  views  of  respecta- 
bility and  a  sound  education  upon  record.  Most  of  the  ad- 
ventures are  indecent  enough,  and  dull  into  the  bargain ;  they 
turn  upon  all  kinds  of  voluntary  and  involuntary  assignations 


88 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUKE. 


by  land  and  sea,  and  upon  the  squabbles  and  scuffles  which 
arise  from  legitimate  and  illegitimate  jealousy.  Apparently  it 
was  a  subordinate  motive  with  the  writer  to  set  forth  the  dif- 
ferent phases  of  life  among  the  coast  towns  of  the  Roman  em- 
pire •  just  as  our  own  novels  of  the  eighteenth  century  contam 
many  scenes  of  low  life  which  are  not  particularly  humorous 
or  particularly  indecent,  and  yet  seemed  at  the  time  worth 
reading  about  because  they  were  odd  and  unf^imiliar. 

There  is  one  part  which  is  really  interesting,  and  will  bear 
comparison  with  anything  in  ancient  comedy— the  "  Supper  of 
Trimalchio,"  which  is  preserved  in  a  MS.  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury published  in  the  seventeenth.     It  is  a  most  humorous 
and  sympathetic  sketch  of  the  life  of  the  rich  freedmen  who 
flourished  in  the  cities  of  the  Campanian  coast.       It  is  only 
from  this  book  that  we  know  what  the  conditions  of  their  life 
were.     Most  mCu  of  business  were  luxurious  and  left  no  family 
behind  them,  and  the  confidential  slave  who  knew  how  to  in- 
gratiate himself  with  both  master  and  mistress  might  expect 
his  freedom  from  the  master  and   the   inheritance  from  the 
mistress.     Then  the  pleasure  properties  of  rich  nobles  did  not 
remain  long  in  the  same  hands,  and  for  a  business-like  man 
who  speculated  successfully  on  a  few  large  ventures  to  Rome, 
it  was  easy  to  invest  the  proceeds;  and  one  who  had  been  a 
slave,  and  knew  how  the  owner  of  a  large  property,  even  if  he 
wished  to  make  money  out  of  it,  was  apt  to  be  cheated,  was  in 
a  better  position  than  most  purchasers  for  making  it  pay.    The 
whole  pride  of  the  class  lay  in  their  money,  the  ingenuity  with 
which  they  spent  it,  and  the  spirit  they  showed  when  they  lost 
it,  as  happened  often  enough.     They  had  no  ambition  and  no 
career.      Trimalchio,  who  entertained  a  reasonable  hope  of 
buying  so  many  estates  that  he  might  travel  to  Africa  without 
going'^out  of  his  own  ground  except  when  he  was  at  sea,  had 
no  position  but  that  of  a  sevir  augustalis ;  and  he  boasts  of  his 
magnanimity  in  declining  higher  rank,  like  Maecenas;  only 
Mcecenas  might  have  been  consul  or  senator.     Every  corpo- 
ration at  Rome,  from  that  of  the  notaries  downwards,  would 
have  been  delighted  to  put  Trimalchio  on  its  books ;  but  Tri- 
malchio declined.     Of  course,  being  rich  enough  many  times 


PETRONIUS. 


89 


over,  he  assumed  equestrian  rank,  and  wore  more  rings  than 
any  other  knight  whose  father  had  been  free-born.  He  did 
not  trouble  himself  the  least  about  politics,  except  to  be  proud 
when  a  noble  was  pleased  to  say  that  he  had  put  up  as  com- 
fortably at  Trimalchio's  villa  as  at  his  own.  The  management 
of  his  own  property  was  his  great  concern;  he  had  a  regular* 
journal  kept  of  it,  on  the  model  of  the  journal  of  what  hap- 
pened at  Rome,  and  learned  from  this  for  the  first  time  that 
he  had  bought  a  new  estate,  on  which  the  journal  announced 
a  fire.  He  was  very  properly  angry  at  not  having  been  told 
of  the  purchase  before,  and  decided  in  future  that  unless  he 
received  notice  within  six  months  he  would  repudiate  any  such 
purchase;  for  his  slaves  told  him  that  the  land  had  only  been 
bought  the  year  before,  and  so  the  payment  for  it  had  not  yet 
come  into  his  accounts.  The  journal  shows  that  he  made  his 
money  faster  than  he  could  invest  it;  for  something  between 
^80,000  and  ;^ioo,ooo  had  to  be  returned  to  his  strong  box 
because  no  suitable  parties  came  forward  to  borrow  it.  Tri- 
malchio, like  the  majority  of  people  who  make  large  fortunes, 
was  in  a  hurry  to  get  other  people  to  work  for  him.  After  two 
or  tiiree  ventures  to  Rome,  he  took  to  lending  money  to  freed- 
men who  had  yet  to  make  theirs.  His  tastes  are  less  expen- 
sive than  we  should  expect.  He  does  not  care  for  anything 
that  we  should  call  magnificence;  he  is  satisfied  with  a  sort  of 
cockney  smartness  and  completeness  in  the  furniture  of  his 
daily  life,  and  with  a  great  deal  of  inventive  display  in  his 
dinner-parties.  Of  course  it  cost  something  to  serve  one  boar 
whole  with  a  number  of  live  thrushes  inside  ready  to  fly  out 
as  soon  as  it  was  cut  open,  and  a  fat  pig  stufled  with  sausages 
and  black-puddings,  which  came  out  when  the  cook,  who  was 
threatened  for  sending  it  to  table  without  cleaning  it,  was  told 
to  perform  his  neglected  duty  at  table  before  the  assembled 
guests. 

At  bottom,  Trimalchio  is  a  very  well-meaning,  kind-hearted 
man  ;  although  he  has  a  slave  crucified  for  cursing  his  gefiius, 
just  as  the  most  benevolent  emperors  felt  compelled  to  exe- 
cute any  Christian  who  might  obstinately  refuse  to  swear  by 

^  "Sat."  53. 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 

their  fortune.     Neither  quite  knew  how  the  needful  discipline 
of  an  estate  or  an  empire  was  to  be  maintained  without  an 
exemplary  severity,  and  neither  was  struck  with  the  notion 
that  such  severity  ought  to  be  painful.     He  wished  otherwise 
to  make  his  slaves  fond  of  him,  and  read  them  his  will    m 
^vhich  they  were  emancipated,  in  hopes  they  might  love  him 
as  if  he  were  dead  ;  whereupon  they  cried.     He  surprised  his 
cruests  bv  bidding  them  sit  down  to  supper,  though  he  turns 
out  the  first  batch  rather  roughly  to  make  room  for  the  second. 
The  person  to  whom  he  is  harshest  is  his  wife :  he  taunts  her 
with  his  having  married  her  for  love,  when  he  might  have  had 
a  wife  with  a  good  dower ;  he  lays  down  the  general  principle 
that  every  woman  is  a  kite  by  kind,  and  is  struck  by  the  wis- 
dom of  a  soothsayer  who  assures  him   that  he  is  nursing  a 
viper      Still,  when  he  boasts  of  his   humble  beginnings,  he 
aives  her  credit  for  doing  a  dutiful  thing,  and  sacrihcing  all 
her  finery  to  find  him  a  hundred  gold  pieces  to  begin  again 
with    when  his  first  venture  had  proved  unfortunate  ;  and, 
thou'-h  he  threatens  to  leave  her  statue  out  of  his  monument, 
he  does  not  threaten  to  deprive  her  of  the  succession  to  his 
propertv      He  is  proud  alike  of  her  skill  in  shameless  dances 
and  of  iier  notable  housekeeping;  she  would  never  dream  of 
sittino-  down  to  supper  herself,  until  everything  was  properly 
cleared  away  after  the  supper  of  her  lord  and  master ;  just  as 
he  makes  a  pet  of  a  slave,  to  his  wife's  great  disgust  though 
the  slave  is  very  ugly,  as  his  master  is  partly  aware,  because 
the  boy  can  read  and  write  and  cipher,  and  knows  the  ten 
parts  of  an  as,'  and  has  had  several  profitable  transactions 
with  other  slaves,  and  put  by  some  personal  property  of  sub- 
stantial value.  .  . 

It  is  like  master  like  man  :  the  steward  is  going  to  have  the 
bathman  whipped  for  losing  his  clothes.  The  guests  beg  him 
off  and  the  steward  majestically  explains  that  he  does  not 
care  for  the  clothes  ;  he  is  only  angry  at  the  abominable  care- 
lessness of  the  slave.    To  be  sure,  the  clothes  were  a  birthday 

'  The  as  was  divided  into  twelve  niicia:,  but  only  the  ten  divisions,  from 
two  undo:  to  eleven,  had  names  which  needed  to  be  learned  like  the  multi- 
plication-table. 


I 


PETRONIUS. 


91 


t 


1 


present,  and  were  real  Tyrian  purple,  but  then  they  had  been 
washed  once  already.  And  the  culprit  has  quite  as  magnifi- 
cent ideas :  he  says  that  he  has  done  nothing  to  speak  of;  they 
were  not  worth  above  ten  sestertia,*  all  told,  and  promises  the 
visitors  that  he  will  reward  them  for  their  intercession  with  his 
master's  best  wine.  This  explains  the  surprise  of  Trimalchio 
at  his  own  munificence  at  giving  better  wine  than  the  day  be- 
fore,  when  he  had  better  company. 

The  whole  banquet  was  rather  ingenious  than  splendid  : 
there  were  few  dainties  which  were  not  to  be  got  in  any  mar- 
ket ;  the  peculiarity  was  that  the  cook  had  a  talent  for  sur- 
prises, and  could  make  models  of  anything  out  of  anything 
else — game,  for  instance,  out  of  pork,  or  peacocks'  eggs  out  of 
pastry.  The  latter  are  mistaken  for  half-hatched  peachicks, 
which  turn  out  at  last  to  have  beccaficos  inside  cooked  in 
yolk.  Trimalchio  comes  in  late  to  dinner,  and  insists  upon 
finishing  his  game  of  dice,  while  the  company  are  still  toying 
with  their  "  whet,"  and  does  not  leave  off  till  he  has  exhausted 
all  the  gossip  of  the  cobbler's^  stall.  The  next  course  has  all 
the  signs  of  the  zodiac,  with  the  earth  in  the  middle,  but  noth- 
ing much  to  eat ;  the  Scales,  for  instance,  each  held  specimens 
of  different  kinds  of  pastry;  the  Water-carrier  was  represented 
by  a  goose,  and  the  Fishes  by  a  brace  of  mullets,  and  these 
were  the  favorable  signs.  But  all  this  was  merely  the  cover: 
there  was  fixt  poultry  and  sow's  paunch  and  hare  underneath, 
and  in  the  corners  four  figures  of  Marsyas  pouring  peppered 
pickle  out  of  their  flayed  hides  upon  the  fish.  The  carver  is 
named  Carpus,  for  the  sake  of-  a  pun,  as  the  vocative  of  his 
name  is  the  same  as  the  imperative  of  the  Latin  word  for 
Carve,  as  the  narrator  learns  from  one  of  the  other  guests.  And 
then  the  conversation  turns  upon  Trimalchio's  riches.  Not 
one  in  ten  of  his  slaves  knows  him  by  sight  :  he  has  every- 
thing home-grown  upon  his  own  property,  pigeon's  milk  in- 
cluded ;  all  his  mules  are  bred  from  wild  asses,  and  he  has 
fetched  bees  from  Hymettus,  in  order  to  have  Attic  honey 
upon  his  own  farm  ;  even  the  stuffing  of  his  cushions  is  scar- 
let or  purple  (the  two  most  expensive  colors).  "  Such  is  the 
<  Between  ;^So  and  ;^ioo.     "  Sat."  30,  ad  Jin.     '  Literally,  of  the  weaver's. 


^  2  LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 

blessedness  of  his  mind  !"  '  (we  are  reminded  of  the  American 
lady  who  told    Emerson  that    being  perfectly  dressed,  and 
knowin-  it,  filled  her  mind  with  peace  that  not  even  religion 
could  b'^stow).     Even  the  fellow-freedmen  of  Trimalchio  de- 
serve the  respect  of  a  beggarly  poet :  the  very  lowest  of  them 
has  a  knight's  fortune  twice  over,  and  he  used  to  carry  fire- 
wood; there  was  a  story  of  how  he  managed  to  steal  the 
brownie's  cap  and  find  a  treasure.     And  still  his  master  could 
claim  him.   However,  he  knows  how  to  make  himself  comfort- 
able :  he  has  just  advertised  his  old  lodging  to  let,  because,  as 
he  informs  us,  he  is  going  to  buy  a  house.     ''  Then  there's 
another  who  has  had  a  plum  of  his  own,  and  then  got  knocked 
off  his  feet.     He's  head  over  ears  in  debt:  no  fault  of  his— 
there's  not  a  better  man  in  the   world.     His  freedmen  are 
rogues,  and  got  hold  of  it  all.     Then,  of  course,  no  two  part- 
nets  can  boil  soup  in  one  pot,  and  when  the  house  is  shaky 
friends   are  out.     He  was  an  undertaker,  and  lived  in  the 
grandest  style— dined  like  a  king,  with  boars  in  napkins,  and 
fancy  pastry  and  fowl,  and  cooks  and  bakers,  and  poured  away 
more  wine  under  the  table  than  most  men  have  in  their  cel- 
lars     Even  when  he  was  in  difficulties  he  advertised  his  goods 
for  sale  under  this  heading,  '  T.  Julius  rroculus  puts  up  to 
auction  some  articles  for  which  he  has  no  use.'"  ' 

Meanwhile,  Trimalchio  gives   a  lecture  upon  his   zodiac. 
The  heaven  in  which  the  twelve  gods  live  turns  into  so  many 
shapes  :  sometimes  it  is  a  ram— whoever  is  born  then  has  a 
great  many  sheep,  plenty  of  wool,  a  hard  head,  and  an  impu- 
dent forehead,  and  a  sharp  Uorn.     A  great  many  professors 
are  born  under  this  sign.     Then  the  whole  heaven  turns  into 
a  bull,  and  so  on.     Trimalchio  was  born  under  Cancer  him- 
self, which  is  the  reason  he  has  so  many  legs  to  stand  on,  and 
possesses   much  by  land  and  sea.     The   conclusion  of  the 
speech  is  admirable :  "  So  it  goes  round  like  a  mill,  always 
doing  some  mischief,  either  breeding  or  killing  men;  as  for 
the  turf  that  you  see  in  the  middle,  and  the  hive  on  the  turf,  I 
have  a  reason  for  everything.     Mother  earth  is  in  the  niiddle 
as  round  as  an  egg,  and  holds  all  good  things  like  a  hive."  ' 
1  "  Sat."  38.  ''  lb.  38-  '  1^-  39. 


PETRONIUS. 


93 


r 


After  being  duly  applauded,  Trimalchio  sets  one  of  his 
slaves  to  recite  his  verses,  and  rewards  him  by  emancipating 
him  on  the  spot,  and  presently  leaves  the  room.  One  of  the 
guests  complains  of  the  cold,  and  says  there  is  no  wardrobe 
like  a  hot  drink;  another  says  he  don't  bathe  every  day — the 
water  has  teeth  and  washes  away  the  wits :  besides,  he  could 
not  bathe  to-dav,  he  had  been  at  a  funeral.  "That  nice 
man,  that  good  man,  Chrysantheus,  has  just  boiled  over  into 
the  other  world.  Just  now  he  was  talking  to  me.  I  seem  to 
hear  him  now:  dear,  dear!  We  are  nothing  but  blown  blad- 
ders on  two  pins  :  we  are  not  as  much  as  flies — there's  some 
spirit  in  a  fly — we  are  bubbles,  sir,  no  more.  And  it  is  not  as 
if  he  had  not  been  abstemish.  Five  days  and  he  didn't  swal- 
low a  drop  of  water  or  a  crumb  of  bread.  And  yet  he  went 
over  to  the  majority.  The  doctors  were  his  death,  or  rather 
his  ill-fate  ;  all  the  good  of  a  doctor  is  to  make  the  mind  easy. 
Still,  he  had  a  good  funeral :  the  bier  that  he  provided  when 
he  was  alive;  good  rugs;  first-rate  lamentations — he  had  set 
several  slaves  free — though  his  wife  rather  grudged  her  tears. 
Suppose  he  did  not  treat  her  very  well :  well,  every  woman  is 
such  a  kite.  Nobody  never  ought  to  do  one  a  kindness  :  it's 
just  the  same  as  throwing  it  down  a  well.  But  old  love  is  a 
prison  ;^  there's  no  getting  out  of  it." 

Then  Phileros  takes  a  severe  view  of  Chrysantheus ;  and 
then  Ganymedes^  begins  to  grumble  at  high  prices,  and  to 
abuse  the  sediles,  who  are  in  league  with  the  bakers,  and  do 
not  maintain  the  market  laws  and  the  proper  size  of  the  penny 
loaf.  Once  it  took  two  men  to  eat  a  loaf  between  them,  and 
now  the  loaf  is  not  as  big  as  a  bull's  eye.  The  town  is  growing 
down-hill  like  a  calfs  tail,  and  all  the  people  are  lions  at  home 
and  foxes  abroad,  fawning  on  their  thievish  magistrates. 
Ganymedes  has  had  to  sell  his  wardrobe  already,  and  expects 
soon  to  have  to  sell  his  little  bit  of  house-property.  In  his 
opinion,  it  is  all  the  doing  of  the  gods. 

"  No  one  believes  heaven  is  heaven,  no  one  thinks  of  keep- 
ing fasts;  no  one  cares  a  straw  for  Jove.  When  they  draw 
their  dress  over  their  eyes,  it  is  only  to  reckon  up  their  pos- 
'  "  Sat."  42.     Some  read  aancer  for  caixer.  ^  lb.  44. 


94 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


sessions.     Once  upon  a  time  the  women  used  to  go  in  fu 
dress  with  all  their  hair  down,  and  bare  feet,  and  walk  up-hiU 
with  pure  minds,  and  pray  Jove  for  water.     Thereupon  he 
used  to  rain  bucketfuls-he  knew  it  was  then  or  never;  and 
everybody  had  to  come  back  as  wet  as  mice.     And  so  the 
sods  have  woollen  feet  because  we  are  not  religious        Ihen 
a  dealer  in  patchwork  is  shocked  at  this  ill-omened  language, 
and  replies,  "So-so  and  so-so,"  as  the  countryman  said  when 
he  lost  the  spotted  pig.     "If  it  don't  come  to-day  it'll  come 
to-morrow,  and  that's  the  way  we  rub  along.  .  .  .  If  you  lived 
anywhere  else,  you'd  say  that  the  pigs  walked  about  ready- 
cooked  here  ;  and  think  what  a  fine  show  we  shall  have  in 
three  davs:  not  merely  the  trained  slaves,  but  plenty  of  freed- 
men.     Titus  is  a  gentleman :  he  is  going  to  give  them  the  best 
steel,  and  not  let\hem  run  away,  and  put  the  shambles  in  the 
middle  of  the  arena  for  the  spectators  to  see.     To  be  sure,  he 
can  afford  ;  his  father's  dead  and  left  him  a  quarter  of  a  mill- 
ion, more's  the  pity.     If  he  lays  down  three  or  four  thousand, 
his  property  will  never  feel  it,  and  he'll  leave  a  name  to  last 
forever  " '    ^Then  he  goes  on  to  say  that  he  hopes  one  lady  is 
aoin-  io  give  a  feast  to  all  the  people  at  eighteen-pence  a 
head'' which  will  quite  take  away  the  credit  another  gentleman 
o-ot  by  his  last  show,  where  all  the  gladiators  were  invalids, 
hardlv  good  enough  to  fight  with  beasts ;  as  for  the  third  man 
(who  was  held  in  reserve  to  fight  the  winner),  he  was  as  dead 
as  the  dead  man  whose  place  he  would  have  to  take.     Then 
he  turns  upon  the  professor,  and  scolds  him  for  not  talking, if 
he  finds  the  talk  of  others  dull;  and   promises  him  a  new 
pupil  if  he  will  come  and  see  him  in  the  country.     The  new 
pupil  is  his  pet  slave,  who  knows  four  parts  of  the  as  already, 
and  is  fond  of  sums  and  a  very  clever  boy,  though  he  has  a 
mania  for  birds.     His  master  has  killed  three  of  his  gold- 
finches already,  and  said  it  was  the  cat.     But  he  finds  some- 
thing else,  and  is  fond  of  painting.     He's  pretty  well  got 
throu-h  Greek,  and  has  a  nice  turn  for  Latin,  though  one  of 
his  m'asters  is  lazy  and  can  never  stick  to  a  subject,  and  the 
other  is  curious  and  teaches  more  than  he  knows.     The  young 

»  "  Sat."  45- 


PETRONIUS. 


95 


hopeful  is  old  enough  to  begin  the  study  of  law ;  so  his  patron 
has  bought  him  some  red-lettered  books  to  give  him  a  taste 
for  the  subject,  as  he  has  had  a  sufficient  splash  of  literature. 
"If  he  shows  signs  of  jibbing,  he'll  have  to  take  to  trade, 
shaving,  or  auctioneering,  or  pettifogging ;  for  once  master  that, 
and  you've  got  what  nothing  but  death  can  rob  you  of."  Ap- 
parently the  trade  had  not  been  spoiled  then  by  overcrowding, 
as  it  was  in  the  times  of  Martial  and  Juvenal. 

Then  Trimalchio  comes  back  and  delivers  a  lecture  upon 
hygiene,  which  he  seems  to  understand  better  than  most  sub- 
jects except  cookery.     Presently  he  begins  to  draw  the  pro- 
fessor, and  ask  upon  what  debate  he  has  lectured  that  day. 
Though  he  does  not  plead  in  person,  still  he  has  studied  litera- 
ture for  private  use,  and  has  three  libraries,  one  for  Greek  and 
one  for  Latin  (we  don't  know  whether  it  was  Trimalchio  or 
the  copyist  who  forgot  to  add  a  third  for  Oscan).'     The  pro- 
fessor begins  with  a  quarrel  between  a  rich  man  and  a  poor  : 
"What's  a  poor  man?"  says  Trimalchio;  still  he  allows  the 
professor  to  tell  his  story,  and  then  gravely  observes  either  it 
really  happened,  and  then  there  is  nothing  to  discuss,  or  it 
didn't,  and  then  there  is  nothing  to  discuss  either.     Then,  to 
air  his  own  learning,  he  asks  if  the  professor  knows  the  story 
how  the  Cyclops  put  Ulysses's  thumb  out  of  joint.     "As  for 
the  Sibyl,  I  saw  her  myself  at  Cumoe  hanging  in  a  bladder: 
and  when  the  boys  asked  'What  do  you  want,  Sibyl?'  out 
came  *  I  want  to  die.'  " 

He  has  plenty  more  to  say:  among  other  things,  that  he  is 
the  only  man  in  the  world  who  has  true  Corinthian  brass,  for 
his  brasier  is  called  Corinthus.''     The  true  origin  of  Corinth- 
ian brass,  he  tells  us,  dates  from  the  sack  of  Troy,  when  that 
cunning  rogue  Hannibal  threw  all  the  brass  and  gold  and  sil- 
ver statues  upon  one  fire,  and  so  there  was  made  a  new  kind 
of  metal,  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other.     For  his  own  part, 
if  the  company  will  excuse  him,  Trimalchio  likes  glass  better; 
it  has  no  smell  (one  remembers  the  virtuoso  in  Martial  who 
always  wished  to  be  sure  that  brass  smelled  of  Corinth);  it 
would  be  better  than  gold  if  only  it  would  not  break.     And 
'  "  Sat."  48.     Buechler  corrects  the  text,  reading  ii.,  not  iii.     '  lb.  50. 


I 


I 


c,6  LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE. 

then  comes  the  story  of  the  artisan  who  invented  flexible  glass, 
and  was  put  to  death  by  Tiberius  lest  gold  and  silver  should 
lose  their  value.     Trimalchio  is  a  connoisseur  in  silver  too. 
He  has  some  hundred  three-gallon  goblets  with  Cassandra 
killing  her  children  (the  poor  boys  lie  dead  just  as  if  they 
were  alive) ;  and  some  thousand  ladles  that  Mummius  left  to 
his  patron,  where  Dcedalus  is  shutting  Niobe  into  the  Trojan 
horse ;  and  as  for  the  battles  of  his  favorite  gladiators,  he  has 
them  on  his  cups :  they  are  all  heavy,  for  he  is  proud  of  his 
intelligence  (which  enables  him  to  recognize  his  favorite  glad- 
iators in  the  heroes  of  the  Trojan  war),  and  would  not  part 
with  it  for  any  money.     He  is  just  as  proud  of  having  never 
studied  under  any  philosopher  as  he  is  of  the  riches  which  he 
has  acquired  by  starting  with  nothing.     All  his  own  class  ad- 
mire him  heartily,  which  is  pleasant,  and,  when  one  thinks  of 
it,  surprising,  and  are  always  ready  to  take  up  arms  when  they 
suspect  the  representatives  of  the  literary  class  of  laughing  at 
him.     With  all  his  pomposity,  he  aspires  to  nothing  beyond  a 
fine  funeral  and  a  large  monument.     When  the  stonemason, 
who  is  prx'tor,  and  a  friend  of  the  family,  arrives  in  great 
state,  with  his  wife,  and  of  course  his  lictor,  from  a  funeral 
feast  in  honor  of  a  slave,  whom  a  lady  of  the  neighborhood 
had  manumitted  when  he  was  dead,  Trimalchio  says  that  he 
must  have  a  frontage  of  a  hundred  feet  at  least,  and  a  depth 
of  two   hundred,  for  he  intends  to  have  a  vineyard  and  all 
manner  of  good  things  growing  round  him  :  he  cannot  bear  the 
idea  of  being  in  a  Ciowd  when  he  is  dead;  and  hopes  he  shall 
enjoy  his  surroundings  as  he  deserves,  for  his  prudence  in  pro- 
vidino:  that  the  monument  shall  not  descend  to  his  heirs.     He 
holds  it  is  quite  absurd  to  trouble   about  how  we  are  to  be 
lodged  for  this  short  life,  and  not  to  care  how  we  are  to  be 
lodged  through  the  long  hereafter.     He  winds  up  the  feast  by 
having  himself  laid  out  in  his  bier  and  grave-clothes,  first  show- 
ing the  company  what  good  stuff  they  are  made  of;  and  the 
literati  make  their  escape  while  he  is  telling  the  pipers  to  strike 
up  his  funeral  march.     There  is  a  jointed  skeleton  of  silver 
carried  round  at  the  beginning  of  the  banquet;  and  when  Tri- 
malchio boasts  that  his  wine  is  a  hundred  years  old,  his  next 


¥ 


PETRONIUS, 


97 


thought  is  how  sad  that  wine  should  live  longer  than  man. 
His  soothsayer  has  informed  him  of  the  exact  number  of  years 
and  months  and  days  he  was  to  live.  His  feeling  is  not  the 
fear  of  death  exactly,  it  is  a  sort  of  maudlin  sympathy  with  the 
shortness  of  life.  He  reminds  one  of  Horace  in  this;  but  he 
has  outlived  youth,  which  is  always  what  suggests  to  Horace 
the  fleetingness  of  pleasure,  and  expects  to  enjoy  his  life  to 
the  last.  He  does  not  hold  with  Horace  that  enjoyment  has 
to  be  snatched  or  hurried  :  there  is  no  sense  that  the  life  of 
the  underworld  is  grim  or  dreary;  his  only  grievance  is  that 
he  is  fond  of  life,  and  it  ends.  We  might  almost  say  his  self- 
pity  is  the  crown  of  a  well-spent  life— the  life  of  a  dutiful, 
plucky,  trustworthy  man.  There  is  none  of  the  scampishness 
of  the  slave-life  of  ancient  comedy  about  Trimalchio  or  any  of 
his  fellow-freedmen :  they  are  all  like  the  good  apprentices  of 
Hogarth,  only,  instead  of  marrying  their  masters'  daughters, 
they  comfort  their  masters'  wives. 

It  is  natural  to  compare  Trimalchio  with  Nasidienus  and 
Virro,  the  only  illustrious  "  snobs  "  of  ancient  literature.  Of 
the  three,  Trimalchio  is  certainly  the  most  respectable.  Nasid- 
ienus is  not  only  a  snob,  but  a  flunkey ;  he  is  always  trying  to 
propitiate  Maecenas  and  his  friends.  Virro's  favorite  amuse- 
ment is  to  bully  and  insult  everybody  who  is  not  so  rich  as 
himself;  while  Trimalchio,  to  the  best  of  his  knowledge,  wishes 
everybody  to  be  comfortable,  and  is  quite  ready  to  share  his 
best  with  everybody.  His  absurdities  do  not  the  least  aflect 
his  self-respect,  for  he  understands  what  practically  concerns 
him,  and  does  not  really  compromise  himself  by  blundering  on 
matters  that  he  only  takes  up  for  amusement. 

Neither  he  nor  any  of  his  fellows  is  able  to  speak  Latin 
grammatically.  Their  syntax  is  seldom  much  out,  but  their  de- 
clensions are  very  alarming;  they  mix  up  Greek  and  Latin 
words  in  a  curious  way,  which  has  puzzled  the  writer  of  our 
manuscript  and  his  editors  not  a  little;  and  they  coin  Latin 
words,  ^especially  in  ax,  when,  if  they  knew  it,  there  were  au- 
thorized words  to  serve  the  purpose.  At  the  same  time,  they 
never  offend  seriously  against  the  genius  of  the  language  :  their 
singular  forms  are  no  worse  upon  the  merits  than  those  that 

ii.-s 


98 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


PETRONIUS. 


99 


have  come  down  to  us  from  the  days  of  Plautus  and  Enn.us. 
The  truth  is  that  the  way  these  things  are  settled  among  the 
best  ^vriters  is  arbitrary,  and  the  more  elaborate  the  system  of 
inflections  is,  the  more  arbitrary  is  the  settlement:  and  only  an 
e  abo  ate  training,  for  ^vhich  a  rich  freedman  had  neither  le- 
sure  uor  modesty,  could  prevent  deviati^ons  from  the  conven- 
tional standard,  unless,  indeed,  the  speaker  were  protected  by 
a  narrmv  vocabulary,  the  shades  of  which  could  be  learned 

'Te,';:ntfshows  no  signs  that  he  thinks  the  banquet  his 
masterpiece,  and  consistently  treats  Trimalch.o  and  h.s  set  as 
buffoons,  at  whom  it  is  very  good  of  literati  not  to  laugh  too 
loud;  but  it  can  hardly  be  an  accident  that  they  are  the  only 
charncters  in  his  book  who  are  quite  alive  and  really  amus- 
in  '  Like  most  discoverers,  he  undervalued  his  discovery, 
for  even  Cervantes,  especially  in  the  first  part,  undervalues 

^  ThSe"is'very  little  difference  in  their  views  of  life,  except 
that  the  traders  worship  money  from  conviction  and  earn  ,t, 
and  the  literati  complain  that  nothing  else  counts  for  anythmg, 
Tnd  make  plans  for  getting  it  by  cheating,  and  the  luerat. 
think  much  more  than  the  tradesmen  of  passing  amours.  A 
tradesman  apparently  required  a  wife  and  a  -"-bme  3-\- 
he  liked  to  have  a  house  and  a  service  of  plate  but  an  he 
main  he  looked  upon  love  as  the  cement  of  a  business-like 

"'"'Thradventure  of  the  literati  which  comes  nearest  to  being 
amusin-  is  at  Crotona,  where  it  seems  will-hunting  was  the 
only  industry  in  vogue:  so  the  party,  who  have  been  ship- 
w  ecked,  decide  to  ^.t  a  crazy  poet '  (who  is  often  pelted  for 
didaiming  verses  out  of  season)  at  their  head,  with  instruc- 
tions that  he  is  to  personate  a  rich  owner  of  African  property, 
who  has  just  lost  a  son,  and  become  disgusted  with  his  own 
country  in  consequence.     The  plot  at  first  succeeds  admira- 
bly •  but  even  then  the  narrator  is  nervous  lest  they  should  be 
detected  or  betrayed,  and  piously  observes:  "O  gods  and 
coddesses,  what  a  hard  life  an  outlaw's  is !  he  is  always  ex- 
"  '  "Sat."  117. 


Il 


pecting  his  deserts."  At  last  the  poet,  by  way  of  sustaining 
his  pretensions,  informs  everybody  who  expects  to  benefit 
tinder  his  will  that  his  legatees  will  have  to  prove  their  en- 
during attachment  by  eating  him  up  when  he  is  dead;  and 
then  recites  for  their  encouragement  all  the  historical  in- 
stances of  cannibalism  where  the  cannibals  had  no  prospect 
of  a  legacy  for  their  pains.  There  is  also  a  little  humor  in  the 
contrast  between  the  mistress  and  maid,  whose  taste  in  lovers 
is  very  different :  the  mistress  liking  the  poorest  and  shabbiest 
best,  and  the  maid  disdaining  to  look  at  anybody  below  the 
degree  of  a  knight.  But  in  general  the  adventures  are  quite 
uninteresting,  and  would  probably  be  so  even  if  they  were  not 
fragmentary. 

The  style,  on  the  contrary,  is  very  good  and  simple,  with 
none  of  the  affectations  of  the  silver  age.     If  it  has  a  fault,  it 
is  that  it  is  too  uniform,  and  wants  a  little  relief.     Exactly  the 
same  attention  is  paid  to  one  adventurer  as  to  another,  and  it 
is  hard  to  keep  what  story  there  is  in  the  head.     It  is  difficult 
to  say  what  purpose  the  greater  part  of  the  verses  serve,  ex- 
cept to  display  the  writer's  fluency:  they  are  neither  ridiculous 
nor  beautiful,  and  the  writer  breaks  into  verse  without  any 
visible  occasion,  and  often  shifts  from  one  metre  to  another. 
This,  however,  is  part  of  the  system  of  the  Menippean  satire, 
and— one  may  dimly  conjecture— in  certain  states  of  literary 
taste  gave  the  same  sort  of  mild  amusement  as  bilingual  com- 
position does  at  others.     There  are  two  pieces  in  which  per- 
haps we  can  trace  a  serious  intention:  the  iambics  on  the  fall 
of  Troy  are  probably  more  or  less  a  criticism  of  Nero,  as  the 
hexameters  on  the  civil  war  are  certainly  a  criticism  upon  Lu- 
can.     Both  are  more  than  creditable  if  tried  by  an  appropriate 
standard,,  for  no  great  poem  was  ever  written  in  ostentatious 
rivalry  with  other  poets.     The  sack  of  Troy  in  "Hamlet"  is 
Shakespeare's  criticism  of  the  most  stilted  declamation  of  his 
time,  and  is  not  much  better  than  Petronius,  though  he  only 
embraces'  the  first  part  of  the  scene,  and  lets  the  mob  inter- 
rupt Eumolpus  with  stones  before  the  catastrophe  of  Priam 
and  Cassandra.     There  is  a  good  deal  of  pragmatic  reflection 

»  «'  Sat."  89. 


\ 


jQQ  LATfiV  LITERATURE. 

in  proportion  to  the  poetry.  We  learn  that  the  credit  of 
Calchas  was  at  stake,  and  that  it  was  a  grave  omen  that  the 
fillets  of  Laocoon  should  be  stained  with  blood 

The  poem  on  the  civil  war  is  also  pragmatic:  there  is  a 
c^reatdeal  about  wealth  and  luxury  which  is  commonplace  and 
tiresome,  and  there  is  also  a  great  deal  too  much  mytholog). 
The  author  has  a  hold  of  two  important  canons  which  Lucan 
violates :  one  is  that  a  poem  ought  not  to  be  a  history  in  verse 
because  history  can  be  better  written  in  prose;  the  other,  that 
the  right  way  to  attain  poetical  elevation  is  by  making  the 
reader  conscious  of  pervading  inspiration,  not  by  piling  up  one 
enthusiastic  epigram  upon  another,  and  trying  to  make  each 
startlin-  by  itself.     His  positive  precepts  are  less  commend- 
able     His  general  idea  of  an  historical  poem  is  something 
vac'ue  and  allusive  and  dignified:  the  gods  apparently  are  to 
do'duty  as  concrete  symbols  of  abstract  historical  conceptions, 
and  all  individual  facts  are  to  be  left  out  as  below  the  majesty 
of  .rt      In  the  same  way,  all  words  that  have  the  least  flavor 
of  bein-  plebeian  are  to  be  rigorously  excluded.'     'Ihe  writer 
is  to  limit  himself  to  the  example  of  Homer  and  the  lyric 
writers  of  Greece,  and  of  Vergil  and  Horace  in  Latin      1  he 
whole  tone  of  his  poetical  legislation  is  curiously  like  the  tone 
of  the  orthodox  poetical  legislation  of  France  before  the  reign 
of  precedent  was  disturbed  by  the  Romantic  movement ;  and 
Peironius  deserves  credit  for  the  insight  which  made  him  a 
classicist  just  at  the  time  when   the  romanticism  of  Nero  s 
rei-n  was  at  its  height.     His  metres  also  are  for  the  most  part 
frank  and  manly,  with  little  trace  of  the  fashionable  refine- 
ments of  sound.     Even  where  he  intends  to  be  flowery  his 
verse  is  never  melting,  and  his  prose  does  not  aim  often  at 
bein-  melting  either.     His  most  voluptuous  descriptions  have 
litde°of  the  lingering,  cloying  tenderness  of  Apuleius. 

In  another  way  he  marks  an  epoch ;  he  is  the  first  conspic- 
uous opponent  of  the  bizarre  system  of  declamation  on  imagi- 
nary themes.'  He  is  of  opinion  that  professors  are,  for  the 
most  part  fools  themselves  and  the  cause  of  folly  in  others; 
the  only  use  of  the  exaggerated  cases  they  put  and  the  noisy 
..■Sat."  119.  »  lb.  118.  =Ib.  >. 


B( 


PETRONIUS. 


lOI 


sentiments  they  bandy  is  to  leave  them  without  a  word  to  say 
when  they  come  into  the  forum.     A  young  man  who  goes  to  a 
professor  sees  and  hears  nothing  of  what  goes  on  in  the  world 
but  pirates   standing  on  the  shore  with  chains,  and  tyrants 
publishing  edicts  to  order  sons  to  cut  off  their  fathers'  heads, 
or  oracles  in  time  of  pestilence  prescribing  the  sacrifice  of 
three  maidens  or  more;  and  everything  that's  said  or  done 
seems  to  be  kneaded  up  with  honey  and  nicely  powdered  over 
%vith  poppy  and  spice.     Then  come  plenty  of  historical  exam- 
ples to  show  that  the  literature  of  a  great  age  is  simple,  and 
that  a  noble  and,  so  to  say,  a  modest  style  is  not  swollen  nor 
patchy,  but  grows  up   to  beauty  and  nature  at  once.     This 
looks  as  if  his  ideal  were  the  same  as  the  French  classical 
ideal  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse.     It  is  curious  that  he  does 
not  appear  to  admire  Cicero,  and  it  is  a  sign  of  over-clever- 
ness that  Hyperides'  rather  than  Demosthenes  appears  to  be 
his  model  orator;  though  we  know  that  ancient  critics  consid- 
ered  Hyperides  the  more  finished  speaker  of  the  two,  and 
counted  up  more  separate   merits  in  his  writings.     Thucydi- 
des,  who  is  his  model  historian,  though  a  very  grand  writer,  is 
a  very  faulty  one,  and  sins  as  much  as  Seneca  in  bedizening 
his  writings  with  a  display  of  intellectual  ingenuity.     Perhaps 
Petronius  may  have  judged  of  Thucydides  by  his  Latin  imita- 
tor, Sallust,  who,  though  empty  and  crabbed  by  comparison 
with  his  original,  is  more  level  because  he  is  more  monotonous. 
His  theory  of  the  defects  of  Roman  education  is  put  into 
the  mouth  of  the  unlucky  professor,^  who  is  as  ready  to  con- 
demn himself  as  his  acquaintance  can  be  to  condemn  him. 
The  root  of  the  mischief  is  that  the  teacher  is  dependent  on 
his  popularity  with  his  pupils,  and  he  can  only  maintain  it  by 
a  system  of  absurd  and  mischievous  excitement.     So  far  so 
good:  the  system  of  education  recommended,  if  parents  could 
open  their  eyes  and  uphold  the   authority  of  the  teacher  as 
they  ought,  is  in  some  ways  more  questionable.    Like  modern 
reformers,  Petronius  holds  that  a  great  deal  of  time  is  wasted 
in  premature  attempts   at  composition  ;  but  the  time  which 
he  wishes  to  save  for  reading  he  would  employ  rather  in  the 

»  "  Sat."  5.  •  2  lb.  3. 


'^ 


102 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


MARTIAL. 


103 


spirit  of  Fronlo  than  of  Quinctilian.     The  wholesomest  train- 
ing, according  to  him,  is  to  be  found,  not  in  the  classics  of  the 
days  of  Caesar  and  Augustus,  but  in  the  quaint,  vigorous  writ- 
ings of  the  Republic.    These  attracted  him  by  their  plainness 
and  by  their  rough  and  picturesque  vocabulary,  which  seemed 
more  picturesque  and  significant  than  it  was  because  it  was 
unfamiliar.      It  must  soon  have  got  very  monotonous  for  a 
Roman   to  lecture  on  the  Roman  classics,  for  the  necessary 
learning  required  for  Vergil  had  been  accumulated  once  for 
all,  and  the  old  writers  who  required  more  elucidation,  about 
whom  the  lecturer  could  find  out  something  fresh  every  time 
he  went  over  them,  were  more  attractive  to  the  teacher  for  the 
same  reason  that  they  were  less  profitable  to  the  pupil.     On 
the  other  hand,  the  intellectual  advantages  of  a  sound  moral 
tone  are  admirably  set  forth  in  some  very  tolerable  scazons. 
Almost  the  only  point  on  which  Petronius  seems  to  agree  with 
Trimalchio  is  that  Publius  Syrus  is  a  very  edifying  writer,  and 
Trimalchio  gravely  quotes  a  long  alliterative  sermon  against 
gonnnandisc  from  him  (perhaps  we  ought  to  give  Trimalchio 
credit  for  his  quasi-consistency  in  not  serving  up  a  peacock). 
The  upshot  of  the  whole  book  is  to  emphasize  the  suggestion, 
which  probably  appeared  more  plainly  in  the  mimes  than  in 
Plautus,  that  there  is  nothing  safe  or  wholesome  but  sense  or 
virtue;  and  that  there  is  no  success  without  money,  and  no 
amusement  without  vice. 


k' 


CHAPTER  IV. 

MARTIAL. 

Martial's  career  is  one  of  the  best  known  and  the  most 
instructive  in  the  history  of  Roman  literature.  He  came  to 
Rome  when  Seneca  and  Gallio  were  still  able  to  keep  up 
tlie  hospitality  of  the  An  nasi,  for  he  reminds  a  quasi-patron 
that  he  had  chosen  to  trust  him  instead  of  them.  He  spent, 
apparently,  the  first  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of  his  sojourn 
in  Rome  ingloriously,  though  several  of  his  epigrams,  and 
those  among  the  best,  have  the  look  of  being  inspired  by 
these  early  years.  When  Domitian  came  forward  to  inaugu- 
rate a  new  Augustan  era,  he  came  forward  as  a  poet :  he  re- 
ceived about  the  degree  of  encouragement  that  was  due  to 
him.  Domitian  gave  him  some  cheap  privileges,  such  as  the 
rights  of  a  father  of  three  children,  and  conferred  citizenship 
upon  a  good  many  persons  recommended  by  the  poet,  who, 
of  course,  got  paid  for  the  recommendation.  Martial  had 
presents  from  other  patrons,  and  he  managed  to  get  a  piece 
of  land  within  a  short  drive  of  Rome  to  spend  his  summers 
in  :  perhaps  one  of  his  patrons  reflected  that  a  little  outlay 
once  for  all  would  discharge  him  from  the  obligation  of  ever 
taking  his  friend  to  the  Campanian  coast  again.  .He  even 
was  able  to  set  up  a  team  of  mules  of  his  own  to  take  him 
to  and  fro,  and  soon  found  that  his  possessions  cost  more  than 
they  were  worth.  He  enjoyed  himself  rather  at  the  expense 
of  his  respectabiHty,  and  at  last  his  acquaintances  found  that 
he  would  never  do  anything  of  a  kind  to  bring  them  credit, 
and  decided  to  leave  him  to  his  own  devices.  The  presents 
he  received  got  less  and  less  valuable,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  emancipated  himself  more  and  more  from  the  barren  du- 
ties of  a  retainer,  and  at  last  he  emancipated  himself  alto- 
gether, and  went  home  to  Bilbilis,  where,  as  might  be  ex- 


104 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE. 


I: 


pected,  he  regretted  Rome,  after  thinking  for  a  while  that  he 
enjoyed  the  recovery  of  leisure  and  liberty.  He  survived  his 
return  from  Rome  about  five  years  at  most,  and  he  had  spent 
thirty-five  in  Italy;  though  he  went  more  than  once  away  from 
Rome,  for  he  appears  to  have  had  a  genuine  taste  for  country 
life,  although  the  patronage  of  Domitian  and  a  few  others 
was  enough  to  keep  him  in  Rome,  where  his  wit  throve  under 
the  stimulus  of  appreciation. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  supposed  that  he  was  entirely  idle  during 
the  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  before  he  began  to  publish.  It  is 
likely  enough  that  a  good  many  of  the  epigrams  he  published 
had  been  written  sufficiently  for  those  who  knew  the  circum- 
stances already,  and  had  made  a  reputation  for  their  author 
among  the  numerous  set  of  fortune-hunters  with  whom  he 
lived  and  w^aited  for  something  to  turn  up.  For  instance,  he 
was  often  advised  to  carry  his  ingenuity  to  the  bar,  and  he 
made  some  halting  attempts  to  act  upon  the  advice.  Here  is 
an  epigram  in  two  couplets,  which  records  the  issue  of  one  of 
his  attempts: 

Egi,  Sexte,  tuam,  pactus  duo  millia,  causam. 
Misisti  nummos  quot  mihi  ?  mille  ;  quid  est  ? 

Narrasti  nihil,  inquis,  et  a  te  prodita  causa  est: 
Tanto  plus  debes,  Sexto,  quod  erubui.i 

For  a  company  that  knew  the  circumstances,  the  first  line 
and  the  last  were  enough,  and  the  easiest  to  write. 

But,  upon  the  whole,  Martial  was  mainly  living,  till  the  ac- 
cession of  Domitian,  \vhat  an  adventurer  like  him  supposed 
to  be  a  practical,  business-like  life:  dancing  attendance,  if  it 
led  to  nothing  else,  enabled  anybody  who  was  diligent  to  get 
a  dinner  most  days,  or  the  means  of  buying  one:  the  hard- 
ships of  the  dependant's  life  were  over  by  noon,  and  generally 
earlier,  except  when  a  very  rich  patron  invited  him  to  a  Bar- 
mecide feast.  Even  this,  though  Martial  does  not  tell  us  so, 
had  its  compensations.  When  we  compare  his  invitations 
(which  always  include  a  bill  of  fiire)  with  his  complaints  of 
the  shabbiness  with  which  some  of  his  acquaintance  enter- 
tained him,  it  is  quite  clear  that  at  worst  a  Roman   patron 

»  VIII.  17. 


b' 


) 


MARTIAL. 


105 


gave  his  client  the  best  dinner  that  the  client  could  offer  his 
friends,  even  when  he  had  the  bad  taste  to  eat  a  better  din- 
ner himself  and  to  give  titbits  off  his  plate  to  pet  slaves. 
Generally  speaking,  however,  a  retainer  attached  himself  to 
a  patron  of  some  literary  or  political  ambition;  and  such  a 
patron,  whenever  he  made  a  speech  which  he  wished  to  pass 
for  great,  or  had  a  new  poem  to  bring  before  the  public,  or  a 
new  instalment  of  a  history,  invited  enough  of  his  dependants 
to  applaud,  and  treated  them  well  enough  to  put  them  in  good 
humor.  In  fact,  literary  ambition  w^as  so  general  that,  if  Mar- 
tial is  to  be  trusted,  more  than  one  amiable  and  distinguished 
author  had  no  public  at  all  but  his  unhappy  guests,  who 
learned  from  experience  to  dread  his  admirable  dinners. 

Another  point  of  Roman  life  on  which  Martial  throws  a 
good  deal  of  light  is  the  relation  of  sodalcs,  which,  as  he 
describes  it,  could  hardly  have  existed  until  his  own  day. 
Sodales  were  men  who  lived  together  till  thirty  or  forty,  meet- 
ing each  other  constantly  and  contracting  inlimacies'which 
were  intended  to  be  perpetual;  in  fiict,  they  were  chums; 
only  they  continued  to  be  chums  up  to  an  age  when  marriage 
or  business  has  long  separated  chums  in  England.  However, 
even  sodales  had  to  part,  and  there  were  the  same  complaints 
upon  the  subject  as  we  read  in  our  own  novels.  Generally 
speaking,  it  was  not  marriage  that  parted  them,  but  success : 
they  probably  were  married  at  home  before  they  came  to 
Rome  to  seek  their  fortunes,  and  it  was  aggravating  to  find 
one's  self  dropped,  very  likely  by  a  next-door  neighbor'  who 
had  more  profitable  connections,  or,  perhaps,  more  method  in 
cultivating  them. 

Still,  such  separations  were  rare,  for  the  reason  that  the  life 
which  was  led  in  common  was  so  barren  that  there  were  gen- 
erally plenty  left  to  lament  in  chorus  over  the  deserter  An- 
other and  more  fruitful  topic  was  that  no  money  was,  as  a 
rule,  to  be  made  except  by  the  rich,  and  that  all  gentlemanly 
and  liberal  professions  were  beggarly.  Martial  goes  beyond 
Juvenal  because  he  does  not  give  himself  airs  of  virtue:  he 
asks  all  his  acquaintance  who  come  to  Rome  to  push  their 

*  I.  Ixxvji. 

11.-5* 


1 


io6 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


fortunes,  not  how  they  can  bring  themselves  to  the  necessary 
baseness,  but  whether  there  is  any  market  for  their  talents/ 
He  is  especially  fond  of  illustrating  the  poverty  of  the  mag- 
istracy and  the  bar  :  he  is  full  of  the  absurdity  of  young  bar- 
risters who  set  up  their  litters  and  their  clients  on  borrowed 
money,  as  doctors  set  up  their  broughams  now.     The  only 
reward  that  they  could  look  forward  to  was  payment  in  kind 
by  rich  fiirniers;  for  clients  able  and  willing  to  pay  their  ad- 
vocates in  ready  money  had  not  nearly  business  enough  to 
occupy  the  courts.     Meanwhile,  business  of  other  kinds  in- 
creased so  much  that  a  man  was  still  poor  with  the  gifts  that 
were  almost  enough  to  tempt  Persius  from  the  study  of  philos- 
ophy. When  Martial  enumerates  the  presents  Sabellus'  had  re- 
ceived one  Saturnalia,  he  rather  undervalues  them.     It  is  more 
to  the  point  that  he  observes  that  a  retired  pleader  who  had 
turned  farmer  had  to  buy  all  the  country  produce  which  he  used 
to  sell'     This  is  a  theme  to  which  Martial  often  returns:* 
sometimes  it  is  a  fine  gentleman  with  a  train  of  slaves  laden 
with  country  produce,  whom  one  naturally  expects  to  be  re- 
turning from  his  estate  in  the  country:  on  the  contrary,  he  is 
just  setting  out  for  it.    Sometimes  the  poet  complains  that  an 
estate,  large  or  small,  used  to  keep'  its  owner:  now  it  is  the 
owner  who  has  to  keep  up  the  estate.     In  one  of  the  most 
ingeniously  turned  of  his  petitions  to  Domitian,'  he  complains 
of  the  labor  and  expense  of  drawing  water  for  his  little  bit  of 
land  near  Nomentum,  and  requests  to  be  allowed  to  avail  him- 
self of  the  aqueduct  which  ran  close  by. 

He  is  in  other  respects  remarkably  business-like  for  a  poet, 
especially  in  his  behavior  when  he  asks  for  money  and  does 
not  get  it.  After  an  application  to  Domitian,  he  rebukes  his 
own  impatience  for  thinking  a  gift  refused'  when  it  may  be 
only  delayed.  When  he  applies  to  private  acquaintances,  on 
the  other  hand,  he  is  peremptory  enough ;  he  will  be  satisfied 
with  no  delays  ;  if  the  friend  gives  the  money  after  a  few 
months,  it  is'  thank  you  for  nothing.  IMany  of  the  epigrams 
1  III.  xxxviii.  *III.  xlvii.  8.  '  VI.  x.  I2. 

2 IV.  xlvi.  *  X.  xxvi.  7.  *  E.  g.  VI.  xxx, 

3  XII.  Ixxii.  5,  6.  '  IX.  xix. 


i-\ 


MARTIAL. 


107 


look  like  demands  for  blackmail.'     Somebody— the  poet  de- 
clines to  know  who  the  somebody  is — has  given  offence ;  if 
the  poet  knew  who,  so  much  the  worse  for  somebody.     He  is 
full  of  veiled  personalities  of  the  most  damaging  kind  :  he 
deprecates  guessing  at  who  the   subjects  can   be,  but  they 
must  have  recognized  themselves,  and  have  seen  the  need  of 
propitiating  a  poet  who  was  at  once  politic  and  vindictive. 
He   insists  repeatedly  upon   his  successful   avoidance  of  all 
personal  attacks,  while  he  had  been  lavish  of  personal  com- 
pliments.    He  tells  us  himself  that  these  were  not  given 
gratis  :  when  somebody  whom  he  has  praised  ignores  the  obli- 
gation he  receives,  the  fact  is  published  as  a  general  warning: 
besides,  he  tells  us  that  a  less  popular  poet,  when  he  wrole 
three  hundred   lines  on  the  baths  of  a  celebrated  gourmet, 
wanted  a  dinner  more  than  a  bath.     We  cannot  doubt  that 
when  Martial  wrote  to  one  of  his  friends  that  there  were  no 
baths  in  the  world  like  the  baths  of  Etruscus,'  that  whoever 
missed  bathing  in  them   would  die  without  bathing,  he  ex- 
pected to  be  paid   in  some  form  or  other  for  the  "valuable 
advertisement  he  was  giving  Etruscus.     So,  too,  when  he  an- 
swers numerous  requests  for  a  copy  of  his  poems  with  a  refer- 
ence to  his  bookseller'  and  a  jocose  assurance  that  they  are 
not  really  worth  the  money,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  his  book- 
seller had  paid  something  for  his  manuscript.     It  is  to  be 
noticed  that  even  where  Martial  is  treating  the  most  general 
and  commonplace  topics,  he  always  manages  to  give  the  treat- 
ment a  false  air  of  personality  :  either  he  professes  to  give  his 
own  experience,  or  he  apostrophizes  the  more  or  less  imac^i- 
nary  person  he  is  writing  about.  ^ 

The  last  two  books  are  merely  couplets  to  serve  as  direc- 
tions for  the  presents  sent  round  at  the  Saturnalia,  and  pur- 
chasers paid  for  the  labels  as  they  paid  for  the  wine  or  the 
game  or  the  knick-knacks  which  the  labels  accompanied.  One 
can  imagine  that  to  be  ingenious  enough  to  write  about  any- 
thmg  conferred  a  kind  of  reputation,  and  that  Martial  may 
have  hked  the  practice,  and  now  and  then  there  is  a  happy 
turn :  the  wine  of  Nomentum,  when  it  is  old  enough,  may  pass 

"  V.  xxxiii.  . »  VI.  xlii.  3  iv.  Ixxii. 


io8 


LATIN-  LITERATURE. 


MARTIAL. 


109 


for  any  wine  in  the  world;'  the  wine  of  Spoletum,  when  it  is 
old,  is  better  than   Falernian  when   it  is  new.     The  cloudy 
Marsic  wine  is  ^ood  enough  for  freedmen,  and  a  person  who 
receives  a  jar  of  brine  from  tunnies^  is  told  that  if  the  brine 
were  made  from  a  daintier  fish  it  would  not  have  been  sent  to 
him.      A  neater  point  is  that  a  jar  of  wine  is  laid  down  in  a 
year  when  there  was  no  consul :    the  recipient   may  guess 
whether  it  dates  from  the  days  of  the  kings,  or  simply  from 
the  battle  of  Mutina,  which  was  so  closely  followed  by  the 
death  of  both  consuls.      Some  of  the  presents  are  curious  in 
themselves;  for  instance,  the  desk'  which  was  used  to  protect 
the  books  read  upon  the  knee  from  the  fluff  of  the  clothes, 
and  the  snow-strainers,  sometimes  of  flax  and  sometimes  of 
silver,  which  were  used  according  to  the  quality  of  the  wine 
they  flavored.    For  the  ancients  were  not  of  our  mind,  that  the 
flavor  of  the  best  wine  was  spoiled  by  icing;  for  instance,  it 
was  a  shame  to  use  water  cooled  with  snow  for  the  *'  smoky" 
wine  of  Marseilles,  as  the  wine  would  be  less  valuable  than 
the  water.*      If  the  reader  thinks  this  rather  poor  fooling,  he 
may  perhaps  prefer  the  couplet   on    some  wool    dyed  with 
Tyrian  purple  :^ 

The  shepherd  gave  me  to  his  Spartan  flame, 
To  put  her  mother's  home-dyed  robes  to  shame.— XIV.  clvi. 
But  there  are  often  comparisons  of  this  kind ;  for  instance, 
besides    the    couplet   for   cheap   brine    made    from    tunnies, 
another'  on   two   kinds  of   mattress-stufiing— one  made    of 
woollen  flock  for  the  rich,  the  other  of  chopped  rushes  for  the 
poor.     There  is  a  constant  play,  too,  on  the  conceit  that  the 
poor  man  makes  a  cheap  present,  and  recommends  a  rich 
man  to  make  a  handsome  one.'    There  is  even  a  hint  that  the 
verses  may  do  as  well  as  a  present  by  themselves.     More  than 
once  in  the  twelve  books  of  epigrams  Martial  recurs  to  the 
same  idea,  and  hints  that  he  may  send  an  epigram  as  a  sub- 

»  I.  cvi.  ""  XIII.  ciii.  ^  XIV.  Ixxxiv.  *  XIV.  cxviii. 

=  There  were  purple-dyers  in  Laconia  and  Tarentum  who  competed, 
unsuccessfully  in  the  judgment  of  connoisseurs,  with  the  manufacturers  of 
Tyre  ;  the  latter  employing  an  animal,  the  former  a  vegetable,  dye. 

6  XIV.  clix.,  clx.  ^  y^\\.  lii. 


t 


i« 


I   J 


stitute  for  paying  a  morning  call.'  Sometimes  he  tells  us  that 
a  poor  man  shows  true  generosity  when  he  sends  no  present 
to  a  rich  one,  because  he  dispenses  the  rich  one  from  making 
a  rich  return.^  On  a  friend's  birthdays  when  he  acquiesces  in 
the  friend's  bidding  to  send  nothing,  he  tells  the  friend  to  re- 
ward him  for  his  obedience  by  sending  a  present  on  his  birth- 
da}%  He  was  alive  to  the  ridiculous  side  of  his  life  :  he  wished 
for  wealth  that  he  might  make  presents  and  build;  he  did 
build  a  little,  and''  one  of  his  raciest  epigrams  is  on  another 
little  builder,  who  was  warden  of  the  hamlet  the  same  year 
that  a  rich  neighbor  was  consul,  and  built  a  little  sweating- 
house  when  the  rich  neighbor  built  splendid  marble  baths. 

The  aesthetic  aspirations  of  the  poor  are  as  ridiculous  as 
their  ambition.  Martial  holds  that  most  who  laush  at  the  im- 
pecunious  connoisseur*  who  cries  at  the  sight  of  rarities  which 
he  cannot  buy  are  crying  for  the  very  same  things  in  their 
hearts.  A  lighter  sketch  is  of  Mamurra,^  who  amused  himself 
all  day  in  the  most  expensive  and  fashionable  shops,  turning 
over  the  daintiest  slaves  that  vulgar  people  like  Martial 
never  see  at  all,  and  then  having  the  covers  drawn  off  all  the 
finest  tables  and  calling  for  the  richest  ivory,  and  measuring 
a  splendid  tortoise-shell  sofa  four  times,  only  to  discover 
with  regret  that  it  was  just  too  small  for  his  citron  table. 
Then  he  smelled  at  the  bronzes  to  see  if  they  had  the  right 
Corinthian  perfume,  and  found  fault  with  statues  designed  by 
Polycletus:  thought  it  was  a  pity  there  were  specks  of  nitre 
in  the  crystal  goblets,  and  so  resigned  himself  to  having  mur- 
rhine'  instead;  and  marked  and  put  on  one  side  ten  of  these 
(probably  there  were  not  fifty  men  in  Rome  wdio  had  so 
many).  Then  he  weighed  all  the  old  plate,  and  the  cups  that 
were  famous  as  the  handiwork  of  Mentor,  and  counted  all  the 
green  gems  in  the  golden  enamel,  and  all  the  large  pearls  that 
are  such  becoming  ear-balls  for  white  ears.  He  went  to  every 
booth  for  genuine  sardonyx,  and  priced  all  the  large  jaspers. 
At  last,  when  he  was  tired,  and  the  shops  were  just  ready  to 

'^  I.  cix.  "^  V.  xviii.  3  X.  ixxix.  *  X.  Ixxx.  ^  IX.  Ix. 

"  It  is  not  known  whether  these  were  porcelain  or  spar,  or  some  kind  of 
semi-opaque  and  jewelled  glass. 


no 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


MARTIAL. 


Ill 


shut  up,  he  bought  two  cups  for  a  penny,  and  carried  them 
away  himself.  Another  amusing  pauper  boasts '  that  he  never 
dines  at  home;  and  quite  truly,  for  whenever  he  does  not  get 
an  invitation  he  simply  goes  without  a  dinner.  Another  is  too 
independent  for  this,  so  he  professes  never  to  dine  out,  and 
takes  his  snack  of  fish  and  eggs  and  lettuce  in  the  baths,''  in- 
stead of  going  home  to  his  garret. 

Martial  himself  was  not  poor  in  this  sense:  he  had  friends 
who  could  make  him  a  present  of  a  boar,'  though  he  was 
obliged  to  decline  it  because  it  was  too  grand  a  dish  for  his 
kitchen,  and  he  could  not  aftbrd  pepper  and  pickle  to  have  it 
properly  cooked.  One  hardly  knows  whether  it  is  character- 
istic of  Martial  or  of  his  age  that  he  could  publish  the  fact. 
He  was  equally  enthusiastic  over  a  toga  sent  him  by  Parthe- 
iiius,  and  over  the  goblet  sent  him  by  Instantius  Rufus.  The 
poems  are  on  the  same  model :  he  speculates  on  the  breed  of 
sheep  whose  wool  was  spun  for  the  toga,'  he  speculates  upon 
the  artist  whose  hand  had  wrought  the  goblet.'  After  specu- 
lating,  he  describes  the  beauties  of  the  to.gaand  of  the  goblet, 
the  latter  apparently  consisting  in  the  extreme  realism  of  the 
goat  charging  a  boy.  Upon  the  whole,  Martial  is  more  amus- 
Tng  when^  he  duns'  Paullus  than  when  he  thanks  Rufus, 
though  the  exaggeration  is  carried  too  far  when  we  are  told 
not  merely  that  the  goblet  is  a  leaf  from  the  crown  Paullus 
wore  as  prcetor,  nor  that  a  drop  of  wine  breaks  it,  and  that  it 
shakes  with  the  draught  of  the  lamp,  but  that  it  is  thinner  than 
the  chalk  on  an  old  woman's  face,  thinner  than  a  bubble. 

In  general,  Martial  is  not  careful  to  vary  his  subjects.  He 
has  two  or  three  other  epigrams '  on  the  bad  habit  his  ac- 
quaintances were  apt  to  get  into,  of  sending  him  less  and  less 
silver  every  year;  sometimes  the  friend  whose  present  has 
dwindled  till  imperceptible  is  invited  to  go  back  to  the  begin- 
ning of  the  series;  another  is  invited  to  pay  at  least  half  the 
poet's  customary  claim;'  a  third  is  told  that  half  a  pound  of 
pepper  does  not  cost  as  much  as  a  pound  of  plate,  or  rather 

^  V.  xlvii.  *  VIII.  xxviii.  '  E.g.  VIII.  Ixxi. 

»XII.  xix.  ^VIII.  li.  «X.  Ivii. 

3  VII.  xxvii.  '  VIII.  xxxiii. 


/ 


that  Martial  can  buy  it  for  less.  This  last  is  a  favorite  turn : 
owing  to  the  fortunate  ambiguity  of  Latin,  Martial  can  say, 
"I  don't  buy  pepper  for  that,"  or  "I  don't  buy  a  toga  for 
that,"  when  he  means  "  I  don't  give  so  much  for  pepper,  and 
I  give  more  for  a  toga"  than  the  trifling  presents  you  make 
me  for  dancing  attendance  on  you.  In  the  same  way  he  re- 
peats the  conceit  that  nothing  is  worse  than  a  bald-head*  with 
long  hair,  with  a  variation  to  the  effect  that  nothing  is  worse 
than  a  gelding"  Priapus;  and  is  fond  of  ringing  the  changes' 
on  bought  hair,  bought  teeth,  or  bought  poems — all  the  prop- 
erty of  the  purchasers.  Often,  however,  he  varies  the  same 
subject.  For  instance,  once  when  a  criminal  enacts  Mucins 
in  the  arena,  he  is  so  struck  with  his  courage  that  he  declines 
to  know  what  the  hand  he  sacrifices  has  done:*  another  time 
he  reflects  that  the  true  mark  of  courage  would  be  lo  refuse, 
as  the  unfortunate  criminal  would  then  be  burned  alive.' 
Sometimes  the  tame  lion  (there  seems  to  have  been  more  than 
one)  has  imbibed  the  clemency  of  Domitian ;  sometimes  it 
does  not  think  a  hare"  sufficient  occupation  for  its  lordly 
jaws;  sometimes  it  is  too  much  used  to  its  old  friend  the  goat 
to  think  of  hurting  it.  There  is  the  same  light-hearted  incon- 
sistencv  in  the  way  that  he  thanks  Domitian  for  jrivins'  him 
the  privileges  of  a  father  of  three  children,'  dismissing  his  wife 
because  it  would  be  a  shame  to  waste  such  a  gift,  while  he 
tells  other  applicants  for  the  same  favor  to  ask  it'  of  nature 
and  of  their  wives,  not  of  the  emperor. 

It  deserves  to  be  mentioned,  to  Martial's  credit,  that  he 
shov/s  no  exultation  when  the  power  before  which  he  abased 
himself  so  passionately  was  overthrown.  The  only  sign  that 
h;is  enthusiasm  cooled  during  Domitian's  life  is  an  invitation 
to  dinner,  where  he  promises  his  guests  they  shall  talk  of 
nothing  more  serious  than  the  colors  of  the  circus,  and  run  no 
risk  of  prosecution  for  anything  they  may  say  in  their  cups. 
When  Domitian  was  dead,  the  only  signs  of  reaction  are  one 


*  X.  Ixxxiii.  12. 

'  These  come  alto- 

'" X.  XXV. 

^  II.  xcii. 

^  I.  XXXV  i.  15. 

gether,  I.  Ixxiii. 
*  VIII.  XXX.  9,  10. 

^  I.  xxiii. 

«  VIII.  xxxi 

112 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


MARTIAL. 


113 


or  two  epigrams/  where  he  quotes  Nerva  as  an  excuse  for  the 
license  of  his  own  language,  and  flatters  Trajan  by  an  epigram 
full  of  civic-sounding  titles^  which  the  poet  thenceforth  will 
have  to  substitute  for  the  titles  of  lord  and  god  which  still  come 
too  readily  to  his  courtly  tongue.  Martial  dedicates  under 
both  reigns  with  the  same  confident  empressefnent  to  Parthe- 
nius,  the  emperor's  reader,  who  took  a  leading  part  in  the 
conspiracy  against  Domitian,  and  who  narrowly  escaped,  if 
he  did  escape,  the  vengeance  of  the  Praetorians.  Of  course, 
such  an  easy,  good-humored  writer  had  no  sympathy  whatever 
with  pessimist  critics,  who  judged  the  Rome  of  Domitian  as 
Juvenal  judged  the  Rome  of  Trajan  ;  but  he  disapproved 
equally  of  the  indiscriminate  optimism  which  admired  every- 
thing as  a  disguise  for  lack  of  worthy  interest  in  anything. 
Certainly  it  is  pleasant  to  turn  from  Juvenal's  sneer  at  Fuscus, 
who  studied  war  in  a  marble  villa,  and  was  nursing  his  flesh 
for  the  vultures  of  Dacia,  to  Martial's  truly  Roman  tribute'  to 
the  urn  that  never  need  fear  the  threat  of  a  foeman,  and  the 
shade  that  inherits  the  homage  of  the  conquered  grove,  in 
spite  of  the  flunkeyism  of  the  opening  lines  about  the  guard- 
ian of  his  sacred  majesty's  person  and  the  captain  of  civic 
soldiery. 

When  one  compares  Martial's  consolatory  poems  with  those 
of  Statius,  one  is  struck  by  the  superiority  of  Martial  in  sim- 
plicity of  feeling:  he  may  be  less  moved,  but  his  kindliness  is 
more  spontaneous;  he  has  not  to  torment  himself  and  his 
reader  with  considerations.  Martial  reminds  us  of  Statius  in 
his  sympathy  for  the  fashion  of  petting  the  handsome  young 
slave,  who  seems  very  often  to  have  died  of  being  a  little  too 
refined  for  his  situation,  in  which  case  he  was  always  liberated 
before  death.  He  stands  almost  alone  in  Roman  literature  in 
his  appreciation  of  mere  girlhood  :  one  of  the  most  pathetic  of 
his  epitaphs*  is  for  a  child  of  six  who  died  of  some  face  dis- 
ease. He  dwells  on  the  quaint  horror  of  her  end,  the  little  lips 
that  were  not  whole  when  licked  by  the  black  flame  of  the 
funeral  pyre,  in  a  way  to  remind  us  that  he  is  a  countryman 

1  XII.  vi. ;  cf.  XI.  XX.  ^  VI.  Ixxvi. ;  cf.  Juv.  iv.  1 1 1,  1 12. 

'  X.  Ixxii.  *  XI.  xii. 


i 


of  the  Spanish  painters  of  martyrdoms;  and  winding  up  by 
telling  us  that  fate  was  in  a  hurry  to  stop  her  voice,  lest  if  she 
could  cry  for  mercy  the  grim  goddess  should  relent.     Still 
prettier  are  the  distichs '  in  which  he  commends  the  ghost  of 
a  little  slave  girl  of  his  own  to  the  ghosts  of  his  parents,  and 
concludes  with  the  often-quoted  prayer,  "Lie  lightly  on  her, 
earth,  she  trod  lightly  on  you:"  and  long  after,  when  he  was 
leaving  Italy,  he  wrote  another  epitaph,'*  commending   her 
grave  to  whosoever  might  succeed  him  as  the  owner  of  his 
Sabine  farm.     In  between  comes  an  epigram^  that  is  witty  and 
heartless.     For  thirteen  lines  he  describes  the  perfections  of 
his  pet,  whose  hair  was  softer  than  the  fleece  of  a  Spanish 
lamb,  and  more  golden   and  more  curly  than   a  German's; 
whose  breath  was  as  sweet  as  the  rosebuds  of  PiEstum  and 
the  finest  honey  of  the  hives  of  Attica,  or  a  lump  of  amber 
fresh  snatched  from  the  hand,     llie  peacock  has  no  grace 
in   comparison  with  her,  the  squirrel  no  winning  ways,  the 
phoenix  no  rarity.     So  far  we  seem  to  be  reading  an  anticipa- 
tion of  the  compliments  of  Don  Quixote,  but  we  presently 
learn,  "  And  my  friend  Paetus  bids  me  not  be  sad:  he  thumps 
my  breast  and  pulls  my  hair.     '  Are  not  you  ashamed  of  cry- 
ing at  the  death  of  a  slave  baby.?'  he  says:  *  why,  I've  buried 
my  wife,  and  yet  I  live,  well  born,  well  connected,  rich,  and 
haughty  as  she  was.'     Where  shall  we  find  a  man  so  brave  as 
PjEtus.?     Think  of  coming  into  ;^20o,ooo  and  surviving  it!" 

Martial  is  one  of  the  first  writers  to  be  gallant  in  our  sense 
of  the  word.  We  might  search  in  vain  in  Latin  literature  for 
parallels  to  the  epigram  where  he  sends  a  lady  German  hair, 
that  she  may  see  how  much  yellower*  her  own  is;  and  the 
other,  where  he  complains  of  having  fresh  roses'  sent  him, 
when  he.  would  prefer  those  whose  bloom  her  hands  had 
rubbed  away.  On  the  other  hand,  even  for  a  Roman  writer, 
he  is  singularly  ignorant  of  love,  and,  oddly  enough,  is  aware  of 
the  deficiency:  he  even  fancied  that  if  he  had  something  to 
love '  it  would  make  a  poet  of  him.  His  notion  of  something 
to  love  was  modelled  rather  upon  Corydon's  love  for  Alexis 
^  V.  xxxiv.  3  V.  xxxvii.  ^  XL  Ixxxix. 

'  ^-  ^^'-  *  V.Jxviii.  6  VIII.  Ixxiii.  10. 


114 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


MARTIAL. 


115 


than  upon  the  love  of  Catullus  for  Lesbia,  and  therefore  had 
not  the  smallest  element  of  permanence.     If  he  wanted  per- 
manence in  matters  of  affection  he  thought  of  marriage;  it 
was,  after  all,  an  intrinsic  part  of  his  scheme  of  life:  he  could 
not  dispense  with  it  as  Horace  or  Vergil  or  Catullus  did,  as 
Ovid  could  have  done.     His  general  scheme  of  life  is  a  reflec- 
tion of  the  lower  side  of  Horace's.     Amusement  has  a  much 
larger  place  in  it;  he  is  always  in  a  hurry  to  live.     The  wise 
man,  the  only  wise  man,  is  he  who  lived  yesterday.     The  only 
approach  to  remorse  or  to  compunction  in  him  is  due  to  the 
thought  of  the  good  daylight  we  lose  over  business  of  an  un- 
interesting  kind,  when  we  might   be    having  warm  or   cold 
baths,  or  doing  gymnastics,  or  talking,  or  lounging  in  the  sun  ; 
and  every  sun  that  sets  without  being  enjoyed  is  one  item 
more  in  the  account  against  us.'    The  notion  of  enjoyment  of 
thought  or  imagination  or  mere  repose  is  far  from  Martial  in 
his  prime  ;  and  he  found  the  comfort  of  having  his  sleep  out 
at  Bilbilis  a  poor  exchange  for  the  mental  activity  of  Rome. 
He  has  no  idea  whatever  of  putting  to  himself  the  question  of 
what  his  business  in  life  may  be,  about  which  Horace  is  inter- 
mittently quite  serious ;  for  the  sufficient  reason  that  Horace 
was  useful  to  one  of  the  most  important  men  of  the  day,  while 
Martial  was  in  no  fruitful  relation  to  any  one,  except  perhaps 
his  namesake  Julius,  of  whom  and  to  whom  he  writes  with  a 
hearty  enthusiasm  upon   the   duty  of  enjoying  life   and  the 
charms  of  his  few  acres.     We  extract  one  of  the  sincerest  and 
sweetest  of  his  confidences: 

Vitam  qu3C  faciunt  beatiorem, 
Jucundissime  Partialis,  hacc  sunt : 
Res  non  parta  labore,  sed  relicta; 
Non  ingratus  ager,  focus  perennis, 
Lis  nunquam,  toga  rara,  mens  quieta, 
Vires  ingenuae,  salubre  corpus, 
Prudens  simplicitas,  pares  amici, 
Convictus  facilis,  sine  arte  mensa, 
Nox  non  ebria,  sed  soluta  curis, 
Non  tristis  torus,  et  tamen  pudicus, 
Somnus  qui  faciat  breves  tenebras. 
Quod  sis,  esse  velis,  nihilque  malis: 
Summum  nee  metuas  diem  nee  optes  (X.  xlvii.). 

1  V.  XX. 


I 


f 


— "The  things  which  make  life  pretty  happy,  my  own  dear 
Martial,  are  these:  a  property  which  was  left  you  without  your 
working  for  it,  land  that  pays  for  cultivation,  a  hot  dinner 
every  day,  never  a  law-suit,  very  seldom  a  dress-suit,  a  quiet 
mind,  bodily  health,  and  gentlemanly  vigor;  frankness  and 
prudence,  equal  friendships,  easy  society,  a  simple  table,  a 
wet  night  to  wash  out  cares,  but  not  quite  a  tipsy  one,  a  wife 
who  is  faithful  and  not  strait-laced,  sound  sleep  to  shorten  the 
darkness;  to  wish  to  be  what  you  are  and  nothing  else  in  the 
world ;  not  to  be  afraid  of  your  last  day,  nor  to  long  for  it." 

It  throws  a  little  light  on  Martial's  views  of  marriage  that 
he  was  enthusiastic  over  Sulpicia,'  who  wrote  a  book  to  cele- 
brate the  liberties  she  and  her  husband  took  with  one  another. 
In  fact,  she  practised  all  the  fascinations  of  a  mistress  upon 
her  husband,  and  boasted  of  them  in  a  book  which,  in  spite 
of  Martial's  advertisement,  failed  to  secure  a  permanent 
reputation.  Still,  it  must  have  had  some  charm,  for  Martial 
was,  as  a  general  rule,  averse  to  the  tendency  ladies  of  station 
were  beginning  to  show  to  ape  the  fascinations  of  ladies  to 
whom  station  was  unattainable.  That  great  part  of  the  wit  of 
his  epigrams  consists  in  veiled  or  unveiled  imputation  of  un- 
mentionable vice  is  hardly  a  proof  that  his  practical  standard 
of  behavior  was  much  lower  than  that  of  respectable  contem- 
poraries. When  Lucan  jested  he  made  the  same  kind  of 
jokes,  though  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  Lucan  did  not 
make  a  business  of  such  jests.  Even  so,  Martial  was  scrupu- 
lous compared  with  those  who  made  it  their  business  to  jest: 
he  boasts  that  he  was  more  careful  than  most  of  his  prede- 
cessors to  keep  clear  of  the  cheap  attraction  of  mere  gross- 
ness,  and  takes  a  tone  of  sarcastic  superiority  to  a  competitor 
who  tried  to  make  a  reputation  out  of  ingeniously  detailed 
nastiness,  telling  him  that  it  was  not  worth  while  that  he 
should  prove  his  gift  of  expression  at  that  rate.*' 

Now  and  then  Martial  follows  Horace,  not  only  in  his  phi- 
losophy, but  in  the  construction  of  individual  poems.  As 
Dean  Merivale  observes,  the  well-known  odes  to  Dellius  and 
Postumus  find  an  echo  in  the  sharp  scazons  to  Titullus.  In 
»X.  XXXV.  •  2XII.  xliii.  II. 


ii6 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


MARTIAL. 


117 


directness  and  rapidity  and  energy  the  later  poet  has  such 
advantage  as  a  later  poet  can  have. 

Rape,  congere,  aufer,  posside:  relinquendum  est. 
Superba  densis  area  palleat  nummis, 
Centum  expliceiitur  paginae  Calendarum, 
Jurabit  heres  te  nihil  reliquisse.^ 

That  is  worth  reading  after — 

Cedes  coemptis  saltibus  et  domo, 
Villaque,  flavus  qiiam  Tiberis  lavat, 
Cedes,  et  exstructis  in  altum 
Divitiis  potietur  heres.' 

Martial  has  thought  out  what  Horace  only  suggests,  and 
the  imacfe  of  the  wooden  chest  with  its  brown  darkness  turn- 
ing  pale  with  the  gleam  of  the  silver  that  chokes  it  is  new 
and  vigorous.  Martial  goes  on  to  cap  Horace's  description 
of  the  heir  tossing  off  the  Caecuban  which  was  shut  up  behind 
a  hundred  bolts,  and  washing  the  pavement  with  better  wine 
than  the  pontiffs  drink,  with  a  brutal  picture  of  the  dead  body 
thrown  against  a  hurdle  or  a  stone,  while  the  bier  to  burn  it 
on  is  being  stuffed  with  papyrus,  and  the  heir  takes  posses- 
sion of  the  harem  at  his  ease. 

But  more  commonly  Martial  exhibits  himself  as  the  rival  of 
a  poet  with  whom  he  has  little  in  common  but  metre.  He 
does  not  know  what  passion  is.  Catullus  is  one  of  the  most 
passionate  of  poets,  and  yet  Martial  tries  to  outdo  him  in  his 
ambition  for  kisses,^  and  his  quarrels  with  his  friends  who 
give  him  ground  for  jealousy;  and  add  to  this  the  unpardon- 
able offence  of  not  being  even  fat  and  w^ell-liking.  Now  and 
then  there  are  imitations  of  the  Greek  epigram  :  a  terse  set 
of  questions  and  answers  upon  a  work  of  art,  or  an  epitaph 
simple  and  dignified.     But  for  the  most  part  he  keeps  to  the 

'  VIII.  xliv.  9-12.  "  Snatch,  hoard,  seize,  hokl,  you  still  must  leave  it  all ; 
though  the  proud  chest  is  choked  and  pale  with  coin,  though  there  are  a 
hundred  pages  in  the  roll  of  your  debtors,  your  heir  will  swear  you  left  him 
nothing." 

"^  "  You  shall  depart  from  the  wide  woodlands  you  bought,  from  your 
home,  from  your  farm  washed  by  the  yellow  Tiber — you  shall  depart,  and 
all  your  heaped-up  wealth  shall  be  for  your  heir." — Hor.  Od.  II.  xiv.  21-24. 

'VI.  xxxiv.:  cf.  I.  cix. 


\ 


paradoxes  of  contemporary  Roman  life,  and  it  was  among 
these  that  he  earned  his  popularity.  Unambitious  as  he  was, 
he  was  too  ambitious  for  his  public,  w^ho  showed  a  good  deal 
of  impatience  whenever  he  wrote  anything  longer  than  a  few 
lines  (their  ideal  length  was  a  distich)  or  paid  compliments  of 
any  kind.  The  taste  of  the  day  did  not  apparently  revolt  at 
his  numerous  jingles  and  plays  upon  sound  like  "Aut  apponc 
dapes  Vare  vel  aufer  opes."  '  His  style  here  and  there  show^s 
signs  of  linguistic  decay  :  for  instance,  in  the  best  epitaph,  on 
Erotion,  we  hear  that  she  went  to  the  world  below  with  a 
hastened  ghost. 

^  IV.  Ixxviii.  6. 


ii8 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL. 


119 


CHAPTER  V. 

JUVENAL. 

It  is  difficult  to  be  sure  whether  Juvenal,  who  was  the 
friend  of  Martial,  is  to  be  identified  with  the  satirist.     If  so, 
there  was  a  certain  plausibility  in  the  endeavors  of  some  ma- 
licious persons  to  get  up  a  quarrel  between  the  two,  for  the 
temperament  of  the  two  was  as  different  as  could  be.     Mar- 
tial was  mercurial,  Juvenal  was  saturnine.     Martial  was  quite 
capable  of  admiration  ;  Juvenal  was  not.     INIartial  was  an  en- 
thusiast for  the  shows  of  the  circus;  Juvenal  thought  a  day 
when  all  Rome  was  in  the  circus  a  capital  opportunity  for  a 
quiet  dinner,  and  considered  the  praetor  the  prey  of  his  horses 
when  he  gave  a  handsome  show.     Juvenal,  again,  has  a  great 
passion  for  exhortation,  from  which  Martial  is  entirely  free. 
The  friend  of  Martial  was  not  yet  known  as  a  poet,  for  INIar- 
tial is  anxious  to  give  any  of  his  acquaintances  who  write  full 
credit  for  their  performances,  good  or  bad.     This,  pro  tanto, 
tells  in  favor  of  the  accepted  belief  that  Juvenal  only  began 
to  write  under  Trajan,  which  rests  upon  three  facts.      In  his 
first  Satire  which  is  obviously  intended  to  serve  as  an  intro- 
duction to  the  rest,  he  mentions  the  condemnation  of  Marius, 
which  took  place  100  a.d.     The  thirteenth  is  addressed  to 
a   friend  of   sixty  who  was  born  in  the  consulship  of   Fon- 
teius,  which  dates  the  Satire  at  72,  119,  or  127  a.d.     The  fif- 
teenth professes  to  be  written  soon  after  an  event  which  took 
place  in  the  consulship  of  Junius,  which  would  leave  us  to 
choose  between  84  a.d.  and  119  a.d.,  or  possibly  under  the 
consulship  of  Juncus,  who  was  consul  suffect  in  127  a.d.;  and 
although  an  inscription  of  Hadrian's  reign  is  dated  by  his 
consulship,  it  is  rather  difficult  to  suppose  that  a  poet  could 
expect  everybody  to  keep  all  the  consuls  suffect  in  their  heads, 
and  speak  loosely  of  what  happened  "  lately  "  if  he  was  dat- 
ing within  a  couple  of  months. 


i 


It  would,  of  course,  be  curious  that  Martial  should  write  of 
Juvenal  as  a  private  person  if  there  were  another  Juvenal 
who  had  a  reputation  as  a  poet,  and,  according  to  the  tradi- 
tion embodied  in  the  lives  of  Juvenal,  he  had  published  under 
Domitian,  who  banished  him  to  Egypt;  though  it  is  also  true 
that  Martial  tells  us  nothing  of  Statins,  the  leading  f^ashiona- 
ble  poet  of  the  age.  There  is  one  other  Satire  which  seems 
to  bear  its  date  upon  its  face.  The  seventh  —  where  the 
poet  complains  that  poetry  has  no  patrons  but  the  emperor — 
must  surely  be  contemporary  with  the  complaints  of  Martial 
about  the  one  drawback  to  Domitian's  admirable  reign,  that 
it  was  not  recognized  that  a  poor  man's  talent  deserved  re- 
ward, and,  consequently,  poets  and  men  of  letters  in  general 
had  no  patron  to  look  to  but  the  emperor.  And  it  is  not  im- 
possible that  the  Cordus  who  makes  himself  hoarse  reciting 
his  "Theseid"  to  an  unappreciative  world  is  the  same  Cor- 
dus whom  Martial  banters  good-naturedly  on  his  taste  for 
finery  rather  above  his  means.  The  eighth  Satire  is  full  of 
allusions  to  the  reign  of  Nero,^  and  the  scholiast  embodies 
confused  echoes  of  a  more  or  less  conjectural  tradition  that 
Juvenal  began  to  write  under  him  ;  and  in  the  first  Satire 
there  are  allusions  which  might,  perhaps,  be  taken  the  same 
way.  It  is  remarkable  that  there  are  no  allusions  to  the 
victorious  campaigns  of  Trajan,  and  in  the  eighth  Satire  we 
should  have  expected  these.  We  hear  of  the  career  of  a 
valiant  and  diligent  youth  who  goes  to  Euphrates,  or  the 
eagles  which  keep  watch  and  ward  over  the  conquered  Bata- 
vian,  and  a  young  noble  is  reproached  for  idling  in  taverns 
when  at  an  age  to  guarantee  the  safety  of  Nero.  There  is 
another  passage^  in  what  would  seem  a  later  Satire,  which 
is  still  more  conclusive:  an  aspiring  boy  is  told  by  a  father 
with  an  eye  to  the  main  chance  to  ask  for  a  centurion's 
rod,  that  he  may  have  the  perquisites^  oi pn7?iipilus  at  sixty. 

'  One  explanation  of  these  might  be  that  Juvenal  goes  back  to  the  per- 
sonages of  Turniis  as  Persius  goes  back  to  the  personages  -of  Horace. 

''xiv.  193-19S. 

'Consisting  largely  of  fees,  upon  furloughs,  and  sufficient  to  support  the 
rank  of  knight,  with  which  a/'r//;////7//j  hoped  to  retire,  probably  with  the 
brevet  rank  of  tribune. 


120 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL. 


121 


These  perquisites  are  to  be  earned  by  a  long  course  of  petty 
warfare  on  the  extreme  northern  and  southern  frontiers  of  the 
empire. 

The  whole  subject  is  very  perplexing,  for  we  cannot  even 
conclude  that  Juvenal  wrote  mainly  under  Domitian ;  but  the 
thirteenth  Satire  must  have  been  written  either  under  Vespa- 
sian or  under  Hadrian,  and  the  twelfth  and  fourteenth  Satires, 
and  probably  the  eleventh,  must  be  assigned  to  about  the 
same  period.  It  is,  of  course,  difficult  to  understand  so  much 
bitterness  in  the  golden  age  of  Trajan,  when  the  world  was 
enjoying  the  first  rebound  of  prosperity  and  freedom  after  the 
jealous  and  latterly  unsuccessful  tyranny  of  Domitian.  We 
learn,  indeed,  from  Pliny's  correspondence  with  Trajan  that 
jobbery  flourished  extensively  throughout  the  provinces,  and 
may  conjecture  that  it  flourished  at  the  capital.  The  mani- 
festo which,  it  is  said,  Avidius  Cassius  issued  against  Marcus 
Aurelius  implies  that  under  that  model  emperor  corruption 
was  flourishing  throughout  the  empire,  and  the  public  interest 
was  entirely  neglected  by  everybody.  But  it  is  not  easy  to 
give  credit  to  Juvenal  for  such  comprehensive  indignation : 
the  only  life  that  he  knows  or  cares  to  describe  is  the  life  of 
the  capital,  and  the  life  of  the  capital  can  hardly  have  been 
other  than  prosperous  during  a  period  of  profuse  expendi- 
ture, which  was  supplied  without  either  of  the  unpopular 
resources  of  confiscation  or  taxation.  The  last  fragmentary 
Satire  on  military  privileges,  which  seems  to  have  been 
intended  to  come  before  the  Satire  on  the  savagery  of  Egyp- 
tian superstition,  might  naturally  be  referred  to  the  reign 
of  Trajan,  although  Domitian  was  conspicuous  for  his  defer- 
ence to  the  armv. 

Another  difficulty  about  Juvenal  is  the  steady  ancient  tra- 
dition of  an  exile  in  which  he  enlarged  his  Satires,  which 
must  be  considered  in  conjunction  with  the  elaborate  conject- 
ure of  Ribbeck  that  the  tenth,  twelfth,  thirteenth,  fourteenth, 
and  fifteenth  Satires  are  declamations  quite  unworthy  of 
Juvenal,  and  that  the  author  of  these,  or  somebody  as  stupid, 
interpolated  the  Satires  which  Ribbeck  recognizes  as  gen- 
uine.    And  it  is  quite  true  that  there  is  a  real  division  in 


ii 


f 


Juvenal's  work.  In  all  the  Satires  which  Ribbeck  rejects 
there  is  very  little  direct  observation  of  life:  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  hortatory  commonplace,  and  such  illustration  as  there 
is  seems  taken  second-hand  from  history;  and  there  are  un- 
mistakable signs  of  this  tendency  in  the  Satires  which  he  ac- 
cepts; and  there  is  no  Satire  where  the  arrangement  is  the 
strong  point — in  fact,  there  is  hardly  any  where  a  methodi- 
cal editor  is  without  some  temptation  to  rearrange  his  text, 
wliich  never  hardly  comes  to  the  end  of  one  topic  and  goes 
on  to  another  without  recurring  to  the  first.  Juvenal  is  too 
considerable  a  poet  for  it  to  be  easily  admitted  that  he  could 
keep  back  nothing,  that  he  thought  everything  that  he  wrote 
too  good  to  lose. 

On  the  whole,  Juvenal  may  seem  to  have  written  mostly 
under  Domitian  and  Nerva,  and  during  the  early  years  of 
Trajan.  Perhaps  after  a  considerable  interval  he  began  to 
write  again  under  Hadrian  in  a  different  and  milder  vein. 
During  his  exile  he  may  have  enlarged  his  earlier  Satires,  if 
we  rely  at  all  on  the  comparatively  respectable  authority  of 
Sidonius  Apollinaris  for  the  statement  that  he  was  banished 
for  some  reflection  on  the  patronage  dispensed  by  Paris,  a 
favorite  actor  under  Domitian.  As  the  actor  was  put  to  death 
84  A.D.,  the  Satire  on  the  poverty  of  men  of  letters  must 
have  been  written  tolerably  early  if  it  was  to  give  offence 
to  him  or  even  to  Domitian,  who  may  have  resented  the 
imputation  of  bestowing  military  rank  at  the  bidding  of  an 
actor.  The  first,  second,  third,  fifth,  sixth,  seventh,  eighth, 
and  ninth  Satires  might  all  fairly  be  set  down  to  the  reign 
of  Domitian,  if  we  strike  out  the  two  lines'  about  Marius 
from  the  first,  which  decidedly  disturb  the  symmetry  of  the 
text  wher^  they  occur.  The  fourth  is  probably  Juvenal's  con- 
tribution to  the  outburst  of  virtuous  indignation  which  fol- 
lowed the  fall  of  Domitian.  Perhaps  there  is  a  trace  of  the 
same  at  the  end  of  the  first  Satire,  where  the  poet,  after 
contemplating  the  risks  of  attacking  a  reigning  fiivorite  as  set 
forth  by  an  imaginary  monitor,  proclaims  a  not  very  magnani- 
mous resolution  of  trying  whether  it  is  safe  to  make  war  upon 

•'49,  SO- 
IL—6 


122 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL. 


123 


the  dead.     The  second  Satire,  and  perhaps  the  ninth,  may 
fairly  be  regarded  as  pamphlets  in  favor  of  Domitian's  revival 
of  the  Scantinian  law,  for  there  is  nothing  in  them  that  can 
be  taken  to  reflect  upon   Domitian   except  five  bitter  and 
powerful   lines,*  which    are,  after   all,  irrelevant    to    the  two 
main  subjects  of  the  Satire,  for  Domitian  in  a  private  sta- 
tion would  have  been  safe  from  a  prosecution  under  the  Lex 
Scantinia,  and  had  no  taste  for  exhibiting  himself  in  the  arena 
or  making  men  of  station  exhibit  themselves.     The  sixth,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  a  Satire  on  Domitian's  attempt  to  revive  the 
Julian  law  :  it  rallies  a  man  who  intends  to  live  up  to  the  new 
reformation,  partly  upon  the  absurdity  of  his  pretensions  to 
virtue,  and  partly  upon  the  impossibility  of  finding  a  suitable 
partner.     It  is  a  saturnalia  of  invective:    all  the  world  of 
women   is  represented   as   stained  by  one  or   other  of  the 
offences  which  in  the  second   Satire   are  treated  as  excep- 
tional.    Picturesque  and  truthful  as  the  invective  is,  there  is 
a  want  of  proportion  and  perspective  about  it.       One  would 
never  guess  that  the  author  was  a  contemporary  of  Sulpicia,  or 
Statius,  or  Pliny  the  Younger,  or  even  Martial,  who,  though  he 
writes  of  and  to  his  wife  in  a  tone  the  reverse  of  chivalrous, 
is  not  wholly  wanting  in  good-nature.      Here,  as  elsewhere, 
Juvenal  is  provokingly  old-fashioned :   he  repeats  and  exag- 
gerates the  misogyny  of  the  republic;  he  does  not  dislike 
women  because  the  sex  in  his  time  was  corrupt,  but  his  dis- 
like to  the  sex  makes  him  keen  to  detect  and  eloquent  to 
dilate  upon  all  the  instances  of  corruption  which  society  sup- 
plied.    There  is  a  great  deal  of  spasmodic  and  not  quite  un- 
real indignation  at  the  turpitude  of  women,  but  no  recommen- 
dation for  improvement — in   fact,  whenever  a  woman  has  a 
character,  Juvenal  makes  haste  to  take  it  away.     He  offers  to 
give  up  his  own  bit  of  land  if  a  lady  who  had  a  great  reputa- 
tion on  her  own  domain  could  live  in  one  or  two  of  the  dullest, 
pettiest  towns  as  she  is  said  to  have  lived  on  her  own  estate; 
though  even  about  that  Juvenal  has  his  doubts,  and  asks  if 
Jupiter  and  Mars  are  grown  so  old.     In  the  second  Satire 
the  indignation  seems  to  be  rather  against  the  pretensions  and 

» 29-34- 


v\ 


the  hypocrisy  of  effeminate  debauchery  than  against  the  effem- 
inacy itself,  while  in  the  ninth  Satire  there  is  no  indignation 
at  all,  or  else  it  is  marvellously  well  suppressed.  The  poet 
encourages  his  friend  to  hope  for  better  luck  with  his  next 
effeminate  employer,  and  promises  secrecy  about  his  quarrel 
with  the  last,  while  sagely  reflecting  that  a  rich  man  can  have 
no  secrets:  his  servants  are  sure  to  understand  all  his  affairs 
and  publish  them  through  his  tradesmen,  with  plenty  of  com- 
ment and  conjecture.  The  worst  thing  about  a  bad  slave  is  his 
tongue,  and  among  many  good  reasons  for  living  correctly  it 
is  not  the  least  that  then  you  need  not  mind  what  servants  say 
of  you. 

Even  in  the  fifth  Satire  it  is  not  clear  whether  Juvenal  means 
to  attack  the  rich  man  who  will  not  treat  his  clients  civilly, 
or  the  poor  man  who  is  eager  to  go  out  to  dinner  even  at  the 
risk  of  being  worse  served  and  fed  than  his  host.  Here,  as 
often,  Juvenal  does  nothing  but  paraphrase  at  length,  and  with 
much  emphatic  humor,  an  epigram'  of  Martial's  on  a  dinner 
of  Zoilus,  who  probably  stands  for  a  real  person  who  did  not 
appreciate  Martial's  epigrams:  there  is  even  the  same  parade 
of  the  resources  which  are  less  discreditable  than  dining  out 
on  such  terms.  Only  Martial  is  impartial :  he  tells  us  quite^an- 
didly  what  a  miserable  thing  it  was  to  dine  three  nights  run- 
ning in  a  garret  that  was  dark  and  low,  up  ever  so  many  pairs 
of  stairs,  at  the  top  of  which  you  had  to  stoop  to  get  into  it  • 
and  he  obviously  feels  that  a  poor  man  might  very  well  think 
the  price  for  freedom  too  high.  Juvenal's  inference  is  that 
a  poor  man  had  better  leave  Rome  :  he  just  says  enough  of  the 
discomfort  of  dark  garrets  and  high  rents'  to  recommend  the 
cheap  comfort  of  a  country  town.  He  does  not  touch  on  the  fact 
that  a  man  with  the  tastes  he  approved  could  do  nothing  in  a 
small  town  but  vegetate,  while  the  busy  idleness  of  Rome  .Sharp- 
ened the  wits  and  kept  ambition  alive.  He  thought  it  quite 
shocking  that  well-known  poets  should  go  into  business  and 
open  an  auction  hall  at  Rome,  or  contract  for  the  management 
of  the  baths  at  Gabii,  although  that  was  better  than  making 
a  trade  of  perjury,  which  pushing  freedmen  from  the  Levani 

'  Mart.  III.  Ixxxii.  .  a  ju^.  III.  190  sqq. 


124 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL. 


125 


who  had  acquired  equestrian  fortunes  were  ready  enough  to 
do.  Transmarine  trade,  which  was  almost  the  only  honest 
way  of  making  money  known,  struck  him  as  a  proof  of  in- 
sanity. A  man  setting  out  in  the  storms  to  traffic  in  stinking 
saffron  and  sackcloth  is  a  more  amusing  show  than  any  that 
the  praetor  can  exhibit. 

It  is  quite  of  a  piece  with  this  that  Juvenal  has  no  belief 
whatever  in  any  connection  between  merit  and  success :  all 
the  external  conditions  of  life  depend  upon  fate  or  luck:  the 
shabby  adventurers  who  get  on  without  minding  what  they  do 
are  not  monuments  of  the  power  of  energy  or  perseverance  or 
adaptability,  but  they  show  what  fortune  can  do  when  she  has 
a  mind  tofoke.'    If  Quinctilian'  has  accumulated  what  passed 
for  a  fortune,  that  does  not  prove  that  Quinctilian  understood 
his  profession,  but  that  the  stars  and  the  wondrous  power  of 
hidden  fate  had  manifested  themselves  in  him;  for  fate  can 
turn    a   professor   of  rhetoric   into   a  consul,'  and   a  consul 
into  a  professor  of  rhetoric,  just  as  it  can  make  a  slave  a 
king  or  give  a  captive  a  triumph.     In  the  same  way  luck  is 
the  great  thing  in  entering  the  army:*  a  lucky  camp  is  more 
important  than  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Venus  to  Mars. 
It   is   no  contradiction   to   this  that  twice   over  we  get  the 
sentiment   that   it   is   only  for  lack  of  prudence    that  men 
deify  fortune :   virtue   and    prudence   are   never    represented 
as  the  way  to  fame  or  splendor;  they  are  the  way  to  safety 
and  tranquillity,  which  are  all  that  Juvenal  thinks  it  wise  to 

wish  for. 

With  this  apathy  of  desire  it  is  not  surprising  that  Juvenal 
is  one  of  the  most  irreligious  of  Roman  poets  :  he  jests  much 
more  freely  at  mythology  than  his  fellows,  but  this  is  not  all. 
When  he  is  serious  and  reverent  he  speaks,  for  the  most  part, 
not  of  the  gods,  but  of  nature,  or  the  author  of  nature;  but 
there  is  no  trace  of  any  piety  to  the  traditional  worship  which 
often  survived  any  respect  for  the  legends  connected  with  it. 
Juvenal  is  not  much  further  from  jesting  when  he  says  that  of 
course  man  is  dearer  to  the  gods  than  to  himself,  and  therefore 

^  Juv.  Iir.  40.         ^  Quinctilian  only  received  the  consular  ornaments, 

'VII.  189-200.      *XVI.  2-6. 


the  future  may  be  left  to  their  care,  than  when  he  says  that  if 
you  must  go  on  to  petitions,'  and  have  a  motive  for  vowing  the 
entrails  and  the  chitterlings  of  a  nice  little  white  pig  (which, 
to  be  sure,  are  a  dish  for  gods)  to  your  favorite  chapel,  the 
only  thing  to  pray  for  is  a  courageous  mind  above  the  fear  of 
death:  \vhich  is  hardly  an  improvement  from  the  point  of 
view  of  reason.  Or  from  that  of  religion,  upon  Horace,  who 
says  simply  it  is  enough  to  pray  Jove  for  what  he  gives  or 
takes  away :  let  him  give  health  and  wealth,  and  then  I  will 
find  myself  an  even  mind.  The  jests  upon  mythology  are 
mostly  euhemeristic  in  tone — references  to  the  days  when 
Juno'  was  a  young  girl,  and  Jupiter  had  not  been  promoted 
from  private  life  in  the  caves  of  Ida  to  be  king  of  heaven,  and 
sneers  at  Vulcan's  way  of  taking  a  long  pull  at  the  nectar  he 
handed  round  before  it  occurs  to  him  to  clean  the  soot  off  his 


arms. 


The  gradual  decline  of  morality  since  the  Golden  Age  is  a 
favorite  topic  with  Juvenal,  and  he  likes  to  dwell  on  the  ex- 
treme simplicity  of  the  good  old  times,  when  it  was  a  great 
crime  for  a  young  man  not  to  rise  up  to  an  elder,  and  for  a 
boy  not  to  rise  up  to  any  one  with  a  beard,  although  he  might 
see  more  strawberries  and  larger  heaps  of  acorns  at  home.' 
Next  to  this  he  admires  the  life  of  the  Sabine  farmers,*  where 
the  wife  had  a  large  family,  and  lived  upon  porridge,  and 
slaves  and  freemen  played  together  as  children,  and  worked 
together  when  they  grew  up;  and  the  elders  warned  them 
against  outlandish  purple  as  something  wicked,  without  wish- 
ing to  know  what  it  was.  He  has  a  strong  feeling  that  the 
love  of  money  is  the  root  of  all  evil,  and  that  field-work  in 
shabby  clothes  is  the  root  of  all  virtue;  that  a  son  who  is 
brought-up  to  think  of  earning  money  will  make  up  his  mind 
to  try  criminal  short-cuts  to  wealth.  He  admires  the  best 
poetry,  and  thinks  that  to  dine  early  and  listen*  to  it  is  one 
of  the  greatest  pleasures  in  the  world,  though  it  would  pall 
if  indulged  in  often.  This,  however,  is  only  a  pleasure  for 
men:  women  are  better  in  entire  ignorance;  they  should  keep 

'X.  354,  355.  Mb.54sqq.  ^XI.  177-180. 

2x111.40.  Ub.  165-189. 


I 


126 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL, 


127 


their  hearts  pure  and  their  hands  hard  by  spinning,  and  not 
trouble  themselves  about  grammar  or  literature,  which  will 
only  put  it  into  their  heads  to  tease  their  husbands  about 
doubtful  grammar,  or  take  up  all  the  time  at  a  dinner-party 
with  discussions  about  the  comparative  merits  of  Homer  and 
Vergil.  In  his  eyes  this  is  even  a  worse  offence  than  to  keep 
dinner  waiting  through  an  excessive  passion  for  gymnastics,  as 
this  was  a  worse  offence  than  dressiness,  which  easily  passed 
into  cruelty. 

Juvenal's  politics  agree  very  well  with  his  philosophy:  he 
holds  in  most  things  with  the  elder  Cato,  and  is  superior  to 
all  considerations  of  anachronism.  The  empire  of  Rome 
gives  him  no  pleasure:  he  regards  everybody,  great  or  small, 
who  profits  by  it  with  the  robust  envy  of  a  conservative  demo- 
crat. He  is  a  hearty  patriot,  and  thinks  no  praise  too  high  for 
those  who  delivered  the  municipal  community  of  Rome  from 
great  perils,  like  Cicero  or  Marius  or  the  Decii,  but  one  looks 
in  vain  for  any  sympathy  with  Vergil's  view  of  Rome's  mission 
to  spare  subjects  and  war  down  the  proud  and  lay  the  fashion 
of  peace  upon  the  world.  Both  in  history  and  in  ethics  it  is 
rudimentary  virtues  that  attract  him.  When  there  is  an  op- 
portunity for  taking  a  large  view  in  politics  he  is  suspicious  ; 
when  there  is  an  opportunity  for  taking  a  large  view  in  history 
he  is  sceptical  and  credulous  by  turns.  When  he  has  to  speak 
of  the  struggle  of  Greece  against  Persia,  he  can  think  of  noth- 
mz  better  than  to  try  to  reduce  Herodotus,  or,  at  any  rate, 
Sostratus,^  who  versified  him,  to  the  level  of  Munchausen. 
When  he  has  to  speak  of  the  struggle  of  Rome  against  Han- 
nibal, he  can  think  of  nothing  better  than  to  sneer  at  the 
ambition  of  a  commander  who  melted  rocks  with  vinegar, 
and  lost  an  eye  in  the  wars.'^  It  is  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable points  in  JuvenaPs  view  of  life  that  he  attaches  no 
value  whatever  to  posthumous  renown,  which  almost  all  his 
serious  contemporaries  rated  extremely  high,  just  as  they  all 
agreed  in  attaching  as  much  worth  as  thev  could  to  the  wor- 
ship  which  they  had  inherited.  Of  course,  one  does  not  ex- 
pect much  homage  to  the  ideals  of  an  age  in  a  satirist,  though 
^X.  178.  'lb.  153,  158. 


^ 


we  find  it  abundantly  in  Martuil,  but,  compared  with  either 
Horace  or  Persius,  Juvenal  is  decidedly  narrow  and  ungra- 
cious in  all  matters  of  opinion.  If  men  could  only  live  up  to 
the  standards  they  profess,  neither  Horace  nor  Persius  would 
have  much  to  say  against  them,  but  Juvenal  complains  that 
the  aims  they  propose  to  themselves  are  absurd:  he  finds  not 
only  men  but  life  ridiculous.  Aristophanes,  whom  Juvenal 
alone  of  Roman  satirists  makes  no  boast  of  imitating,  is  as 
contemptuous  of  what  his  contemporaries  admire,  but  Aris- 
tophanes makes  a  jest  of  his  own  opinions,  as  readily  as  of  the 
new  fashions  in  thought  and  politics  against  which  he  waged  a 
war  which  lowered  him.  Aristophanes  to  the  last  keeps  the 
air  of  looking  down  upon  what  he  ridicules;  he  represents 
himself  as  the  champion  of  the  orthodox,  respectable  view  of 
things.  Juvenal  always  assumes  that  the  view  which  he  ridi- 
cules is  in  possession;  he  is  a  Diogenes  who  can  afford  to 
laugh  at  Alexander. 

In  his  later  works  Juvenal  is  in  the  same  position  towards 
Stoicism  substantially  as  Horace  :  he  wishes  to  amuse  himself 
with  the  pretensions  of  the  Stoics  and  to  be  independent  of 
their  doctrine,  and  yet  he  can  do  nothing  but  repeat  their 
commonplaces.  He  keeps  so  far  as  he  can  to  what  they  have 
in  common  with  all  philosophers,  which  was  the  easier  be- 
cause they  had  been  fiilling  back  upon  this  common  ground 
at  least  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Seneca.  The  thirteenth 
Satire  is  full  of  this  incoherence.  Juvenal  undertakes  to 
console  a  friend  who  has  been  cheated  of  ten  sestertia — 
something  like  ;^ioo  sterling — and  tells  him  that  for  such  a 
trifle  there  is  no  need  to  call  in  the  assistance  of  high  philoso- 
phy— which  the  author  boasts  of  not  having  read.  In  one 
place  he  tells  him  that  it  is  unmanly  to  care  about  revenge,  in 
another  that  he  is  quite  certain  to  be  avenged  by  the  force  of 
circumstances:  the  perfidious  borrower  has  committed  one 
crime  with  impunity;  he  will  be  sure  to  commit  another,  and 
be  punished.  In  one  place  he  makes  a  jest  of  the  number  of 
deities  whom  a  perjurer"  will  defy  for  the  sake  of  keeping 
money  which  does  not  belong  to  him.  In  another  we  are  as- 
sured that  he  will  be  haunted  by  the  spirit  form  of  the  man 


128 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


that 


he  has  wronged:  throughout  there  is  the  assumption 
every  one  who  does  wrong  is  always  tormented  by  the 
thought  of  what  he  has  done,  so  that  legal  penalties  are  really 
less  severe  than  what  every  criminal  must  suffer  from  his 
conscience. 

It  is  just  the  same  in  the  fifteenth  Satire:  all  the  Stoical 
doctrines  of  the  fellowship  of  mankind  are  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  grotesque  cannibalism  of  the  inhabitants  of  an 
Egyptian  town,  who  had  caught  one  of  the  inhabitants  of  an- 
other that  they  had  a  quarrel  with,  and  actually  eaten  him  at 
the  end  of  a  brawl  at  a  festival.  At  the  same  time,  Juvenal 
will  not  be  too  serious  about  his  Stoicism:  he  asks  himself 
whether  the  stories  of  Spanish  cannibalism  are  to  be  tried  by 
the  Stoical  standard,  and,  of  course,  says  that  the  Spaniards 
who  acted  under  a  mistaken  sense  of  honor  are  to  be  ex- 
cused. The  humor  is  not  very  remarkable :  the  poet  assures 
us  that  the  fables  of  the  "  Odyssey  "  about  the  Cyclops  and 
the  Laistrygons  were  disgusting  and  incredible,  as  a  preface 
to  his  more  incredible  and  more  disgusting  picture  from  con- 
temporary life:  even  the  contrast  between  the  hungry  hate  on 
one  side  and  the  coarse  merry-makings  on  another,  with 
which  the  actual  narrative  opens,  is  rather  labored  than 
effective,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  complaints  that 
Egyptians  worship  animals.  The  twelfth  Satire  professes 
to  be  a  letter  to  Corvinus  on  the  festival  Juvenal  intends 
to  hold  in  honor  of  the  safety  of  Catullus,  who  was  very 
nearly  shipwrecked,  after  seeing  the  mast  cut  away  and  all 
his  own  property  thrown  overboard.  This  gives  occasion  to 
praise  Catullus  for  not  sacrificing  his  life  to  save  his  property, 
and,  as  he  had  children  of  his  own,  Juvenal  can  praise  him- 
self for  disinterestedness  in  paying  such  a  tribute  to  a  friend 
from  whom  he  expects  nothing.  Hereupon  we  have  a  bit  of 
genuine  satire  upon  the  manners  and  customs  of  fortune- 
hunters  who  would  sacrifice  a  daughter,  to  say  nothing  of 
their  best  slaves,  to  prove  their  devotion  to  a  rich  old  bache- 
lor, without  expecting  a  miracle  to  save  them  such  as  was 
wrought  for  A2:amemnon.  The  rest  looks  rather  like  a  series 
of  exercises  in  description  pieced  together;  there  is  a  sacri- 


yUVENAL, 


129 


y 


¥ 


I 


lice  and  a  shipwreck  (and  a  shipwreck,  at  any  rate,  was  a 
fovorite  theme  for  schoolboy  versification),  and  Juvenal's  sea- 
piece  seems  rather  interrupted  by  the  catalogue  of  the  goods 
which  Catullus  sacrifices.  Here  and  there  is  an  attempt  to 
be  comic  by  dint  of  grandiloquence,  which  breaks  down  in 
unexpected  places  :  for  instance,  a  bowl  thrown  overboard 
holds  three  gallons,  and  is  worthy  of  the  thirst  of  Pholus  (a 
celebrated  centaur),  or  the  wife  of  Fuscus  (as  we  might  say, 
Mrs.  Brown).  The  fourteenth,  which  deals  with  education,  is 
vigorous  and  edifying,  though  here,  too,  the  author  cannot 
help  going  off  into  a  special  polemic  against  avarice,  which 
occupies  two  thirds  of  the  Satire,  though  most  of  this  is  con- 
nected with  the  subject  upon  which  he  begins  by  declamations 
on  the  influence  of  evil  examples  in  propagating  avarice,  as 
well  as  other  vices  which  the  young  acquire  from  elders  who 
do  not  recommend  them  in  theory.  Here,  too,  we  have  the 
same  scepticism  as  to  Greek  legend  which,  in  the  tenth 
Satire,  we  find  about  Greek  history. 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  interest  of  Juvenal's 
later  Satires,  from  the  eleventh  onwards,  is  derivative:  the  first 
ten  are  exciting,  and  when  the  poet  reaches  a  calmer  and 
more  elevated  atmosphere  the  recollection  of  the  bracing 
storms  of  the  lower  level  prevents  our  finding  the  calm  insipid 
or  oppressive.  The  eleventh  Satire  is  fresh  and  pleasant,  and 
the  description  of  the  modest  country-bred  boy  who  waits  at 
table,  and  wants  to  get  back  to  his  mother  and  his  kids,  is  in 
a  vein  of  sentiment  that  is  original  in  ancient  literature.  But 
one  may  fancy  it  possible  to  trace  failing  powers  in  the  sketch 
of  the  fast  young  men  who  live  beyond  their  means,  and 
break  up  their  mother's  bust  for  old  silver,  and  paw'n  their 
plate  to  provide  for  one  or  two  banquets  more,  before  they 
have  to  run  away  from  their  creditors  for  a  season  or  two  at 
the  baths,  after  which  they  will  come  back  to  the  gladiators' 
mess  at  Rome.  The  outline  is  vigorous  still,  but  there  is 
little  detail,  and  the  coloring  is  pale  beside  the  picture  of 
Lateranus  among  his  boon  companions.  The  tenth  Satire  is 
certainly  a  work  of  the  full  vigor  of  its  author.  To  be  sure, 
there  is  much  more  ethical  disquisition  than  in  the  third  or 

IF.— 6* 


ISO 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL, 


^31 


eighth,  but  there  is  an  amplitude  about  even  the  abstract  dec- 
lamation which  we  miss  hater,  and  there  is  nothing  afterwards 
to  set  against  the  splendid  pictures  of  the  fall  of  Sejanus,  and 
the  humiliation  of  Hannibal,  or  the  wedding  of  Messalina  and 
Silius.  The  plan  of  the  Satire  is  clearer  and  more  consist- 
ently carried  out  than  usual.  First,  we  have  a  statement  that 
men  are  foolish,  and  wish  for  what  will  do  them  harm,  en- 
forced by  the  consideration  that  Heraclitus  wept  over  the 
world,  and  Democritus  laughed  at  it  when  there  was  much  less 
to  laugh  at,  while  there  is  no  sage  who  has  given  his  authority 
for  admiring  the  popular  judgment.  Then  we  have  illustra- 
tions of  the  evils  arising  from  the  individual  things  which  men 
desire— wealth,  political  power,  eloquence,  military  glory,  long 
life,  and  beauty.  The  only  trace  of  unsteadiness  is  in  the 
treatment  of  long  life,  which  is  handled  at  more  length  than 
the  rest,  and  there  are  a  dozen  lines  on  the  different  diseases 
of  old  age,  which  rather  interrupt  the  description  of  natural 
decay.  Perhaps,  too,  it  may  be  said  that  the  perils  of  beauty 
are  not  clearly  discriminated.  We  never  quite  know  whether 
the  poet  is  talking  about  the  risk  of  violence  or  the  risk  of 
seduction,  and  he  is  full  on  the  perils  of  beauty  in  man  and 
short  on  its  perils  to  woman,  although  he  sets  out  by  saying 
that  it  is  only  for  women  that  even  unphilosophical  devotees 
desire  it  very  heartily. 

The  whole  Satire  is,  as  Mr.  INIacleane  pointed  out,  very  like 
an  expansion  of  the  passage  in  which  Valerius  Maximus  re- 
sumes the  doctrine  of  the  Alcibiades.  It  is  not  improbable  that 
further  resemblances  of  the  same  kind  might  be  traced,  but  it 
detracts  even  less  from  Juvenal's  originality  to  amplify  Vale- 
rius than  it  detracts  from  Johnson's  originality  to  have  para- 
phrased Juvenal,  or  from  Pope's  to  have  paraphrased  Horace. 
In  the  eighth  Satire  we  find  originality  of  another  kind.  Ju- 
venal is  the  only  writer  of  his  day  who  has  a  fierce  quarrel 
with  the  nobility  and  with  luxury.  Tacitus  and  Pliny  make 
a  kind  of  protest  in  favor  of  simplicity  :  perhaps  so  far  as  sim- 
plicity of  personal  habits  goes  the  protest  is  sincere,  but  as  to 
the  material  organization  of  social  life  it  is  certainly  hypocrit- 
ical.    With  more  or  less   affectation   of  regret,  they  accept 


♦id 


% 


splendid  houses;  they  worship  great  names.  Now  Juvenal 
only  worships  great  names  under  protest  as  a  means  to  re- 
proach their  unworthy  inheritors:  he  has  a  quite  ferocious 
passion  against  the  pride  of  a  degenerate  noble,  but  his  en- 
thusiasm is  reserved  for  the  plebeian  Decii,  for  the  new  men 
Marius  and  Cicero.  He  is,  again,  the  only  writer  who  is  im- 
placable to  the  emperor  Otho,  who  was  the  hero  of  the  efifem- 
inate  circles  which  Martial  as  well  as  Juvenal  re^-arded  with 
disgust.  Martiar  asked  nothing  better  than  the  ready-made 
epigram  of  the  contrast  between  his  life  and  his  end.  Juvenal 
will  not  hear  of  a  hero  whose  liighest  achievement  was  the 
slaughter  of  Galba,''  who  only  showed  the  constancy  of  a  great 
citizen  by  taking  care  of  his  complexion  to  the  last.  Juvenal, 
again,  is  curiously  indifferent  to  the  great  question  of  suicide, 
which  is  so  prominent  in  Tacitus  and  the  letters  of  Pliny;  he 
does  not  even  condescend  to  sneer  at  the  fashion.     He  does 

not  discuss,  like  Martial,  whether  seeking  death  or  challeng- 
i-*       .    .  ^ 

ing  It  is  not  too  cheap  a  way  of  earning  fame.     Of  course 

the  riddle  of  Otho's  career  is  simple  enough.  He  was  a 
clever,  capable  man,  with  nothing  to  do  in  Rome,  and  there- 
fore ready  iox  mischief:  When  he  had  a  province  to  adminis- 
|ter,  he  did  it  well ;  when  he  had  a  civil  war  to  conduct,  he 
bhowed  as  much  sense  and  rather  more  public  spirit  than 
pould  be  expected  of  him.  Other  nobles  who  had  rather  less 
enterprise  found  an  outlet  for  their  energy  in  the  passionate 
cultivation  of  some  accomplishment.  If  they  happened  to 
take  to  eloquence  or  poetry,  their  ambition  was  respectable, 
but  those  gifts  were  rare.  It  was  commoner  then,  as  now,  for 
a  man  to  have  a  talent  for  singing,  or  driving,  or  fencin"-,  or 
play-acting.  Saleius  Bassus,  or  whoever  it  was  that  wrote  the 
panegyric  on  Piso,  has  quite  as  much  to  say  of  his  distinction 
as  a  chess-player  as  upon  his  industry  as  an  advocate.  Of 
course,  as  slave  labor  left  the  rich  no  employment  in  the  man- 
agement of  their  property  (for  slaves  had  to  be  flogged,  and 
gentlemen  preferred  to  order  .flogging  by  deputy),  accomplish- 
ments took  a  quite  disproportionate  place  in  the  lives  of  men 
whose  own  pride  conspired  with  the  jealousy  of  the  soverei^-n 

1  "  Mart."  VI.  xxxii.  =  "  Juv."  II.  104. 


132 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL. 


"^ZZ 


to  keep  them  back  from  worthy  public  employment.     And 
therefore  it  was  difficult  to  abstain  from  some  public  or  semi- 
public  display.     Even  Thrasea,  the  most  virtuous  and  con- 
sistent politician  of  the  previous  generation,  had  appeared  on 
the  sta^e  of  Pataviuni,  tliough  no  one  was  more  stern  in  re- 
buking   the  appearances    of   Nero   on    the    stage    of  Rome. 
There  were  members  of  Piso's  conspiracy  who  asked  whether 
it  was  worth  while  to  get  rid  of  Nero,  who  sang  to  the  cittern, 
for  Piso,  who  sang  on  the  stage.     Of  course  this  made  it  all 
the  easier  for  men  of  station,  whose  fortunes  were  impaired,  to 
trv  to  make  money  out   of  their   accomplishments  and  their 
names,  and  things  were  not  yet  so  complicated  that  a  prac- 
tised professional  commanded  a  higher  price  than  the  most 
distinguished  amateur.    To  all  this  Juvenal  is  absolutely  irrec- 
oncilable: he  insists  upon  holding  the  nobility  to  their  dig- 
nity, as  some  of  them  insisted  upon  holding  the  emperor  to 
his.     It  never  occurs  to  him  that  his  standard  is  conventional ; 
that  in  the  best  ages  of  Greece  the  best  men  had  contended 
in   the   public   games;  our   boat-races   and   cricket-matches 
would  have  scandalized  him,  and  he  would  have  thought  it 
shocking  that  ladies  should  sing  in  public  even  for  a  charity, 
or  act  as  saleswomen  at  fancy  fairs. 

He  is  more  in  accordance  with  his  age  in  his  harsh  judg- 
ment of  the  delator.     Whoever  held  a  brief  in  a  prosecution 
for  the  crown,  whoever  gave  information  of  a  claim  that  the 
crown  had  upon  property  in  private  hands,  is,  for  Juvenal  as 
for  Pliny  and  Tacitus,  an  enemy  of  the  human  race.     Martial 
is  the  only  writer  who  has  a  good  word  for  Regulus,  who  was 
simply  an  advocate  in  large  practice,  one  department  of  which 
was  enforcing   the  very  elastic   laws   against  disloyalty,  and 
threw  himself  into  this  part  of  his  business  with  the  same  zeal 
as  into  the  rest.     There  almost  seems  to  be  something  per- 
sonal in  Juvenal's  contention  with  Crispinus,  for  he  has,  after 
all,  very  little  to  say  against  him,  except  that  he  was  an  Egyp- 
tian freedman,  who  had  become  offensively  rich,  and  spent  his 
money  in  parading  an  offensive  and  effeminate  elegance,  and 
was  no  doubt  sufficiently  profligate  in  his  private  life;  but 
opinion  did  not  exact  either  temperance  or  chastity  as  neces- 


»u4 


sary  adornments  of  a  leader  of  fashion;  and  there  is  no  tan- 
gible charge  of  robbery  or  oppression.  The  worst  that  is  said 
of  him  is,  that  he  seduced  a  Vestal,  and  gave  fifty  pounds  for 
a  fish,  which  is  mentioned  as  a  proof  that  the  emperor,  his 
patron,  must  have  dined  still  better;  and  then  comes  the  fa- 
mous story  of  the  council  of  the  turbot,  which  tells  us  how  the 
members  of  Domitian's  cabinet  were  convoked  in  hot  haste 
to  the  Alban  Villa,  and  had  to  wait  while  the  emperor  gave 
audience  to  a  fisherman  who  had  brought  him  an  unusually 
Jarge  turbot  from  the  Hadriatic,  and  when  they  were  admitted 
found  they  had  nothing  to  debate  about  except  whether  the 
turbot  was  to  be  minced  or  cooked  in  a  special  dish,  as  there 
jwas  none  large  enough  in  the  imperial  kitchen.  They  de- 
cided, of  course,  upon  the  special  dish,  and  were  dismissed. 
As  no  other  writer  tells  the  story.  Dean  Merivale  suspects  Ju- 
venal of  inventing  it  out  of  the  two  data  that  Domitian  was 
given  to  practical  jokes,  and  that  Vitellius  invented  a  gigantic 
dish.  If  there  is  any  basis  of  fact  beyond  this,  Domitian 
bust  have  summoned  his  council  to  sit  upon  business,  and 
changed  his  mind,  and  decided  to  keep  the  business  to  him- 
self, and,  instead  of  telling  them  so,  to  take  their  advice  upon 
the  turbot.  The  description  of  the  councillors  is  as  racy  as 
possible  :  there  is  Crispinus,  smelling  oi  amomum  in  the  morn- 
pg  stronger  than  any  two  fimerals;  and  the  deadly  Catullus, 
j^who  was  in  love  with  a  girl  he  had  no  eyes  to  see,  and  was  so 
buch  dazzled  by  the  turbot  that  he  turned  to  the  left  to  praise 
it  when  it  lay  on  his  right.  Veiento  (whom  Juvenal  treats 
^'ith  comparative  respect,  for  he  kept  his  place  at  court  under 
Nerva  and  in  the  senate  under  Trajan)  was  quite  as  flattering 
as  Catullus.  Montanus,  who  remembered  the  banquets  of 
Nero,' mov^d  that  a  dish  should  be  made  on  purpose:  appa- 
rently the  rest  of  the  council,  Fuscus  and  Pegasus,  the  prefect 
of  the  city,  and  the  Glabrios,  father  and  son,  the  gentle  elder 
Vibius  Crispus,  and  the  cruel  whisperer  Pompeius,  and  the 
impudent  Publius,  who  plumed  himself  upon  an  offence  with 
which  Domitian  dared  not  reproach  him,  though  he  could  not 
hide  his  nervousness,  left  the  emperor  and  his  turbot  alone. 
It  should  be  added  that  Juvenal  expressly  asserts  the  truth  of 


134 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL, 


135 


his  story.  When  he  invokes  Calliope,  he  bids  her  take  a  seat, 
for  she  will  not  need  to  sing,  as  it  is  all  matter  of  fact,  and 
then  bids  the  maidens  of  Pieria  tell  his  true  tale,  and  hopes 
they  will  tell  it  all  the  better  since  he  calls  them  maids  and 

young.  .  . 

This  satire  is  written  throughout  with  admirable  decision 
and  unity.     The  framework  is  rather  loose,  for  he  goes  off 
from  Crispinus  to  his  master  in  a  way  not  strictly  artistic;  but 
there  is  no  patchwork.     This  is  more  than  can  be  said  of  all 
the  satires,  even  of  the  best.     In  the  third,  for  instance,  the 
passac;e  about  the  fountain  of  Egeria,  though  it  is  quite  up  to 
Juven^al's  level,  is  decidedly  an  interruption.    Umbricius  stops 
outside  the  Porta  Capena  while  his  whole  goods  are  being 
packed  in   one    cart,  and   then  we   naturally  expect   him   to 
make  his  speech  on  the  spot.     By  the  best  accounts,  when 
you  were  outside  the  Porta  Capena  you  were  in  the  valley  of 
Egeria;  and  the  case  is  not  mended  when  we  see  that  the  two 
se'ctions  of  which  the  episode  of  Egeria  is  made  up  do  not  fit 
well   together.     Jahn  transposes  them,  but  either  would   go 
more  smoothly  by  itself.     A  still  stronger  case  is  the  anticli- 
max in  the  second  satire.     Juvenal  has  been  dilating  on  the 
worst  forms  of  effeminacy,  and  winds  up  with  a  formal  mar- 
riage between  two  men  ;  whereupon  he  proceeds:  "  Even  this 
monstrosity  has  been  surpassed  by  Gracchus  with  his  tunic 
and  his  trident."     If  that  were  all  it  might  be  simply  an  ex- 
travagance;   but   we  find   here   the   explanation   of  another 
passage  in    the  eighth   satire  about  the   taste   of  this   same 
Gracclius,  for  disgracing  himself  on  the  arena,  which  is  much 
more  intelligible  when  we  compare  it  with  the  passage  in  the 
second.     There  he  is  taunted  with  his  rank  as  salius;  in  the 
eighth  he  is  taunted  with  his  official  dress.     When  we  put  the 
two  together,  it  looks  very  much  as  if  Juvenal  had  written  a 
more  or  less  fragmentary  satire  against  Gracchus,  and  when 
he  came  to  prepare  his  w'orks  for  publication  put  one  piece  of 
invective  into  the  second  satire  and  another  into  the  eighth. 

The  sixth  satire,  the  longest  of  all,  has  to  be  vigorously  re- 
arranged and  retrenched  by  Ribbeck,  in  order  to  reduce  it  to 
a  coherent  plan.     It  may  be  doubted  whether  his  changes  are 


»4 


improvements:  the  series  of  caricatures,  revolting  or  humor- 
bus  or  disgusting,  has  its  merit  in  the  individual  sketches,  not 
in  their  connection;  their  unity,  such  as  it  is,  comes  from  the 
spleen  of  the  poet.     Here  is  a  sketch,  for  instance,  of  the 
cruelty  of  a  woman  who  fancies  herself  neglected,  or  is  over- 
anxious to  please  her  lover:  "The  book-maid  is  undone;  the 
perfumers  strip  (for  a  Hogging);  the  chairman  is  said  to  have 
come  late,  and  has  to  pay  the  penalty  because  another  was 
sleepy;  the  rods  are  broken  upon  one;  another  is  red  with 
lithe  scourge,  yet  another  with  the  strap.     There  are  ladies  who 
contract  with  the  tormentors  by  the  year.     She  whips,  and  by 
the  way  she  uses  her  face-wash,  she  listens  to  visitors,  or  looks 
pver  her  embroidered  dresses  with  the  Jieavy  gold-lace,  and 
goes  on  beating  ;  she  reads  the  lengthy  entries  in  her  day-book, 
and  goes  on  beating— till  at  last,  when  they  are  tired  of  beat- 
ing, she  thunders  in  a  dreadful  voice,  '  Now  go,'  and  the  court 
is  cleared  for  the  day.     A  major-domo  has  to  be  as  cruel  as 
any  tyrant  in  Sicily.     If  she  has  an  appointment,  and  wishes 
to  be  dressed  more  becomingly  than  usual  in  a  hurry,  as  some 
one  is  waiting  for  her  in  her  garden,  or  more  likely  at  the 
chapel  of  Isis,  where  the  priestess  understands  such  things, 
poor  Psecas  has  to  arrange  her  hair,  while  her  own  is  torn  out 
by  handfuls,  and  her  dress  is  stripped  from  her  breast  and 
shoulders.     *  Why  is  that  curl  too  high.?'  and  presently  the 
cowhide   punishes  the  deadly  f  rime  of  a  bit  of  hair  twisted 
awry.     What  has  Psecas  done  1     What  fault  of  the  girl  is  it  if 
you  don't  like  the  shape  of  your  nose  ?     Then  another  maid 
has  to  stretch  and  comb  the  hair  on  the  left,  and  roll  it  into  a 
ball."     And  here  the  poet  goes  off  into  general  reflections  upon 
the  absurdity  of  a  short  woman  trying  to  make  herself  look 
taller  by  ex'periments  in  hairdressing.      Not,  of  course,  that  she 
dresses  for  her  husband  (we  have  had  this  reflection  before) ; 
her  only  interest  in  him  is  to  quarrel  with  his  friends  and  ser- 
vants, and  to  make  him  pay  for  what  she  takes  to  be  pietv. 
"A  big  priest  of  Cybele  comes  to  tell  her  that  the  hot  winds 
of  autumn  will  do  her  a  mischief,  unless  she  gives  him  a  hun- 
dred eggs  for  a  lustration  and  all  her  old  crimson  gowns,  that 
the  danger  may  fall  upon  them,  and  then  she  will  be  safe  for 


136 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


JUVENAL. 


137 


a  year.  She  will  break  the  ice  in  winter  for  the  sake  of  taking 
her  three  dips  in  the  Tiber,  and  will  crawl  round  the  whole 
Campus  Martins  shivering  on  her  bare  knees.  If  white  lo 
bids  she  will  go  to  the  end  of  Egypt,  and  bring  waters  drawn 
from  hotMeroe  to  sprinkle  upon  the  temple  of  Isis  that  stands 
close  to  the  old  sheepfold  of  Romulus.  For  so  she  thinks  her 
lady  herself  warned  her  with  her  own  voice.  What  a  soul  and 
what  a  mind  for  gods  to  hold  converse  with  in  the  night  1" 
Then  we  have  the  tale  how  she  will  pay  a  priest  of  Isis  to  pro- 
pitiate all  her  faults  and  her  husband's,  and  listen  to  a  Jewess 
who  will  sell  any  dreams  that  she  fancies. 

Then  comes  the  turn  of  the  diviners,  especially  the  Chal- 
d£Ean,  about  whom  Juvenal  is  too  copious  to  be  quite  orderly. 
The  chief  is  one  who  has  been  often  in  exile:  it  was  his  friend- 
ship and  his  tables  (and  who  will  not  pay  to  consult  them  too) 
that  brought  that  great  citizen,^  Otho  was  afraid  of,  to  his  end. 
A  man's  art  is  trusted  if  he  has  been  kept  a  prisoner  in  the 
camp  so  long  that  the  chain  (which  fastened  him  to  the  soldiers 
in  charge)  clanked  on  the  left  wrist  as  well  as  the  right.     No 
mathematician  can  have  a  genius  till  he  has  been  convicted— 
a  true  genius  had  been  almost  undone,  and  was  almost  too 
formidable  to  be  sent  to  a  habitable  island  and  escape  the 
dreariest  of  all.     One  is  rather  puzzled  by  the  fact  that,  of  the 
three  sentences  which  comprise  the  Chaldaean's  qualifications, 
every  one  should  cover  so  much  of  the  ground  of  the  other, 
and  that  the  last  is  superfluous.     We  do  not  want  to  be  told 
that  no  mathematician  who  has  not  been  condemned  can  have 
a  genius,  after  hearing  that  prosecutions  give  reputation.     If 
thts  line  were  the  end  of  a  paragraph  it  might  be  a  summary, 
but  it  is  the  beginning  of  a  sentence  quite  worthy  of  Juvenal. 
It  is  the  same  as  he  goes  on:  we  learn  that  the  questions  a 
woman  asks  are  all  very  heartless,  and  that  a  woman  who  has 
to  ask  is  less  formidable  than  one  who  can  make  her  own  cal- 
culations and  has  clients  of  her  own  ;  and  then  suddenly  we  are 

.  The  -reat  citizen  is  probably  Cornelius  Dolabella,  a  connection  of 
r.alba's  whom  Otho  put  under  arrest  at  Aquinum,  which  accounts  for 
Juvenal's  thinking  of  him.  Under  Vitellius  he  returned  to  Rome  and  was 
put  to  deaths 


•» 


carried  back  to  a  distinction  between  the  sources  of  informa- 
tion open  to  a  rich  woman  and  a  poor.     And  thence  Juvenal 
passes  to  a  new  branch  of  his  subject :  at  any  rate  a  poor  wo- 
man will  take  the  risk  of  being  a  mother  ;  no  rich  woman  will, 
which  is  just  as  well  for  her  husband — his  wife's  children  would 
not  be  his,  although  his  wife  will  probably  provide  him  with 
children  that  are  not  his.     But,  though  she  has  none  of  the 
feelings  of  a  mother,  she  has  all  the  feelings  of  a  step-mother 
to  the  children  of  a  concubine.     If  she  has  children  of  her 
own  she  will  poison  them,  like  Pontia,  for  gain.     The  heroines 
of  fable  who  did  as  much  may  plead  the  passions  of  their  sex 
as  an  excuse  :  it  is  only  in  a  civilized  age  and  country  that  a 
mother  will  sacrifice  her  children  for  filthy  lucre:  as  for  sacri- 
ficing her  husband  to  gain  or  revenge,  there  are  classical  prec- 
edents for  both,  and  both  are  pretty  generally  followed,  only 
the  ancients  had  no  resource  better  than  brutal  violence.     All 
the  passage  analyzed  above,  it  should  be  added,  which  takes 
up  nearly  a  third  of  the  satire,'  begins  with  a  promise  that  we 
are  to  have  an  account  of  a  Roman  lady's  whole  day,  which  is 
quite  forgotten  after  the  first  paragraph  on  the  vindictive  tem- 
per in  which  she  is  apt  to  wake. 

In  general,  construction  is  not  the  strong  point  of  any  of  the 
Latin  satirists,  and  least  of  all  of  Juvenal,  who  is  less  conversa- 
tional in  his  tone  than  either  Horace  or  Persius,  and  keeps 
up  a  grave  tone  of  sarcastic  indignation,  which  almost  requires 
an  orderly,  methodical  treatment  of  the  subject.  Besides,  he 
is  sententious,  and  likes  a  sonorous  aphorism  which  fills  the 
mouth,  and  is  not  above  a  truism.  There  are  a  large  number 
of  lines  belonging  to  this  type:  most  of  them  are  supported 
by  all  the  MSS.,  and  the  editors  have  never  been  able  to  agree 
which  to  gQ.X.  rid  of  and  which  to  keep.  In  extreme  cases  They 
disturb  the  connection  wherever  they  can  be  put,  and  then  the 
MSS.  sometimes  try  more  places  than  one,  and  sometimes 
most  of  them  omit  the  lines  altogether.  It  is  often  a  question 
whether  they  come  from  Juvenal's  own  margin,  or  from  the 
margin  of  his  annotators,  and  whether  they  invented  on  their 
own  account  or  quoted  from  memory.     And,  generally  speak- 

1  474-661. 


138 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


ing,  the  doubtful  lines  would  be  better  away,  unless  we  give 
the  poet  credit  for  wishing  to  work  up  to  a  memorable  maxim, 
which  is  almost  always  edifying  and  seldom  new. 

That  Juvenal  wTote  slowly  we  know,  and  that  he  began  to 
write  late:   it  is   not  surprising  that  his  writing  should  be 
patchy.     What  is  surprising  is  that  the  little  bursts  of  indig- 
nation, of  sarcasm,  should  succeed  each  other  so  smoothly 
and  with  so  much  appearance  of  spontaneous  impetuosity:  as 
if  his  own  boast,  Facit  indignatio  versiim,  were  literally  true. 
Perhaps  for  the  three  or  four  lines,  or  the  six  or  eight,  which 
are  written  at  red-heat,  this  is  true;  but  one  notices  that  in  a 
very  short  space  Juvenal  runs  himself  to  a  standstill,  and  has 
to  begin  again :  he  is  quite  incapable  of  the  long  bursts  of 
Lucan,  who  keeps  up  a  higher  level  of  declamation  for  twenty 
or  fifty  lines  than  Juvenal  can  keep  up  for  half  a  dozen.     Yet 
Juvenal  has  always  been  much  more  popular  than  Lucan,  be- 
cause he  deals  with  lower  motives  and  is  less  earnest,  while 
he  has  been  popular  in  later  times  compared  with  Horace  just 
because  of  his  making  a  greater  show  of  manly  indignation. 
It  is  characteristic  that  both  Persius  and  Horace  are  more  apt 
to  end  their  sentences  in  the  middle  of  a  line,  while  Juvenal 
is  so  used  to  ending  the  sense  and  the  line  together  that  where- 
as one  finds  the  chevilles  at  the  end  of  a  line  in  the  "^neid," 
one  finds  them  at  the  beginning  of  the  line  in  Juvenal,  who 
instinctively  elaborates  the  point  at  the  end  first:  thus,  t'.^., 
he  works  up  rather  feebly  to  the  aphorism— 

Spoliatis  arma  supeisunt  (viii.  124). 

In  another  way  Juvenal  comes  more  closely  into  contact 
with  Vergil  than  any  other  satirist :  he  is  fond  of  parody,  and 
he  hardly  goes  beyond  the  great  school  classic  when  he  wants 
something  to  turn  into  a  jest.  He  parodies  without  any  in- 
tention of  making  his  original  ridiculous,  and  only  wishes  to 
raise  a  laugh  by  describing  his  subject  in  language  that  is  too 
fine  for  it.  He  does  this  consistently,  even  when  he  is  not 
parodying  language  that  has  heroic  associations  of  its  own,  and 
he  is  fond  of  enhancing  the  effect  of  this  by  interpolating  a 
low  word  like  caballus  (which  meant  "nag"  as  distinguished 


SULPICIA. 


139 


iVom  "horse,"  though  "chivalry"  is  derived  from  it)  at  the 
end  of  a  sonorous  passage,  which  is  all  the  more  striking  be- 
cause contemporary  epic  writers  never  dreamed  of  calling  a 
jhorse  cabaiius,  though  they  were  sorely  discontented  with 
\£quus,  which  was  not  nearly  long  enough  or  sonorous  enouo-h 
for  them.  .  ^ 

SULPICIA. 

^  Sulpicia  was  a  voluminous  authoress,  at  any  rate  a  versa- 
tile one;  but  the  only  record  of  her  activity  is  a  dull  and  pre- 
tentious protest  against  the  banishment  of  the  philosophers  by 
Domitian  in  94  a.d.  ii  it  is  genuine,  it  is  a  curious  proof  that 
It  was  possible  then,  as  now,  for  a  clever  lady  who  wrote  very 
badly  to  acquire  a  literary  position  by  the  help  of  her  charms 
as  a  leader  of  society.  There  are  only  seventv  lines  of  it  in 
all,  and  eleven  are  devoted  to  explaining  to  the  muse  whom 
the  authoress  piously  invokes  that  she  wishes  to  write  in  hex- 
ameters, not  in  hendecasyllables  or  iambics  or  elegiacs.  So 
far  as  the  poem  has  a  plan  or  a  subject,  it  is  to  quote  the  au- 
1.hority  of  the  elder  Cato,  who  once  told  the  younger  Scipio  a 
iable  about  wasps  and  bees,  the  point  of  which  cannot  be  ex- 
tracted from  Sulpicia's  grandiloquence,  to  the  effect  that  Rome 
throve  best  in  adversity.  The  application  of  this  is,  that 
Rome  will  be  ruined  in  the  midst  of  apparent  prosperity  by 
the  expulsion  of  the  philosophers— for  courage  in  war  and  wis- 
dom in  peace  have  been  her  strength  hitherto,  and  she  owes 
her  wisdom  to  the  philosophers  who  came  from  Greece  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  world  to  be  her  teachers.  It  is  much  to  be 
feared  that  when  they  are  gone  the  Romans  will  be  reduced 
to  live  upon  acorns  and  spring-water.  There  is  an  astonish- 
ingly bold  and  clumsy  jest  at  the  reigning  emperor,  who  is 
charged  with  being  pale  with  gluttony  and  heavinir  a  flillino- 
pauncli.  Under  these  distressing  circumstances  the  poetess 
prays  that  Calenus  may  have  grace  to  emigrate,  like  the  Smyr- 

^  »  There  was  a  Greek  proverb  about  a  man  who  f^ll  ohK  utto  Sokov  aW 
ctrr'  oi^ot;— falling,  not  off  a  beam,  but  off  an  ass,  or  out  of  his  mind,  otto 
mv,  which  would  be  pronounced  the  srmie  way.  Tlie  pun  is  poor,  but  Sul- 
picia rei)roduces  the  pun  as  well  as  she  can  :  the  tyrant  falls,  not  from  a 
beam,  but  from  his  back— at  least  h'is  paunch  does. 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 
140 

niotes  when  the  Lydians  took  the  town,  or  at  any  rate  that 
everything  may  be  overruled  for  the  best  for  Rome,  and  for 
Calenus's  Sabine  farm.  The  muse  reassures  her,  vengeance 
will  overtake  the  tyrant.  There  are  two  or  three  good  hnes 
towards  the  end  which  Sulpicia's  admirers  m>ght  conscien- 
tiously praise,  though  even  in  these  there  is  a  vagueness  which 
reminds  us  that  we  are  reading  an  amateur. 


\ 


PART  VI. 

PROSE     LITERATURE     FROM    VESPASIAN    TO    HA- 
DRIAN. 


CHAPTER   I. 
PLINY  THE  ELDER. 

The  death  of  Nero  marks  a  more  important  epoch  in  Latin 
literature  than  the  death  of  Augustus;  for  the  public  to  which 
writers  addressed  themselves  underwent  a  thorough  change. 
In  the  reign  of  Nero  the  public  consisted  of  two  classes— the 
fashionable  and  frivolous  amateurs  whom  Persius  ridicules, 
and  the  serious  students,  who  were  always  risking  a  collision 
with  authority  in  the  pursuit  of  rhetorical  or  political  or  philo- 
sophical or  historical  reputation.  Discreet,  sensible  persons 
went  about  their  business  and  made  their  way  by  fair  means 
or  foul,  but  in  neither  case  wrote ;  for  "  glory  "  was  to  be  won, 
if  at  all,  by  means  they  despised  or  disapproved.  With  the 
accession  of  Vespasian  this  class  of  men  came  into  literature. 
The  court  favorites,  who  had  dazzled  the  town  generally  by 
their  expenditure  and  sometimes  by  their  wit,  had  disappeared 
with  Vitellius,  and  did  not  reappear  even  under  Domitian, 
whose  magnificence  was  less  uncalculating  than  Nero's,  and 
unlikely  to  disturb  the  finances,  but  that  he  had  to  conciliate 
the  soldiery  as  well  as  the  populace.  It  is  probable  that 
Seneca's  was  nearly  the  last  of  the  monstrous  fortunes  which 
made  it  possible  for  a  large  pppulation  of  idlers  to  live  the  life 
of  parasites  in  tolerable  comfort.  We  find  that  Seneca  was 
reduced  to  very  risky  investments  :  for  when  he  tried  to  call 
his  capital  in  which  he  had  lent  in  Britain,  the  story  goes  that 


142 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


PLINY  THE  ELDER. 


143 


this  was  enough  to  excite  a  revolt:  and  it  would,  of  course, 
check  accumulation  if  there  were  no  convenient  means  for  in- 
vestment.    Distant  properties  can  never  have  been  very  pro- 
ductive to  nobles  who  lived  in  Italy;  they  must  have  been 
exposed  to  the  same  drawbacks  as  Jamaica  properties,  doubled 
by  the  worse  state  of  communications ;  and  a  millionaire  of 
Martial's  age  probably  reckoned  his  fortune  by  what  his  whole 
assets   would    bring,  if  he   could   have   found  a  purchaser, 
though,  if  compelled  to  realize  at  a  moment's  notice,  the  total 
might  have  been  an  insignificant  percentage  of  the  estimated 
value.     It  is  true  that  the  system  of  recitations  continued,  but 
they  were  felt  to  be  a  weariness  by  all  who  were  less  good- 
natured  than  the  younger  Pliny,  who  found  reason  repeatedly 
to  rebuke  his  contemporaries  for  showing  too  plainly  that  they 
were  not  interested  in  what  was  well-intended  for  their  enter- 
tainment.    All  the  great  books  of  the  Claudian  period  were 
written  to  be  recited,  or  to  please  a  taste  formed  by  the  habit 
of  recitation  :  all  the  great  books  of  the  period  which  followed 
were  written,  more  or  less,  to  be  read,  with  the  exception  of  the 
"  Thebaid  "  of  Statins.     Even  the  "  Punica  "  of  Silius  Italicus 
was  written  in  the  main  to  be  read,  for  Pliny  tells  us  that  it 
was  only  now  and  then  that  he  recited,  to  see  what  people 
thought  of  him  ;  and  Silius  Italicus,  though  an  estimable,  was 
not  an  influential,  author.     Pliny  the  Younger  himself  was  only 
a  quasi-success  as  an  orator,  and  it  was  as  an  orator  and  a  poet 
that  he  recited.     His  real  success  was  as  a  letter-writer,  for 
down  to  the  fourth  and  fifth  century  he  was  imitated  by  ac- 
complished nobles.     Quinctilian,  of  course,  had  been  a  cele- 
brated declaimer,  and  had  even  done  something  as  a  pleader; 
but  his  great  work  that  he  is  remembered  by  is  the  elaborate 
treatise  which  he  composed  when  he  had  retired  from  teach- 
ing.    Pliny's  vast  compilation  was  avowedly  intended  for  a 
book  of  reference  ;  he  did  not  expect  even  to  be  read  through, 
and  drew  up  a  table  of  contents  for  the  use  of  his  readers, 
that  each  might  find  what  he  wanted.     This  is  characteristic : 
he  was  a  practical  man  writing  for  practical  men;  and  this  is 
the  rule  with  all  the  leading  writers  in  prose  of  the  age.     Even 
Tacitus,  wilful  and  poetical  as  he  is,  makes  up  his  mind  at  once 


»i 


that  no  one  will  care  to  recall  any  details  that  had  been  re- 
corded by  earlier  writers.  He  intends  his  narrative  to  be 
complete  in  essentials,  but  all  details  are  introduced  either 
because  they  are  disputed,  or  because  they  are  original. 

Of  this  practical  literature  Pliny  the  Elder  was  the  morning 
star;  he  was  also  one  of  the  most  astounding  monuments  of 
human  industry;  it  cannot  be  added  that  he  was  one  of  the 
most  encouraging.  He  was  born  a.d.  23.  He  seems  to  have 
belonged  to  the  famous  city  of  Catullus  by  right  of  extraction, 
and  to  the  new  city  of  Como  by  right  of  domicile.  The 
MSS.  of  his  works  call  him  Veronensis:  his  nephew,  himself 
a  citizen  of  Novum  Coinum,  treats  his  uncle  as  a  fellow-towns- 
man. He  himself  claims  Catullus  as  a  countryman,  r^/z/trrrtr- 
rnms ;  which,  if  it  stood  alone,  might  be  satisfied  by  a  belief 
that  both  were  Tra7ispadani^  natives  of  the  regio'n  beyond 
the  Po. 

In  early  life  he  served  as  prefect  of  one  of  the  two  squad- 
rons of  cavalry  attached  to  a  legion  in  Germany,  and  wrote  a 
book  on  throwing  the  dart  on  horseback,  which  proves  that 
when  young  he  still  found  time  for  wholesome  exercise.     He 
began  a  work  on  the  German  wars,  which  probably  exercised 
him  most  during  the  reign  of  Nero;  there  were  twenty-one 
books  of  it,  and  he  set  about  it  because  Drusus,  the  brother 
of  Tiberius,  who  had  pushed  the  Roman  arms  fiirthest  into 
Germany,  appeared  to  him  in  a  dream  and  set  him  the  task, 
which  shows  that  his  sleep  was  broken,  because  he  never  al- 
lowed himself  time  to  digest  his  food.     On  his  return  to  Rome, 
he  thought  the  time  had  come  for  him,  according  to  the  ordi- 
nary routine,  to  entertain  ambition   to  distinguish  himself  in 
other  than  a  military  way  :  he  began  to  train  himself  to  ora- 
tory.    The  only  result  was  three  books  of  "Studies,"  which 
were  so  long  that  each  made  two  rolls  or  volumes;  they  con- 
tained a  complete  essay  on  rhetorical  training,  taking  the  in- 
f^mt  orator  in  his  cradle  and  conducting  him  to  the  end  of  his 
career.     Still  his  general  force  of  character  was  enough  to 
secure  him  an  appointment  as  imperial  procurator  in  Spain, 
which  was  high  promotion  for  a  man  who  did  not  belong  to 
a  senatorial  family.     This  was'  in  the  latter  years  of  NerOf 


ii 


^,,  LATIN  LITERATURE. 

144 

when  it  was  perilous  to  write  upon  exciting  subjects  :  so  Pliny 
had  to  compose  eight  books  on  doubtful  points  of  style, 
^fter  Nero's  death  he  was  in  high  office  under  Vespasian 
and  Titus,  till  his  own  death,  when  he  took  advantage  of  his 
station  as  admiral  of  the  Campanian  fleet  to  inspect  an  erup- 
tion of  Vesuvius  more  closely  than  was  prudent.  It  seems 
that  he  was  also  anxious  to  take  off  fugitives  in  distress. 
After  the  death  of  Nero  he  wrote  a  continuation  of  Aufidius 
Bassus  in  thirty-one  books  (which  must  be  the  work  that 
Tacitus  quotes  for  the  reign  ot  Nero),  and  the  vast  compila- 
tion of  natural  history  which  has  reached  us  in  thirty-seven 
books.  Besides  these,  he  had  left  his  nephew  160  rolls  of 
choice  extracts  written  inside  and  out  in  the  smallest  of  hands, 
so  valuable  that,  long  before  the  collection  was  complete,  he 
had  been  offered  between  3000/.  and  4000/.  sterling  for  it. 

All  this  was  accomplished  by  the  rule  of  never  losing  a 
moment.     He  had  his  official  business  to  attend  to,  which  took 
up  a  long  morning.     He  had  his  audience  with  Vespasian 
before  daylight,  then  set  to  work  at  the  orders  he  had  re- 
ceived.    When  he  got  home  he  went  to  his  books,  had  a  very 
licrht  breakfast,  and,  if  time  could  be  spared,  lay  and  sunned 
hhiiself  while  some  one  read  to  him  and  he  took  notes.     Then 
came  a  cold  bath,  a  lighter  luncheon,  a  very  short  siesta, 
which  left  him  fresh  to  study  till  dinner.     During  dinner  he 
was  read  to,  very  fast,  and  took  notes,  and  was  quite  shocked 
at  the  idea  that  anybody  could  stop  the  reader  and  lose  ten 
lines  to  correct  a  mispronunciation  that  did  not  lead  to  a 
misunderstanding.     He   never   sat  till  dark  in  summer;  in 
winter  he  always  rose  from  table  before  the  first  hour  of  night 
was  gone— say  before  five.     Whenever  he  could  get  away  for 
a  hoHdav,  he  gave  all  the  time  to  study  when  he  was  not  in  his 
bath;  and  even  then,  though  he  could  not  go  very  deep,  he 
would  always  be  read  to  or  dictate  while  in  the  hands  of  the 
shampooer.     When  he  was  travelling  he  always  used  to  dic- 
tate ;  he  had  nothing  else  to-  do,  and  kept  a  secretary,  who 
wore  warm  gloves  in  winter,  at  his  elbow  that  he  might  not  be 
interrupted  by  weather.     For  the  same  reason  he  also  used 
a  litter  in  Rome,  that  he  might  be  reading  or  writing  while 


PLINY  THE  ELDER. 


145 


i 

4 


he  w^ent  through  the  streets,  and  reproached  his  nephew  for 
the  time  he  wasted  in  walking.  He  always  began  to  work 
by  candle-light,  long  before  day  on  August  21,  and  in  winter 
he  used  to  begin  before  the  night  was  two  parts  over,  often 
before  it  was  half  over.  This,  his  nephew  implies,  was  less 
wonderful,  because  he  could  always  go  to  sleep  when  he 
pleased,  and  occasionally  went  to  sleep  over  his  books.  He 
was  only  fifty-six  when  he  died,  and  there  is  no  sign  of  ex- 
haustion in  the  enormous  compilation  that  has  reached  us. 

It  is  not  to  be  tried,  of  course,  by  a  critical  standard.     It  is 
useless  to  ask  if  the  writer  has  understood  his  authorities, 
reproduced  them  accurately,  or  whether  he  has  tested  their 
statements.     He  is  not  credulous,  because  he  repeats  impos- 
sible stories  without  discussion.     He  is  only  ignorant  of  the 
exact  boundaries  of  experience :   he   does   not   suppose,  as 
Herodotus,  for  instance,  does,  that  everything  very  unfami'liar 
is  incredible,  or  at  least  requires  unusual  attestation  ;  where- 
upon Herodotus  sets  aside  the  possibility  of  the  Nile  being 
swollen  by  melting  snows  under  the  tropics.     Pliny  puts  down 
all  surprising  facts  which  he  has  gathered  out  of  tolerable 
books  together.     His  real  weakness  is,  that  he  is  almost  en- 
tirely dependent  upon  books,  to  which  he  gave  every  moment 
of  his  leisure  with  the  most  generous  devotion.     He  was  fond 
of  saying  no  book  was  so  bad  as  not  to  have  something  worth 
reading  and  extracting.     And  most  of  the  books  he  was  de- 
pendent on  for  his  purposes  were  collections  of  travellers' 
tales.     It  is  true  that  he  used  Aristotle  and  Theophrastus, 
and  they  used  travellers'  tales  intelligently.     They  would  have 
been  of  immense  use  to  anybody  in  a  condition  to  investigate 
for  himself  any  of  the  subjects  which  they  touched  more  or 
less  directly;  but  Pliny  did  not  wish  to  investigate,  so  much 
as  to  inform  himself  of  what  was  already  supposed  to  be 
known.     He  was  a  wonderfully  well-informed  man,  who  took 
the  pains,  which  few  well-informed  men  do,  to  communicate 
his  information  in  the  state  in  which  he  had  it.     In  spite  of 
the  progress  of  science,  if  any  man  without  personal  experi- 
ence of  investigation  were  to  undertake  to  make  a  digest  of 
his  notes  fi'om  all  old  naturali^sts  not  yet  superseded,  and  all 

IL-7 


II 


I 


in 


146 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


PLINY  THE  ELDER. 


the  transactions  of  learned  societies,  the  result  would  be  very 
grotesque  two  thousand  years  hence. 

Another  weakness  of  Pliny  is,  that  he  is  not  exactly  pessi- 
mist but  splenetic.  His  feeling  that  the  conditions  of  human 
life  are  hard  is  decidedly  too  strong  for  his  reverence  for  any 
power  that  may  have  fixed  them.  It  cannot  be  said  that  in 
the  wide  field  of  nature  or  civilization  he  finds  anything  that  he 
thinks  worthy  of  genuine,  hearty  enthusiasm.  He  found,  as 
the  Yorkshire  Cistercians  found,  that  enthusiasm  comes  more 
easily  to  people  who  do  not  work  at  high  pressure  all  their 
lives  ;  that  a  sense  of  the  pathetic  and  the  sublime  comes  most 
easily  to  those  who  take  their  own  life  easily.  He  is  not 
bitter,  as  Tacitus  is,  but  he  is  always  grumbling,  in  the  tone 
of  an  over- tasked  man  of  business,  over  such  topics  as  this — 
that  we  all  of  us  scream  when  we  are  born,  and  that  the  most 
precocious  child  does  not  laugh  till  it  is  forty  days  old.  There 
is  a  sort  of  solemnity,  perhaps  even  pathos,  about  his  com- 
plaints, but  he  is  much  more  in  earnest  when  he  is  declaim- 
ing against  extravagant  expenditure  than  when  he  is  denounc- 
ing idolatry. 

"It  is  absurd,  a  proof  of  human  infirmity,  to  try  to  imagine 
the  shape  and  likeness  of  God.     Whoever  he  be,  if  he  be  other 
(than  the  sun)  or  wheresoever  he  be,  he  is  all  feeling,  all  sight, 
all  hearing,  the  fulness  of  life,  of  spirit,  of  himself.     To  be- 
lieve in  gods  without  number,  fashioned  even  of  virtues  and 
vices  of  men,  as  Chastity,  Concord,  Mind,  Hope,  Honor,  Clem- 
ency, Faith,  or  in  two  at  all  (for  Democritus  thought  Mercy 
and  Judgment  enough),  is  only  double  dulness.     Our  frail 
and  troublesome  mortality  has  made  all  these  partitions,  re- 
membering its  own  infirmity,  that  each  might  worship  piece- 
meal as  his  need  required.     So  we  find  different  names  in 
different  nations,  and  deities  innumerable  in  each ;  and  the 
powers  below  after  their  kind,  and  diseases,  and  many  plagues 
withal,  since  we  desire  to  appease  them  in  our  great  dismay. 
So  even  by  public  decree  Fever  has  her  temple  on  the  Pala- 
tine, and  the  Childless  by  the  shrine  of  the  A?/r^,  and  111  Fort- 
une her  altars  on  the  Esquiline.     So  we  come  to  see  how  the 
heavens  are  more  populous  than  the  earth,  since  every  single 


147 


mortal  coins  a  Juno  or  a  genius  of  his  own.  Some  nations, 
moreover,  number  animals,  even  such  as  are  abominable' 
among  gods,  and  many  other  things  yet  more  shameful  to 
speak  of,  since  they  swear  even  by  stinking  victual.*  The 
creed  that  there  are  marriages  of  gods,  and  all  this  while  no 
births  among  them;  that  some  are  always  aged  and  hoary, 
some  young  and  boyish;  that  some  are  swarthy  and  some 
winged,  some  lame,  some  hatched  from  an  ^gg,  and  live  and 
die  by  turns,  is  merely  nonsense  fit  for  children.  But  it 
passes  all  impudence  to  feign  adulterers  among  them,  and 
quarrels  and  strife,  and  deities  for  theft  and  crime. 

"  For  a  mortal  to  help  a  mortal,  that  is  God,  and  the  way 
to  everlasting  glory.=  The  chiefs  of  Rome  have  gone  thereby ; 
the  greatest  ruler  of  all  time,  Vespasianus  Augustus,  with  his 
children,  walketh  therein  to  this  day,  with  the  steps  of  an  im- 
mortal succoring  the  weary  withal.  This  is  the  oldest  way  of 
rendering  thanks  to  good  desert,  to  number  such  among  the 
gods.  Forsooth,  the  names  of  all  other  gods,  and  the  sttrs  I 
named  above,  are  begotten  out  of  the  worth  of  man. 

"That  they  are  called  Jove  and  Mercury  and  other  names 
elsewhere,  and  that  this  serves  for  the  vocabulary  of  astronomy, 
is  plain  :  these  names  are  coined  for  a  key  to  nature.  But  the 
most  highest,  whatsoever  it  be,  can  never  be  so  ridiculous  as 
to  care  for  the  affairs  of  men.  How  are  we  to  doubt  or  be- 
lieve that  such  a  sorry,  complicated  ministry  does  not  profane 
his  majesty?  Hardly  can  we  reach  to  judge  which  answer 
IS  most  profitable  to  the  race  of  men,  since  some  have  no  re- 
spect to  the  gods,  and  some  have  such  respect  as  is  a  shame.^'* 
^  One  cannot  mistake  the  vigor  of  this;  incoherent  as  it  is, 
it  anticipates  very  nearly  all  that  the  Christians  were  to  say 
against  paganism,  or  the  positivists  against  all  traditional  re- 
ligions. The  wanton  will-worship  of  the  followers  of  Isis  and 
other  strange  gods  disgusted  Pliny's  good  sense,just  as  much 
as  contemporary  scepticism  alarmed  his  prudence.     His  idea 

^  Such  as  garlic  and  leeks. 

'  The  Buddhists  had  reached  this  point  some  centuries  before,  whenever 
tlK!  Jatakas  were  written. 
■'  Pliny,  II.  V.  (vii.)  1-6. 


\ 


148 


LA  TIN  UTERA  TURE. 


PLINY  TLIE  ELDER. 


149 


of  a  freethinker  was  a  man  who  would  swear  falsely  by  Jove  in 
the  temple  of  the  Thunderer.     There  is  plenty  of  grim  acute- 
ness  in  the  description  of  Fortune,  the  personification  of  men's 
own  perplexity.     They  cannot  decide  whether  the  gods  rule 
their  lot  or  no,  and  cannot  be  content  with  intelligible  finite 
causes,  and  so  they  ascribe  everything  to  an  abstraction  which 
relieves  them  of  responsibility.     Others  again  ascribe  every- 
thing to  climates  or  planets,  with  which   Pliny  returns  to  as- 
tronomy, the  subject  from  which  he  set  out.     For  all  his  the- 
ological speculations  start  with  the  observation  that  the  sun, 
the  midmost  and  most  powerful  of  the  planets,  is  plainly  the 
ruler  of  the  world,  and  the  source  of  life  within  it.     On  the 
way,  he  lays  down  that  it  would  be  well,  if  possible,  to  believe 
in  the  providence  of  the  gods,  but  that  we  may  console  our- 
selves for  our  own  imperfections  by  the  belief  that  the  gods 
share   them.     The  gods,  like  us,  have  limited  powers:  they 
cannot  give  us  immortality,  they  cannot  change  the  past;  to 
put  it  seriously,  they  cannot  deprive  a  magistrate  of  his  hon- 
ors; to  put  it  playfully,  they  cannot  alter  the  rules  of  arith- 
metic.    Moreover,  they  are  condemned  to  immortality:  they 
cannot  die  at  will  like  men,  which  is  our  greatest  privilege. 
Again,  the  death  of  falling  stars  does  not  necessarily  involve 
ours.     A  falling  star  dies  of  having  absorbed  too  much  oil. 
The  technicalities  of  descriptive  astronomy  are  seldom  inter- 
esting, and  Pliny  does  not  make  them  so.     The  periods  of 
Mars\nd  Venus  are  inaccurate,  even  in  terms  of  the  geocentric 
system.     Pliny  assigns  two  years,  more  or  less,  to  Mars:  the 
proper  term  is  twenty  months  fifteen  days.     The  term  he  as- 
signs to  Venus  is  348  days:  it  should  be  225.     It  is  charac- 
teristic that  the  most  interesting  astronomical  phenomenon,  in 
the  judgment  of  Pliny,  is  to  be  found  in  the  eclipses  of  the  sun 
and  moon  ;  whence  he  infers  that  the  moon  is  at  least  as  large 
as  the  earth,  since  she  is  able  to  hide  the  whole  of  the  sun, 
though  he  knows  that  the  sun  is  not  hidden  from  the  whole 
of  the  earth.     Pliny  is  very  much  impressed  by  the  fact  that 
the   conical   shadow  of  earth    which  we  call  night  does  not 
extend  beyond  the  moon.     The  wisdom  of  astronomers  who 
unravel  the  mysteries  of  nature  almost  stupefies  him. 


14 


He  recovers  his  self-possession  when  he  comes  back  again 
to  Earth,  to  whom  he  has  a  real  fetichistic  devotion.  We  call 
her  our  mother,  and  do  well,  because  of  her  great  benefits; 
she  nurses  all  our  life,  and  takes  us  back  to  her  lap  when  we 
die.  She  alone  is  so  merciful  that  we  never  call  down  her 
wrath  on  her  enemies  until  they  are  nothing.  The  evil  of 
beasts  that  live  upon  her  is  no  fault  of  hers;  the  breath  of 
their  life  is  tainted:  such  as  it  is,  it  is  her  portion  to  foster  it. 
As  for  poisons,  they  are  proofs  of  true  tenderness,  that  we 
might  end  a  weary  life  without  unseemly  violence.  If  we 
abuse  them  for  purposes  of  murder,  that  is  our  fault:  just 
as  it  is  our  fault  to  abuse  iron  for  purposes  of  destruction. 
And  how  patient  Mother  Earth  is  with  us  when  we  dive 
into  her  bowels  for  gain  !  True,  we  pay  her  debt  to  her 
perforce.  We  seek  wealth  in  her,  and  it  turns  to  bloodshed ; 
and  at  last  we  cover  the  wounds  we  have  made  with  our  un- 
buried  bones;  and  in  her  great  compassion  she  covers  these 
at  last.' 

After  this  outbreak  of  feeling,  Pliny  comes  back  to  his  note- 
books: first  of  all,  he  has  to  describe  the  terrestrial  slobe, 
and  explain  that  it  really  is  a  globe,  in  spite  of  mountains  and 
seas  and  plains.     The  difiiculty  about  mountains  is  not  seri- 
ous: he  is  reassured  by  the  belief  that    Pelion,  the   highest 
mountain,  as  he  supposed,  which  Dicasarchus"  had  surveyed, 
was  only  twelve  hundred  odd  paces  in  perpendicular  height. 
But  he  obviously  more  than  half  imagined  that  the  earth  is 
practically  a  polyhedron,  every  sea  and  plain  being  a  mathe- 
matical flat.     He  knows  that  the  ocean  must  have  a  properly 
spherical  surface  like  a  drop  of  water.     He  remembers,  if  he 
iails  to  reproduce,  a  Greek  argument  which  had  once  convinced 
him,  to  the  effect  that  if  sheets  of  water  had  not  a  spherical 
surface  they  would  be  deepest  closest  in  shore.     At  this  point 
comes  a  curious  disquisition  about  earthquakes,  which  are  due 
to  the  outbursts  of  a  subterranean  wind:  whence  it  very  nat- 
urally follows  that  buildings  which  have  vaulted  substructures 
suffer  less,  because  the  apertures  of  the  vaults  offer  a  safety- 
valve  for  the  air.     Another  curious  point  on  which  he  expends 
M^liny.ir.lviii.  '  Mb.  II.  lxv.2. 


II 

hi 


I 


150 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


PLINY   THE  ELDER, 


151 


much  ingenuity  is  the  antipodes:  for  then,  as  now,  they  puz- 
zled the  popular  imagination,  which  was  induced  to  take  refuge 
in  the  conceit  that  the  earth  was  like  a  pine-apple.  If  so,  of 
course  no  one  would  have  his  heads  downwards  in  the  abso- 
lute sense,  because  this  could  only  happen  in  the  southern  frigid 
zone,  which  was  uninhabitable  any  way.  The  difficulty,  that  at 
this  rate  no  one  would  really  stand  upriglit,  does  not  seem  to 
have  occurred  to  Pliny  ;  but  on  the  main  question  he  grasps  the 
true  principle  that  "  down  "  practically  means  towards  the  cen- 
tre of  the  earth.  How  the  earth  keeps  its  place,  with  air  all 
round  and  nothing  but  ether  beyond,  is  a  more  puzzling  ques- 
tion. Pliny  wavers  between  the  notion  that  the  earth  does 
not  fall  because  there  is  no  room,  since  each  of  the  elements 
fills  its  appropriate  region,  and  the  notion  that  the  earth,  being 
in  the  centre  to  which  all  things  fall,  cannot  possibly  fall  in 
any  direction. 

It  is  curious  that,  though  Pliny  records  several  observations' 
of  the  noonday  shadow  which  must  have  been  taken  well 
within  the  tropics,  to  say  nothing  of  more  than  one  alleged 
circumnavigation  of  Africa,  he  is  still  in  bondage  to  the  con- 
vention of  the  uninhabitable  tropic  zones  which  rested  on  noth- 
ing but  the  barrenness  of  the  Sahara.  This  serves  for  a  peg  for 
much  splenetic  declamation  on  the  littleness  of  the  world, 
which  rebukes  the  puny  ambition  of  conquerors.  The  greater 
part  of  the  globe  is  ocean:  three-fifths  of  it  (the  frigid  and  tor- 
rid zones)  are  uninhabitable  by  reason  of  the  heaven,  much  is 
barren  mountains,  sand,  and  marsh,  and  forest;  and  no  conquer- 
or has  ever  been  master  of  the  rest.  Then,  leaving  these  gen- 
eral reflections,  Pliny  turns  through  three  or  four  books  to  give 
a  gazetteer  of  the  world,  which  of  course  turns  to  a  catalogue 
of  tribes  for  the  large  regions  that  were  untrodden  by  scien- 
tific travellers.  This  is  a  little  unlucky,  as  after  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  earth  he  proceeds  to  a  description  of  its  organic 
and  inorganic  products,  beginning  with  man;  so  that  we  have 
a  course  of  ethnology  of  a  kind,  which  is  followed  at  once  by 
a  course  of  physiology  of  a  kind.  He  begins  with  all  kinds 
of  anecdotes  of  curious  births,  in  which  Aristotle  and  Varro 

1  II.  Ixxv.  (Ixxiii.). 


figure  side  by  side;  goes  on  to  all  the  family  names  which 
imply  some  accident  at  the  time  of  birth— as,  for  instance, 
when  one  of  twins  was  reared  it  was  named  Vopiscus.  There 
is  an  equally  copious  supply  of  anecdotes  of  longevity,  some 
of  which  have  a  less  apocryphal  look  than  the  legends  of  Old 
Parr  and  Old  Jenkins.  But  the  main  staple  of  the  natural 
history  of  man  is  a  series  of  stories  of  who  was  the  first  to  do 
this  or  that,  interspersed  with  general  reflections  on  the 
fortune'  of  Augustus,  whom  he  will  not  allow  to  be  fortu- 
nate. In  all  this  part  of  his  work  Pliny  gives  us  the  effect  of 
a  survival  of  Seneca.  His  conceit  on  Sulla's  arrogance  is 
just  in  Seneca's  manner  when  Seneca  is  least  earnest.  How 
could  he  dare  surname  himself  Happy,'  which  no  one  else 
dared  to  do?  Why,  every  one  of  his  victims  was  less  unhappy, 
for  we  pity  them,  and  every  one  hates  Sulla.  There  is  a  lit- 
tle treatise  on  diseases  (and  Pliny  ventures  a  hint^'  that  the 
philosophy  which  disposes  to  suicide  is  a  disease  like  the  rest), 
but  all  the  account  of  the  treatment  of  diseases  is  postponed 
till  after  the  account  of  herbs  and  minerals. 

The  seventh  book  disposes  of  the  natural  history  of  man, 
and  ends  abruptly  with  an  account  of  the  first  water-clock  at 
Rome.  Then  come  four  books  of  zoology,  beginning  with 
terrestrial  animals,  and  going  on  to  aquatic  and  aerial.  The 
terrestrial  begin  with  the  elephant,  as  the  largest  and  most 
sagacious,  and  end  with  a  story  of  some  serpents  in  Syria,  on 
the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  who  never  attack  Syrians  when 
asleep,  and  whose  bite  is  harmless  to  a  Syrian,  even  if  they 
are  trampled  on — for  which  reason  the  Syrians  never  kill 
them — though  to  strangers  they  are  peculiarly  deadly.  Lions 
and  tigers  come  after  elephants,  and  dogs  and  horses  come 
together  because  they  are  domestic  animals.  One  hears  of 
mules  in  Cappadocia  which  are  fertile,  but  then  they  belong  to 
a  peculiar  breed  (they  were  probably  wild  asses),  and  that,  if 
mules  are  given  to  kicking,  they  can  be  cured  by  dosing  them 
with  wine.  The  root  of  the  dog-rose,  we  find,  is  a  cure  for  a 
dog's  bite,  as  has  lately  been  revealed  by  an  oracle  :  another 


»  Pliny, «' Hist.  Nat."  VII.  xlvi. 

3  lb.  Vll.  li.  2. 


«  lb.  VII.  xliv. 


i'-^ 


152 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


specific  is  a  hair  of  the  dog  in  a  more  elaborate  form.     The 
Indian  mastiffs,  Pliny  is  quite  willing  to  believe,  are  bred  be- 
tween tigers  and  dogs,  and  the  first  two  broods  are  too  ferocious 
to  rear.     This  is  reinforced  with  a  tale  of  how  the  Britons 
bred  their  dogs  from  wolves;  but  Pliny   draws  the  line  at 
werewolves,  and  is  quite  convinced  that,  if  we  believe  in  them, 
we  may  believe   in  everything.     The  version  of  the  legend 
which  he  knew  was  to  the  effect  that,  if  a  man  has  once 
turned  into  a  wolf,  his  only  chance  of  turning  back  into  a  man 
is  to  abstain  from  human  flesh  nine  years.     In  that  case  he 
will  find  his  clothes,  which  he  left  in  the  open  air  on  his  trans- 
formation, still  fresh,  but  he  himself  will  be  ten  years  older. 
Pliny  somewhat  disparages  his  philosophy  by  undertaking  to 
explain  the  origin  of  this  grotesque  and  widespread  belief 
For,  instead  of  an  explanation,  he  simply  gives  what  he  takes 
for  the  oldest  case  of  it— a  certain  Parrhasius,  an  Arcadian, 
who  at  the  altar  of  Lyca^an  Jove  had  the  misfortune  to  taste 
the  human  entrail  which  always  was  chopped  up  among  the 
rest,  and  turned  into  a  wolf,  to  resume  his  human  shape  after 
nine   years,  and   to   contend   successfully  at   the   Olympian 
games.    Pliny  is  quite  willing  to  believe  that,  though  men  can- 
not turn  into  wolves,  dogs  are  liable  to  be  plagued  by  fauns ; 
and  he  even  knows  that  puppies  of  the  first  litter  are  most 
exposed  to  the  plague.     Fauns,  in  his  mythology,  are  imps 
that  jump  on  more  substantial  creatures,  and  make  them  start, 
whence  it  is  an  easy  inference  that  when  a  puppy  starts  with- 
out reason  it  has  seen  a  faun. 

Sheep  and  oxen  naturally  follow  dogs  and  horses  as  domes- 
tic animals;  and  according  to  Pliny's  method  it  is  impossible 
to  exhaust  the  subject  of  sheep  without  a  long  discussion,  not 
only  of  different  kinds  of  wool,  but  also  of  difi'erent  kinds  of 
woollen,  with  the  dates  of  their  introduction  at  Rome.  Oxen, 
the  partners  of  men  at  the  plough,  afford  room  for  much  sen- 
timentality, and  a  good  many  curious  anecdotes  of  the  feel- 
in"-  against  killing  them,  which  was  once  almost  as  strong  in 
Phrygia  and  Italy  as  in  Hindostan. 

Aquatic  animals  of  all  kinds  take  precedence  of  birds,  for 
they  are  the  largest  of  all :  which  is  explained  by  the  fact  that 


PLINY  THE  ELDER, 


153 


water  abounds  in  their  constitution.  As  it  is  necessary  to 
draw  the  line  somewhere,  crocodiles  figure  among  the  terres- 
trial animals,  while  the  series  of  aquatic  animals  opens  with 
the  biggest  animal  Pliny  knew  of— the  sperm  whale  of  the 
Indian  Ocean ;  the  series  closes  with  an  account  of  the 
pearl  which  Cleopatra  swallowed  in  vinegar  at  a  banquet 
>vhen  she  wished  to  convince  Antony  of  her  capacities  for  ex- 
])ense.  The  legend  as  told  by  later  writers  drops  two  pictur- 
esque circumstances  given  by  Pliny.  Cleopatra  intended  to 
sacrifice  two  unique  and  historical  pearls  to  her  wager;  when 
she  had  dissolved  and  swallowed  the  first,  Plancus  (the  Con- 
sul of  Horace's  youth)  decided  the  wager  in  her  favor,  and  the 
second  pearl  was  saved,  to  be  divided,  according  to  common 
report  in  Rome,  between  the  two  earrings  of  A'enus  in  the 
Pantheon. 

As  for  birds,  in  Pliny's  reckoning  they  are  open  to  some- 
thing like  the  contempt  which,  in  the  judgment  of  unscientific 
common-sense,  attaches  to  insects :  they  are  poor  creatures, 
blown  about  in  the  air,  with  no  strength  and  solidity. 

One  of  the  most  entertaining  points  in  the  treatise  on  orni- 
thology is  the  recurring  allusion  to  Roman  augury.  There 
was  a  standing  debate  about  the  bird  Sanqualis  and  the  bird 
Ivwiussulus,  which  had  never  been  seen,  according  to  some 
authorities,  since  the  days  of  the  augur  Mucins.  Pliny  be- 
lieves himself  that  they  had  often  been  seen,  but,  owing  to  the 
culpable  laziness  of  a  degenerate  age,  they  had  never  been 
recognized.  It  appears  that  the  bird  Sanqualis  was  sacred  to 
the  ancient  deity  Sancus ;  but  Pliny  does  not  decide  on  the 
further  explanation  that  the  Sanqualis  was  the  young  of  the 
vulture,  and  the  bird  Lmnussulus  the  young  of  the  osprey. 
Still  more  puzzling  is  the  case  of  the  fire-bird.  Avis  ijice?idia- 
ria,  whose  appearance  was  repeatedly  chronicled,  as  the  occa- 
sion for  solemn  lustrations  of  the  city  ;  while  in  Pliny's  day  it 
was  wholly  unknown  what  kind  of  bird  had  passed  under  the 
name.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  classification  of  birds  as 
Alites  and  Oscines  comes  in  quite  a  difierent  place,  and  that 
the  classification  of  birds  by  their  beaks  and  claws  is  not 
introduced  until  some  way  has  been  made  in  a  description 

II.— 7* 


154 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


of  birds,  beginning  with  the  ostrich  as  the  biggest  and  the 

eagle  as  the  noblest. 

There  are  a  good  many  curious  traits  about  the  migrations 
of  birds.  Side  by  side  with  the  lists  of  the  migratory  birds 
of  Italy  we  find  the  legend  of  the  cranes  and  pygmies,  and 
accounts  of  the  wedge-shaped  army  which  storks  and  wild 
geese  form  in  flying.  We  are  gravely  informed  that  storks 
never  arrive  except  at  night,  and,  though  the  starting-point  of 
their  migration  is  uncertain,  he  inclines  to  believe  a  certain 
Peridorus,  who  asserts  that  their  winter-quarters  are  on  the 
<Treat  meadow  of  the  Cayster,  where  the  last  arrival  is  harried 

to  death. 

Pliny  is  curiously  meagre  about  parrots:  what  strikes  hmi 
most  is  that  they  have  very  hard  heads,  as  hard  as  their  beaks, 
so  that  when  they  alight  they  come  down  on  their  heads  and 
beaks,  to  save  their  weak  feet ;  and  they  have  to  be  educated 
by  rapping  them  on  the  head  with  an  iron  rod,  because  they 
can  feel  nothing  else.     Their  power  of  speech  is  not  equal,  in 
his  opinion,  to  that  of  magpies,  who  are  more  distinct,  if  not 
so  fluent.     Besides,  magpies  take  an   intelligent  interest  in 
what  they  say— go  over  th^ir  lessons  by  themselves,  and  are 
grateful  for  being  helped ;  while,  if  they  cannot  recover  the 
word  they  are  trying  for,  they  die  of  grief.     He  is  also  the 
earliest  authority  for  the  feats  of  performing  finches,  which  were 
taught,  then  as  now,  to  draw  water  and  go  in  harness.     One 
is  a  little  suspicious  when  he  hears  that  Agrippina,  the  wife 
of  Claudius,  had  a  thrush '  that  could  talk  at  the  time  when 
Pliny  was  writing.     He  observes  that  such  a  case  was  never 
known  before,  and  the  accomplishments  of  the  thrush  were 
probably  much  more  easily  recognized  because  of  the  rank 
of  its  mistress  ;  especially  as  we  find  that  the  young  Caesars, 
Gains  and  Lucius,  had  talking  nightingales:    of  course  one 
hears  of  talking  starlings.     One  hardly  knows  how  to  ques- 
tion the  strange  story  of  the  raven '  which  flew  down  in  the 
reign  of  Tiberius  from  the  temple  of  Augustus,  and  lighted  on 
a  cobbler's  stall ;  where  it  made  such  progress  that  it  learned 
to  salute  Tiberius  and  his  son  Drusus,  and  almost  every  Ro- 
»  Pliny,  "  Hist.  Nat."  X.  lix.  ?..  ""  lb.  X.  Ix.  2. 


PLINY  THE  ELDER. 


155 


man  when  he  went  by.  The  raven  provoked  the  spite  or  the 
envy  of  the  cobbler  opposite,  and  he  managed  to  kill  it ;  and 
this  shocked  the  public  so  much  that  the  raven  actually  had 
a  solemn  funeral  in  the  Campus  Martins;  and  the  avicide 
was  first  pelted  from  his  stall,  and  at  last  pelted  to  death. 
Pliny  moralizes  that  no  one  gave  Africanus  a  public  funeral 
or  avenged  his  death. 

The  discussion  of  ornithology  winds  up  with  a  description 
of  eggs,  and  this  leads  to  a  disquisition  on  hatching,  and  the 
generation  and  birth  of  animals  in  general,  though  this  has 
been  separately  discussed  to  some  extent  in  connection  with 
the  human  species,  and  at  less  length  as  a  part  of  the  descrip- 
tion of  almost  every  other.  Winged  insects  have  a  book  to 
themselves,  chiefly  because  it  was  impossible  to  hurry  over 
bees  :  the  whole  rules  for  their  management  are  given,  with 
all  that  was  known  or  imagined  about  them,  including  their 
birth  from  the  carcasses  of  quadrupeds. 

After  disposing  of  insects,  which  are  made  to  include  the 
smaller  birds  as  well  as  scorpions,  Pliny  gives  a  general  re- 
view of  organic  physiology,  going  through  the  diflerent  organs, 
and  mentioning  the  animals  which  have  them,  or  were  sup- 
posed to  lack  them. 

Pliny  is  overpoweringly  copious  on  the  subject  of  botany, 
which  occupies  twice  the  space  of  zoology;  for  the  first  half 
of  it  includes  a  pretty  full  treatment  of  husbandry,  and  the 
second  touches  largely  upon  medicine.  After  the  usual  sen- 
timental flourish  about  our  primitive  dependence  upon  fruit 
for  food,  in  consequence  of  which  fruit  still  keeps  its  place  in 
the  second  course,  Pliny  begins  with  the  plane-tree,  of  which 
the  oldest  specimen  that  he  knew  grew  in  the  groves  of  the 
Academy.  Palms  follow  soon  after,  and  are  described  fully, 
with  great  appearance  of  knowledge  of  their  diflerent  kinds 
and  their  modes  of  culture.  They  were  considered  the  most 
decisive  proof  of  the  existence  of  sex  in  plants,  although  Pliny 
was  aware  that  all  flowering  plants  had  diflerent  sexes.  It  is 
curious  to  find  that  in  his  day  palm-wine  had  almost  com- 
pletely superseded  grape-wine  in  Syria. 

iPliny  is  long  and  eloquent  on  the  vine  and  wine:  he  de- 


ll 


156 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


PLINY  THE  ELDER. 


157 


scribes  the  dififerent  kinds  then  in  cultivation,  with  hasty  notes 
of  the  qualities  of  the  grape,  and  the  rules  for  their  manage- 
ment; and  declaims  bitterly  at  our  singular  passion  for  an 
intoxicant,  which   we   share  with   no   other   animal,  though 
some  animals  have  been  taught  it  by  us.     He  candidly  allows 
there  are  many  who  think  it  the  one  thing  that  makes  life 
worth  living;  but  all  his  feeling  is  on  the  side  of  severity. 
We  break  the  strength  of  wine  with  sacking,  to  be  able  to 
drink  the  more ;  we  devise  other  spurs  to  thirst,  for  the  sake 
of  drinking.     Some  take  hemlock  before,  that  they  may  drink 
perforce  for  dear  life;  some  take  powdered  pumice-stone,  and 
shameful  drugs  which  no  honest  man  will  name  or  advertise. 
The  most  discreet  stew  themselves  in  the  baths  and  are  car- 
ried out  fainting;  others  are  so  eager  that  they  cannot  wait 
to  sit  down  or  to  dress:  just  as  they  are,  naked  and  panting, 
they  snatch  huge  bowls  in  the  baths  to  prove  their  prowess, 
fill  them  up  and  empty  them  down  their  throats  and  then  on 
the  floor,  and  swallow   again   and  repeat  the   performances 
twice  or  thrice,  as  if  they  were  born  to  spoil  wine,  and  as  if 
wine  could  not  be  spilt  without  passing  through  a  human 
body.     And  all  outlandish  exercises,  rolling  in  the  mud,  and 
broadening  out  the  chest,  and  tossing  back  the  neck,  have  all 
one  end.     They  are  a  proclamation  of  how  we  covet  thirst. 
Some  drink  to  excess  for  the  sake  of  the  goblet  with  its  wan- 
ton chasings,  which  is  the  prize  of  the  hardest  drinker;  some 
bind  themselves  to  eat  at  the  same  rate  as  they  drink;  others, 
to  drink  as  much  as  the  dice  decree.     Then  Pliny  will  not 
allow  that  a  hard  drinker  can  keep  a  secret:  they  recite  their 
own  wills,  and  talk  treasonable  politics.     In  vino  Veritas  is  a 
proverb  against  drinking.     At  the  very  best,  they  do  not  see 
the  sun  rise,  and  they  shorten  their  lives.     They  fancy  that 
they  are  acting  on  the  maxim,  live  while  you  live,  when  they 
are  wasting  one  day  and  spoiling  the  next. 

After  this  explosion,  we  are  told  that  the  foreign  fashion  of 
drinking  before  meals  was  brought  in  by  the  doctors  in  the 
days  of  Tiberius.  And  then  we  get  to  stories  of  famous 
drinkers.  The  Parthians  are  proud  of  their  prowess  in  that 
way;  so  was  Alcibiades,  so  was  NovelliusTorquatus  of  Milan, 


who  actually  could  dispose  of  a  bumper  of  seventeen  or  eigh- 
teen pints  at  a  draught,  which  wonderful  sight  Tiberius  came 
to  see. 

Marcus  Cicero  the  younger  did  not  come  up  to  this  meas- 
ure: he  could  not  do  more  than  eleven  or  twelve  pints;  but 
even  this  passed  for  very  much,  and  Pliny  suggests  that  he 
wished  to  revenge  his  father  upon  Antonius,  who  otherwise 
would  have  been  the  greatest  drinker  of  the  day.  We  are 
indebted  to  Pliny  for  the  fact  that  he  wrote  a  panegyric  on 
drink  shortly  before  the  battle  of  Actium.  Pliny  adds,  with 
^  touch  of  malice,  that  the  one  thing  in  which  Drusus  clearly 
reproduced  his  father  Tiberius  was  his  taste  for  wine:  the 
phrase  is  curious,  regenerdssc patrem  Tiberiiun.''  Pliny  is  fond 
of  using  regenerare  in  this  way  where  most  authors  w^ould  use 
reprceseniare^  or  turn  the  phrase  another  way  to  express  that 
the  ancestor  lived  again  in  his  descendant. 

The  vine  occurs  again  in  another  connection  as  a  timber 
tree  :  Mucianus  is  quoted  as  testifying  that  the  image  of  Diana 
in  the  famous  temple  of  Ephesus,  which  had  outlasted  seven 
temples,  was  made  of  that  wood  ;  he  had  been  proconsul  of 
Asia,  and  had  therefore  been  able  to  inspect  the  image  closely. 
Another  purpose  for  which  the  vine  is  excellent  is  for  kindling 
fire  in  the  primitive  fiishion,  rubbing  one  piece  of  wood  over 
another:  the  piece  of  wood  which  is  held  still  should  be  of 
vine  or  ivy,  the  piece  of  wood  which  rotates  upon  it  should  be 
of  bay  or  cypress.  The  fame  of  cypress-wood  is  well  known, 
but  Pliny,  who  follows  Theophrastus,  has  a  high  opinion  of 
^Im  as  combining  toughness  and  stiffness. 

From  the  twentieth  book  onwards,  medicine  is  decidedly  the 
dominant  topic  of  Pliny's  natural  history.  There  are  some 
digressions  :  in  the  beginning  of  the  twenty-  first  book,  the 
subject  seems  to  be  floriculture,  and  we  get  a  pretty  story  of 
the  custom,  in  the  plain  of  the  Po,  of  putting  the  hives  aboard 
a  punt  at  night  and  drawing  them  five  miles  up  the  river 
every  night,  until  they  were  full  of  honey  ;  and  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  twenty-second  book  there  is  a  little  disquisition 
on  the  honorary  crowns  which  the  Romans  made  of  the  herbs 

^  Pliny,  •'  Hist.  Nat."   XIV.  xxvii.  6. 


158 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


PLINY  THE  ELDER. 


159 


of  the  field.  But  in  the  seventh  chapter  (there  are  eighty- 
two)  we  arrive  at  the  real  subject,  the  medical  use  of  plants 
that  can  be  made  into  wreaths.  In  the  next  book  wines  are 
described  over  again,  since  wine  is  a  medicine  as  well  as  a 
luxury ;  and  then  come  medicines  from  cultivated  trees,  and, 
in  another  book,  the  remedies  to  be  obtained  from  wild  trees. 
In  the  next  three  books  Pliny  seems  to  tend  to  classify  the 
contents  of  his  note-books  on  a  new  principle  :  instead  of 
mentioning  the  diseases  for  which  each  kind  of  herb  is  good, 
he  mentions  together  the  herbs  which  are  good  for  one  kind 
of  disease.  It  is  worth  noticing  that  Pliny's  account  of  the 
mandrake  contains  nothing  fabulous  :  it  was,  according  to  him, 
a  dangerously  strong  soporific,  which  wms  commonly  taken 
before  severe  operations  in  order  to  deaden  sensibility. 

In  the  twenty-eighth  book  Pliny  goes  back  to  animals — as 
contributors  to  the  pharmacopoeia ;  and  here  he  is  very  elo- 
quent against  unseemly  remedies  sought  from  the  human  body. 
Blood  warm  from  a  gladiator  was  thought  to  be  sovereign 
against  epilepsy,  and  Democritus  had  actually  written  down 
that  the  powdered  skull  of  a  criminal  was  good  for  some  dis- 
eases, and  the  skull  of  a  friend  and  guest  for  others.  Pliny 
thinks  it  well  enough  to  use  spittle  or  mother's  milk  ;  but  if 
we  go  further,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  after  the  foulest 
remedies  we  must  die  at  last.  There  is  no  medicine  for  the 
mind  like  a  belief  that,  of  all  the  good  things  which  nature 
has  given  men,  none  is  better  than  timely  death ;  and  the 
best  of  that  is,  that  each  has  power  to  grant  it  to  himself. 

Pliny  thinks  little  of  enchantments :  every  nation  believes 
in  them,  and  no  wise  man.  As  for  prodigies,  they  are  in  our 
power:  their  effects  depend  upon  the  way  we  take  them. 
When  the  foundations  of  the  Capitol  were  being  dug,  a  human 
head  was  found  ;  and  an  embassy  was  sent  to  Olenus  Calenus, 
the  wisest  of  the  Etrurian  seers,  to  ask  him  to  interpret  the 
sign.  The  ambassadors  said,  "We  found  it  here,"  and  he 
said,  "  Did  you  find  it  here  ?"  drawing  a  picture  of  the  Capitol 
on  the  sand— and  if  they  had  said  "  Yes,"  then  the  rule  of  the 
world  would  have  been  translated  to  Etruria  ;  but  his  son  had 
warned  the  ambassadors,  so  they  answered  that"  here  "  in  their 


r 


story  meant  at  Rome.  In  the  same  spirit,  in  the  opening  of 
his  thirtieth  book,  Pliny  favors  us  with  a  very  vigorous  polemic 
against  magic.  To  begin  with,  he  cannot  believe  that  Zoroaster 
flourished  six  thousand  years  before  Plato;  he  justly  asks 
how  it  was  that  his  books  had  been  preserved  for  that  enor- 
mous period,  among  illiterate  nations,  without  a  hierarchy 
with  regular  succession,  and  what  authority  the  people  who 
convinced  Aristotle  had  for  their  story.  Then  he  fastens  on 
historical  magicians  of  the  ages  of  Xerxes  and  Alexander; 
admits  that  there  is  an  independent  source  of  magic  in  "  Moses, 
Jamnes,  and  Jotapes'"— much  later  than  the  alleged  date  of 
Zoroaster,  and  traces  the  history  of  magic  till  the  days  of 
Nero,  who  gave  it  the  fairest  possible  chance,  having  all  the 
means  that  the  most  exacting  could  ask,  and  the  utmost  dili- 
gence and  perseverance.  And  yet  magic  has  some  reality 
about  it,  being  a  form  of  poisoning;  but  magicians  are  con- 
temptible creatures— as  they  think  the  mole  is  the  wisest  and 
holiest  of  animals. 

The  treatment  of  regular  medicine  is  capricious.  The 
twenty- ninth  book  opens  with  the  history  of  medicine  as 
Pliny  understands  it,  and  continues  the  list  of  remedies  from 
land-animals;  among  which  we  find  the  slough  of  a  serpent 
recurring  with  curious  frequency.  The  thirty-first  and  thirty- 
second  treat  of  the  remedies  to  be  derived  from  aquatic  ani- 
mals, and  include  a  disquisition  on  the  best  kind  of  water, 
which  was  thought  by  many  to  be  rain-water,  as  it  must  be 
the  lightest — how  else  could  it  have  risen  into  the  clouds? 
Others,  whom  Pliny  ridicules,  weighed  the  water.  He  him- 
self inclined  to  the  belief  that  clear  spring -water  was  the 
best.  There  are  many  curious  stories  of  streams,  and  springs 
medicinal  and  intermittent. 

The  last  five  books  are  in  some  ways  the  most  interesting 
to  a  modern  reader,  but  they  contain  little  that  is  character- 
istic of  Pliny.  The  general  subject  is  mineralogy,  and  since 
minerals  are  employed  in  the  arts  and  in  medicine,  each  of 
them  takes  the  form  of  a  treatise  on  metallurgy,  or  marble 
cutting  and  w^orking;  followed  by  a  treatise  on  bronze  statues 

^  Pliny,  "  Hist.  Nat."  XXX.  ii.  6. 


i6o 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


and  reliefs,  and  a  separate  treatise  on  works  of  art  in  marble, 
with  the  medical  uses  of  metals  in  one  place  and  stones  in 
another.  Even  the  treatise  on  painting  is  complicated  with 
the  medical  uses  of  the  different  colors,  such  as  vermilion. 
In  the  same  way  the  last  book,  which  is  on  gems,  includes  a 
history  of  gem-engraving  and  an  account  of  all  the  fancies 
about  their  medical  virtues.  Most  of  our  knowledge  of  the 
history  of  ancient  art  is  eked  out  by  Pliny's  hurried  notices  ; 
but  there  is  not  much  of  literary  interest,  if  we  care  for  the 
author  apart  from  the  subject.  One  may  notice  a  little  ex- 
plosion of  the  feeling  which  overflows  in  IMr.  Ruskin's  later 
works  at  the  beginning  of  the  thirty-third  book,  where  Pliny 
denounces  mining,  and  declares  what  a  blessed  age,  what  a 
dainty  life,  we  might  lead  if  we  were  content  with  what  grows 
above  ground,  and  then  goes  on  to  discuss  the  early  history 
of  gold  rings.  In  the  book  upon  marbles  he  has  a  shrewd 
remark  upon  a  procurator  of  Egypt  in  the  time  of  Claudius, 
who  tried  to  introduce  porphyry  statues  at  Rome  :  they  were 
regarded  as  more  laborious  than  beautiful.  The  laborious 
work  concludes  abruptly  :  on  reviewing  the  immense  range 
which  he  has  traversed,  Pliny  has  nothing  to  tell  us  but  that 
Spain  and  Italy  are  the  most  gifted  regions  in  the  world. 


PLINY  THE  YOUNGER. 


i6i 


CHAPTER  II. 
PLINY  THE  YOUNGER. 

There  can  hardly  be  a  greater  literary  contrast  than  be- 
tween Pliny  the  Elder  and  Pliny  the  Younger:  one  was  a 
man-of-all-work,  the  other  a  di/ettanfe;  one  was  a  piece  of  a 
pessimist,  the  other  a  thoroughgoing  and  considerate  opti- 
mist, who  fully  understood  the  necessity  of  making  the  best 
of  the  world.  One  was  quite  indifferent  to  style,  composing 
his  dedication  to  Vespasian  in  a  fine  vein  of  confused  pom- 
posity, and  leaving  Seneca  and  Varro  to  amalgamate  as  they 
could  in  the  main  staple  of  his  work.  One  was  at  bottom  a 
materialist ;  the  other  meant  to  be  a  spiritualist ;  he  speaks 
of  "eternity"  and  "immortality"  very  often,  and  always  in 
the  most  edifying  vein  of  sentiment,  which  has  been  revived 
by  the  disciples  of  the  "  Religion  of  Humanity." 

Here  is  a  very  pretty  specimen:'  "Some  think  one  most 
blessed,  some  another  :  and  I  think  him  who  thoroughly  en- 
joys beforehand  his  good  and  everlasting  fame,  and,  having 
made  sure  of  posterity,  lives  with  his  glory  that  shall  be.  And 
for  me,  but  for  the  reward  of  eternity  in  my  eyes,  I  could  de- 
light in  deep  fatness  of  ease.  For  all  men  in  my  judgment 
ought  to  meditate  either  their  immortality  or  their  mortality: 
exertion  and  effort  are  for  these;  repose  and  relaxation  for 
those,  lest  they  weary  their  short  life  in  perishable  labors: 
for  many,  as  we  see,  by  a  pitiful  and  thankless  parade  of  in- 
dustry, come  only  to  make  themselves  cheap.  I  tell  you  this, 
which  I  tell  myself  every  day— I  tell  you  that  if  you  disagree, 
I  may  tell  myself  no  more  :  though  you  will  not  disagree, 
since  you  have  always  something  glorious  and  imperishable 
io  working.     Farewell." 

»  "  Ep."  ix.  3. 


l62 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURK. 


Here  is  a  necessary  qualification  in  a  letter  to  Tacitus  the 
historian  :'  "You  do  not  applaud  yourself;  and  I  never  take 
more  pains  to  be  strictly  honest  than  in  writing  of  you. 
AVhether  those  to  come  will  care  for  us  at  all,  I  know  not :  it 
is  ours  to  deserve  some  care ;  I  do  not  say  by  genius— that 
would  be  pride— but  by  study,  by  labor,  by  reverence  for 
those  to  come.  So  let  us  keep  on  the  road  we  are  in  :  it  has 
brought  a  few  into  light  and  renown,  it  has  brought  many 
out  of  darkness  and  silence.     Farewell." 

With  all  his  care,  the  chief  work  on  which  he  expected  his 
fame  to  rest  perished  soon  and  completely.     No  one  took 
the  trouble  to  quote  or  read  his  speeches  in  the  senate  or  the 
law  courts,  though  he  had  striven  hard  to  get  back  to  the 
tone  of  the  days  of  Cicero,  and  edited  his  speeches  so  care- 
fully that  he  had  no  time  for  historical  writing,  to  which  his 
friends  often   urged  him.     He   was  so  painstaking,  and  so 
amiable,  and  so  anxious  for  reputation,  that  his  friends  in  his 
lifetime  took  his  oratorical  pretensions  seriously.     Afterwards, 
the  only  speech  of  his  which  lived  was  the  "  Panegyric  on  Tra- 
jan."    He  is  surprisingly  explicit  himself  about  the  kind  of 
success  it  had :  he  invited  a  few  friends,  if  quite  at  leisure,  to 
hear  it  when  he  had  worked  it  up  for  publication  ;  and,  con- 
sidering the  importance  of  the  occasion,  he  had  made  it  so 
long  that  it  took  three  days  to  recite,  and  nevertheless  his 
friends  (he  says  himself  they  were  not  many)  insisted  on 
hearing  the  end.     Of  course  they  stayed  to  dinner,  though 
Pliny  does  not  mention  this;  but  they  would  have  been  re- 
leased the  first  day  if  there  had  been  nothing  to  interrupt  the 
recitation.     However,  Pliny  satisfied  himself  that  their  judg- 
ment had  been  deliberately  given,  and  was  a  sample  of  the 
judgment  of  the  world,  and  his  speech  has  lasted  because  it 
was  a  model  of  the  complimentary  speeches  which  were  so 
important  in  the  third  and  fourth  centuries.     Pliny  even  had 
the  distinction  of  being  taken  for  the  model  of  a  separate 
style  of  oratory,  the  flowery  and  redundant  style — a  compli- 
ment which  he  would  have  hardly  valued  :  if  he  had  a  higher 
ambition  than  to  be  a  second  Cicero,  it  was  to  be  a  second 

'"Ep."ix.  14. 


FLINY  THE    YOUNGER. 


163 


Calvus.     Sidonius  Apollinaris  still  knew  of  his  speech  in  the 
case  of  Accia  Variola,  of  which  there  is  much  in  the  letters; 
for  Pliny  thought  it  his  masterpiece,'  and   compared   it  to 
Demosthenes's  oration  on  the  Crown.     Consequently,  Sidoni- 
us lays  down  that  he  won  more  glor>  by  defending  Accia  be- 
fore the  Centumviri  than  by  his  Panegyric  ;  but  there  is  little 
proof  that  he  had  read  the  first.     The   Panegyric  is  an  in- 
tensely clever  work,  which  it  is  very  hard  to  read ;  it  is  ad- 
mirably written,  and  execrably  composed.     The  author  had 
a  double  object-to  pay  a  long  series  of  exquisite  compli- 
ments to  Trajan,  and  to  make  the  most  effective  protest  that 
he  could  against  the  system  of  Domitian.     A  modern  reader 
thinks  that  the  work  is  a  piece  of  servile  ostentation;  Pliny 
thought  it  was  a  demonstration  of  antique  courage.     In  fact, 
he  praises  Trajan  fulsomely  for  conduct  to  which  only  an 
exemplary  emperor  would  like  to  feel  himself  pledged.     For 
instance,  he  is  praised  for  not  usurping  the  estates  of  his  de- 
funct subjects,  as   Domitian   had   done  under  the  pretence 
that  they  had  said  Cassar  would  be  their  heir.     He  is  praised 
for  his  extreme  punctiliousness  about  official  formalities,  actu- 
ally staying  through  the  whole  ceremony  whenever  he  was 
consul,  and  kissing  each  of  the  candidates  he  nominated  when 
returned.     And  his  conduct  in  office  was  equally  sublime  : 
he  was  consul  when  the  Germans  were  troublesome,  and  he 
went  to  the  frontier  and  decided  cases  in  his  toga,  the  sight 
of  which  awed  the  barbarians.     The  style  of  the  speech  is 
redundant  if  we  take  it  in  gross  ;  terse  and  modest,  if  we  take 
It  in  detail.     One  is  continually  tempted  to  compare  the  epi- 
grammatic turns  with  Seneca,  till  one  notes  the  entire  absence 
of  passion.     Seneca  is  always  thinking  that  he  does  well  to 
be  angry ;  Pliny  could  not  be  angry  if  he  tried.     Here  is  a 
fair  specimen  of  the  less  epigrammatic  passages  : 

*'  Everything,'  Conscript  Fathers,  that  I  say  or  have  said 
of  other  princes  has  this  end,  to  show  how  long  the  custom 
of  corrupting  and  defrauding  the  princedom  has  lasted,  which 
our  parent  has  to  reform  and  amend.  And  otherwise  there 
is  nothing  which  it  is  not  thankless  to  praise  without  a  foil. 


^  "Ep."  IIL  xxiii.  I. 


1  (t 


Pan."  ]iii. 


1 64 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Moreover,  the  first  duty  of  a  dutiful  citizen  to  our  excellent 
emperor  is  to  denounce  emperors  of  other  sorts;  for  who  can 
love  good  princes  enough,  unless  they  hate  evil  princes 
enouf^h  ?  And  remember  that  of  all  the  merits  of  an  emperor 
none  is  <^reater  or  better  known  than  this,  that  we  may  assail 
evil  princes  in  safety.  Have  we  forgotten  our  pain  when 
Nero  was  avenged  but  now  ?  A  man  who  thought  his  death 
a  crime  was  likely,  methinks,  to  give  leave  to  attack  his  fame 
and  repute,  to  refuse  to  understand  of  himself  what  might  be 
said  of  one  so  like  him.  Wherefore,  Caesar,  for  my  part,  I 
rate  this  above  many  of  thy  gifts,  and  equal  to  the  best,  that 
we  are  allowed  both  to  avenge  ourselves  on  evil  emperors 
gone  by,  and  warn  those  to  come  by  such  example  that  there 
is  neither  time  nor  place  for  the  ghosts  of  deadly  emperors 
to  rest  from  the  curses  of  posterity." 

His  correspondence  with  Trajan  is  a  natural  sequel  to  the 
Panegyric,  though  two  or  three  of  the  letters  are  earlier.     In 
one  he  apologizes  for  having  declined  the  office  of  prosecut- 
ing Marius,  the  proconsul  of  Africa,  until  it  was  pressed  upon 
him  by  the  senate;  in  another  he  returns  thanks  for  having 
been  appointed  consul  before  his  term  of  service  at  the  treas- 
ury was  over;  in  a  third  he  asks  a  month's  leave  of  absence, 
in  order  to  arrange  for  a  temple  to  several  Caesars,  whose 
statues  he  had  inherited  and  wanted  to  put  safe  out  of  the 
open  air,  and  also,  as  he  candidly  states,  to  settle  how  much 
he  would   have  to  return   out  of  his  rents  to  his   tenants. 
Most  of  them  relate  to  a  short  two  years  of  office  in  Bithynia, 
where  Pliny  was  known  as  having  defended  Bassus,  a  former 
governor.     He  was  sent  there  because  local  jobbery  of  all 
kinds   had  grown   beyond  bearing,  and  he   hardly  seems   to 
have  had  energy  enough  for  the  post:  he  is  continually  writ- 
ing to  Trajan  for  surveyors  or  architects  to  check  the  con- 
tractors on  the  spot,  who  wasted  the  revenues  of  towns  like 
Nicomedia  upon  abortive  aqueducts,  or  theatres  which  were 
dilapidated  before  they  were  o^^ened.     Trajan  replies  that  the 
works  of  the  capital  take  all  the  architects  within  reach,  and 
that,  after  all,  architects  come  to  Rome  from  the  provinces. 
A  rich  provincial  leaves  his  fortune  to  Pliny,  in  trust  for  two 


PLINY   THE    YOUNGER.  jg^ 

towns,  to  be  spent  at  Pliny's  discretion  on  founding  quin- 
quennial games,  or  buildings  in  the  honor  of  Trajan.  Pliny 
wishes  to  be  told  which  Trajan  would  prefer,  and  Trajan  re- 
plies that  Pliny  must  decide:  the  testator  had  known  enough 
of  Pliny  to  choose  him  for  a  trust  which  it  was  too  late  to 
evade.  In  the  same  way  Pliny  is  referred  to  his  own  dis- 
cretion in  questions  of  towns  which  wished  to  have  a  Roman 
detachment,  with  a  centurion  at  its  head,  stationed  among 
them  to  preserve  order. 

The  letters  on  both  sides  are  admirably  short  and  friendly 
and  frank;  they  have  very  much  the  tone  of  private  corre- 
spondence. Modern  despatches  would  be  far  more  formal, 
perhaps  we  should  say  more  servile,  though  there  is  a  certain 
backsliding  in  Pliny's  always  addressing  Trajan  as  Doutine^ 
"Lord,"  after  the  emphatic  distinction  between  Lord  and 
Prince  in  the  Panegyric. 

The  nine  books  of  private  letters  were  deliberately  collect- 
ed and  revised  for  publication  by  the  author,  whose  boundless 
self-complacency  found  here  a  safe  opportunity  for  expan- 
sion. They  really  serve  all  the  purpose  of  a  polite  letter- 
writer ;  and  this  explains  their  popularity  and  the  diligent 
imitation  of  them  by  Symmachus  and  Sidonius  Apollinaris, 
neither  of  whom  attains  to  the  measure  of  Pliny,  who  is  a 
perfect  model  oiihe  piirum  et  p  res  sunt  genus  at  which  he  aims. 
One  must  accept  that  it  is  always  his  intention  to  flatter  him- 
self or  his  correspondent,  or  both;  that  every  feeling  has  to 
be  reduced  to  the  limits  within  which  one  can  be  proud  of  it 
before  it  is  expressed.  Pliny,  for  instance,  when  he  does  a 
kindness,  never  asks  to  be  thanked  :  he  only  boasts  to  some 
one  else  of  his  delicate  and  reticent  generosity.  The  only 
feeling  which  is  clearly  unamiable  is  his  safe  vindictiveness 
against  all  who  were  connected  with  the  persecutions  of  Domi- 
tian.  This  was  sharpened  a  good  deal  by  his  professional 
rivalry  with  M.  Regulus,  the  leading  counsel  of  the  day,  who 
in  the  latter  part  of  Nero's  reign  had  been  a  very  activ^e  pro- 
moter of  prosecutions  for  treason.  Such  prosecutions  had 
ruined  his  father  and  brother,  and  he  wished  to  retaliate,  and 
make  a  reputation  and  a  fortune.     Under  Domitian  he  was 


i66 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


simply  a  very  active  advocate,  who  traded  a  little,  or  more 
than  a  little,  on  the  jealousy  of  the  dynasty ;  he  was  a  per- 
sonage intimate  at  court,  and  he  did  not  keep  his  suspicions 
of  disaffection  to  himself.     He  was  something  of  a  bully,  and 
pressed  Pliny  very  severely  to  give  his  opinion  on  the  loyalty 
of  a  connection  of  one  of  his  clients,  a  man  actually  banished 
for  disloyalty.     Pliny  very  properly  refused  to  give  any  opin- 
ion of  his  own  on  such  a  subject,  and  felt  that  he  was  dis- 
playing antique  virtue.     Such  encounters  disposed   Pliny  to 
be  very  particular  in  relating  all  the  stories  about  the  fussy, 
pompous  man :  one  is  really  amusing.     A  lady  asked  him  to 
witness  her  will,  and  put  on  her  best  clothes  for  the  cere- 
mony: Regulus  actually  insisted  that  she  should  leave  them 
to  him  by  her  will,  although  she  was  very  likely  to  survive 
him.     Another  story  is  less  discreditable  than  Pliny  seems  to 
think.     A  lady  was  ill.     Regulus  assured  her  that  she  was 
going  to  recover  on  the  strength  of  favorable  sacrifices,  and 
took  the  further  trouble  to  consult  the  Chaldaians,  whose  re- 
port was  equally  favorable.     He  swore  by  the  life  of  his  son 
that  she  would  recover,  whereupon   she   made  a  will  in  his 
favor,  and,  as  was  not  surprising,  died  in  spite  of  aruspices 
and  Chaldxnms.     It  was  his  habit  to  swear  by  the  life  of  his 
son,  which  convinced  Pliny's  circle  that  he  could  not  love  him. 
So  Pliny  and  the  rest  wde  surprised  when  the  son  died,  and 
Regulus  made  an  immense  parade  of  sorrow,  which  Pliny  de- 
scribes in  a  tone  of  bewilderment  which  borders  on  respect. 
The  least  unkindly  letter  is  after  Regulus,  too,  was  dead;  he 
admits  then  that  he  respected  himself  as  a  pleader,  and  main- 
tained the  dignity  of  the  profession  ;  he  prepared  elaborate 
written  speeches,  though  he  failed  to  learn  them  by  heart. 
But  still  an  inflated  pleader,  who  insisted  on  being  heard  at 
length,  was  a  boon  to  a  man  like  Pliny,  who  lets  us  see  in 
very  many  places  that  the  public  was  getting  tired  of  literary 
pretensions  of  all  kinds.     Pliny's  voice  was  as  bad  as  Regu- 
lus's    memory:    when    he    entertained    his    friends    with    his 
speeches  he  had  to  employ  a  young  freedman  with  a  fresh 
voice,  and  actually  debated  whether  he  should  follow  the  ab- 
surd fashion  of  the  time,  and  go  through  the  pantomime  of 


PL  I  IVY  THE    YOUNGER. 


167 


recitation,  while  the  freedman  delivered  the  words.  The  al- 
ternative was  to  listen  and  applaud,  like  everybody  else. 
Pliny  himself  was  very  good-natured  in  the  matter  of  ap- 
plause :  he  could  not  understand  going  to  hear  a  man  you 
called  a  friend  recite  and  not  applauding,  nor  could  he  quite 
understand  the  general  reluctance  to  go,  especially  among 
those  who  composed  themselves.  It  was  the  only  conven- 
tional duty  which  he  discharged  quite  cheerfully:  he  was  al- 
ways delighted  to  get  out  of  town  to  escape  from  conventional 
duties;  he  thought  himself  better  employed  in  cultivating  his 
constitution. 

He  does  not  seem  to  know  who  is  most  ridiculous  in  his 
story  of"  Passienus  Paullus," '  a  countryman  and  descendant 
of  Propertius,  who  was  reciting  an  elegy  before  a  company 
which  included  Javolenus  Prisons,  a  celebrated  jurist,  who  was 
so  absent-minded  as  to  be  suspected  of  insanity.  Unluckily 
Paul  1  us  began  an  elegy  with  Priscejubcs^  the  regular  formula 
of  a  consultation,  "  Priscus,  do  you  advise  ?"  Prisons  immedi- 
ately answered,  "  For  my  part  I  do  not,"  and  Pliny  was  sur- 
prised— at  least  distressed — that  after  this  the  recitation  went 
off  badly. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  we  find  Pliny  making  Martial  a 
present  of  money  for  his  journey  to  Spain,  for  Martial  was  a 
notorious  beggar;  but  we  are  surprised  that  he  could  press  a 
present  of  between  300/.  and  400/.  in  our  money  on  Quinctilian 
on  the  occasion  of  his  daughter's  marriage,  excusing  the 
small  amount  as  a  tribute  to  Quinctilian's  modesty,  for  Quinc- 
tilian had  been  a  successful  teacher,  and  stood  quite  at  the 
head  of  his  profession. 

But  it  does  not  appear  that  even  in  its  best  days  the  eco- 
nomical condition  of  the  empire  was  sound  or  easy.  A  stand- 
ing question  throughout  the  provinces  was,  what  was  to  be 
done  with  "nurslings,"  as  free-born  children  exposed  in  in- 
fancy and  reared  as  slaves  were  called:  it  is  one  of  the  few 
points  which  Trajan  does  not  think  Pliny  ought  to  have  de- 
cided without  help. 

In  Italy  at  least  there  was  an  attempt  to  provide  a  remedy 

1  "£{)."  V.V.I. 


i68 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


as  early  as  the  consulate  of  Pliny;  he  had  to  thank  Trajan 
for  including  children  in  the  public  largesses/     Pliny  him- 
self conferred  on  Comum,  his  native  town,  an  endowment  of 
30,000  sesterces  (between    200/.  and  300/.)   a  year  for  the 
bringing  up  of  freeborn  children,  secured  upon  an  estate  of 
considerably  greater  value.     He  did  not  like  to  give  the  capi- 
tal sum  of  500,000  sesterces  which  he  had  promised,  because 
the  corporation  were  not  to  be  trusted  to  keep  it;  he  did  not 
like  to  give  an  equivalent  in  land,  because  public  fields  were 
never  properly  cultivated ;  and  so  concluded  to  convey  his 
own  land  in  satisfaction  of  his  promise,  and  have  it  conveyed 
back  to  himself  subject  to  a  charge  decidedly  below  its  an- 
nual value,  which  charge  he  hoped  was  permanently  secured. 
Perhaps  something  should  be  said  of  Pliny's  enthusiasm 
for  suicide,  which  is  remarkable,  because  he  has  none  of  the 
strons:  feelinjr  of  human  misery  which  we  find  in  his  uncle 
and  Tacitus.     A  life  that  is  either  enjoyable  or  memorable, 
in  his  judgment,  may  be  an  unmixed  good;  but  he  still  ad- 
mires the  resolution  which  enables  a  man  to  end  it  at  a  mo- 
ment's notice  upon  utilitarian  grounds.     He  not  only  approves 
of  a  woman  who  got  her  husband,  suffering  from  a  loathsome 
— as  she  thought  an  incurable— disease,  to  let  her  tie  herself 
to  him,  after  which  the  pair  drowned  themselves  in  Lake 
Como,  but  actually  compares  her  achievement  to  Arria's,"  who 
killed  herself  to  encourage  her  husband,  and  handed  him  the 
da2:2:er  with  the  fiimous  words,  "  Paetus,  dear,  it  don't  hurt." 
Pliny  had  a  system  of  detecting  heroism  in  common  life,  and 
thought  that  his  neighbors  needed  nothing  but  an  equal  sta- 
tion to  command  an  equal  fame.     In  the  same  spirit  he  de- 
cides that  all  the  acts  of  Arria  which  proved  her  resolution 
to  share  her  husband's  fate  were  as  great,  though  not  as  glori- 
ous, as  the  last. 

His  letters  are  full  of  old  news;  sometimes,  as  in  this  case, 
it  might  be  unknown  to  his  correspondents;  but  often  he  re- 
peats what  they  must  have  known  simply  as  an  exercise  in 
style.  For  instance,  he  tells  the  story  of  Domitian's  exe- 
cution of  the  senior  Vestal,^  because  he  has  just  heard  that 
1  "  Tan."  vii.  and  xviii.    '  "  Ep."  VI.  x.xiv. ;  cf.  III.  xvi.,  III.  xi.  3.    ="  IV.  xi. 


PLINY   THE    YOUNGER.  15^ 

a  man  of  praetorian  rank  who  had,  under  some  pressure, 
given  himself  up  as  her  paramour  had  turned  professor  in 
Sicily. 

When  he  has  a  piece  of  real  news,  he  commonly  makes  it 
fill  two  letters,  even  if  it  is  no  more  than  that  an  advocate  was 
retained  to  oppose  the  application  of  a  consular  for  leave  to 
establish  a  market  upon  his  own  estate,  which  might  interfere 
with  a  neighboring  public  market.  The  advocate  did  not 
appear,  and  the  senate  decided  that  he  might  return  his  fee 
and  be  discharged  from  the  suspicion  of  having  sold  the  case. 
Often  a  letter  will  be  filled  with  an  account  of  a  sentimental 
visit  to  the  villa  of  Scipio,  or  the  description  of  his  own  Lau- 
rentine  or  Tuscan  villas.  Sometimes  one  almost  suspects 
him  of  using  his  correspondents'  letters  as  a  theme  for  his 
own  ingenuity.  In  the  first  book  there  is  a  letter,  rather 
priggish  in  tone,  on  the  benefits  of  taking  a  note-book  out 
hunting;  in  the  ninth  there  is  a  reply  to  the  effect  that  it  is 
pleasant  enough  to  take  a  note-book  into  the  woods,  but  then 
one  must  renounce  the  hope  of  killing  boars.  Both  are  nomi- 
nally addressed  to  Tacitus;  and,  as  we  cannot  suppose  that 
a  letter  of  Tacitus's  got  mixed  up  accidentally  with  a  careful 
collection,  the  alternative  is  that  Pliny  appropriated  two  sug- 
gestions of  their  real  intercourse  for  two  letters,  of  which  most 
modern  readers  will  prefer  the  later  and  simpler.  "When  all 
other  topics  failed,  he  could  turn  an  elaborate  note  on  his 
anxiety  if  a  friend  did  not  write.  Besides,  correspondence 
about  his  own  and  his  friends'  literary  work  was  practically 
endless.  He  could  not  imagine  a  greater  happiness  than  to 
revise  a  work  of  Tacitus's,  and  send  his  own  work  to  Tacitus 
for  revision :  although  the  final  revision  of  his  own  speeches 
was  always  a  weary  task,  and  he  managed  to  spend  much 
time  over  them  without  improving  them — a  temptation  of 
which  he  was  quite  aware  in  the  case  of  others.  In  poetry 
he  seems  to  have  suspected  that  he  could  hardly  succeed  ; 
he  admired  the  contrast  between  a  strict  life  and  a  wanton 
muse,  and  after  defending  the  contrast  by  copious  precedents 
he  finally  admits  that  his  muse  had  been  too  wanton;  for  his 
hendecasyllables  had  never  been  really  published  or  recited, 

II. ~8 


lyo 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


ihey  had  only  been  read  to  five  or  six  friends,  and  were  sub- 
ject to  revision.  Probably  they  were  attempts  in  the  style  of 
Catullus,  in  the  same  way  as  his  orations  were  attempts  in 
the  style  of  Cicero:  at  least  a  contemporary'  imitated  the 
abrupt  grace  of  that  poet  with  considerable  success. 

1  Sentias  Auguiinus,  whom  we  know  from  a  compliment  to  Pliny,  which 
the  latter  reproduces,  IV.  xxxii. 


QUINCTILIAN, 


^71 


CHAPTER  III. 

QUINCTILIAN. 

It  is  very  seldom  that  a  reaction  produces  a  work  so  sane, 
so  perfect,  and  so  commonplace  as  Quinctilian's  twelve  books 
of  the  training  of  an  orator.  Nothing  is  left  out,  and  nothing 
is  left  to  the  reader.  Every  point  of  composition,  of  language, 
of  delivery,  of  gesture,  of  tact,  is  fully  discussed  as  if  nothing 
were  obvious,  in  language  which  is  astonishingly  like  Cicero's, 
considering  that  Quinctilian  wrote  a  hundred  and  twenty 
years  later.  He  does  not  write  so  as  to  be  mistaken  for 
Cicero,  but  he  writes  very  nearly  the  same  language.  There 
are  occasional  deviations,  which  look  more  like  misunder- 
standing than  the  growth  of  language.  The  twelve  books 
were  the  work  of  his  old  age,  after  he  had  retired  from  teach- 
ing; and  as  a  teacher  his  career  had  been  long  and  brilliant. 
His  full  name  was  M.  Fabius  Quinctilianus;  he  was  a  native 
of  Calagurris  in  Spain,  but  settled  at  Rome  by  Galba,'  where 
he  proved  the  best  rhetorical  teacher  of  the  day,  and  was  ap- 
pointed by  Domitian  to  educate  his  nephews,  and  received  the 
consular  ornaments.  He  was  a  friend  of  the  younger  Pliny's, 
who  made  him  a  present  of  about  four  hundred  sterling  on 
the  occasion  of  his  daughter's  marriage. 

In  his  youth  he  wrote  on  the  decline  of  eloquence,  so  that 
he  has  sometimes  been  credited  with  the  dialogue  on  the  sub- 
ject ascribed  to  Tacitus;  but  the  conjecture  is  quite  un- 
lounded,  for  it  would  have  come  down  to  us  under  his  name, 
like  the  collection  of  declamations  which  seems  to  have  been 
ascribed  to  him  in  the  third  century. 

»  Apparently  he  was  at  Rome  with  his  father,  a  rhetorician  too,  and  a 
contemporary  of  the  elder  Seneca:  in  his  youth,  if  St.  Jerome's  notice  in 
his  supplement  to  Eusebius  is  correct,  his  father's  success  was  not  enough 
to  encourage  him  to  remain  in  Rome. 


m 


172 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


QUINCTILIAN-. 


173 


In  point  of  fiKt,  we  know  that  he  did  declaim  in  public,  for 
he  speaks'  of  his  memory,  which  enabled  him  to  compliment  a 
distinguished  hearer  who  came  in  during  the  performance  by 
repeating  verbatim  what  he  had  said  before  his  arrival.  He 
never  speaks  of  publishing  his  declamations,  and  if  they  were 
reported  he  had  no  occasion  to  mention  them,  for  it  is  quite 
incidentally,  in  mentioning  the  one  speech  which  he  did  pub- 
lish, that  he  is  led  to  observe  that  the  published  reports  of  all 
his  other  speeches  were  altogether  unauthorized.  He  seems 
to  have  succeeded  to  his  own  satisfaction  as  an  advocate,  for 
he  ventures  to  illustrate  a  thesis  now  and  again  from  his  own 
speeches,  though  he  prefers  explaining  the  points  which  he 
had  to  make,  and  did  make,  to  quoting  what  he  expected  to 
be  in  the  hands  of  all  his  readers. 

His  lectures,  like  his  declamations,  were  reported  by  zealous 
disciples,  and  he  occasionally  has  to  correct  their  misreports, 
and  to  avow  changes  in  his  own  opinions  in  the  published 
lectures.  Apparently  he  found  another  work  in  possession  of 
the  field,  for  he  repeatedly  criticises  Celsus  as  if  he  passed  for 
an  authority.  He  gives  a  very  large  field  to  the  subject, 
makinii  the  training  of  an  orator  include  all  education,  for  he 
holds  strongly  to  the  doctrine  that  a  good  orator  is  ipso  facto  a 
good  man  :  the  question  had  a  practical  side  to  it,  for  the 
patronus  was  sinking  into  the  causidicus,  and  Quinctilian  was 
disposed  to  protest  against  the  change  with  indirect  solem- 
nity. 

Like  the  elder  Pliny,  he  begins  his  work  with  a  table  of 
contents.  The  first  book  deals  with  what  the  pupil  has  to 
learn  before  he  is  ready  to  go  to  the  rhetorician,  and  contains 
Quinctilian's  views  of  grammar,  which  are  rather  safe  than 
suir2:estive.  In  the  second  book  he  ventilates  his  views  on 
rhetoric  in  general,  and  plays  fast  and  loose  with  his  ideal  of  a 
virtuous  advocate.  Then  come  five  books  on  the  choice  of 
topics  and  the  arrangement  of  the  heads  of  a  speech,  in  which 
the  author  attempts  to  simplify  the  rules  invented  by  Greek 
rhetoricians.  He  always  tends  to  common-sense,  and  dis- 
courages what  savors  of  paradox,  and  therefore  rebukes  all 

» XI.  ii.  39. 


\ 


the  ferocious  ingenuities  of  Severus  Cassius.  The  illustrations 
are  taken  by  preference  from  Cicero  and  Vergil.  The  author 
chooses  Vergil  and  other  poets  because  he  wishes  to  be  at- 
tractive ;  but  he  chooses  Cicero  out  of  a  principle  of  delib- 
erate preference.  He  nowhere  explains  his  reasons  for  setting 
Cicero  above  all  Latin  orators,  he  enumerates  the  points  in 
which  an  orator  who  knew  Cicero  might  improve  himself  by 
studying  others  ;  but  his  real  inarticulate  conviction  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  famous  words, "  Is  nuiltum  se  profecisse  sciat 
cui  Cicero  valde  placebit." 

Then  come  four  books  on  elocution,  a  subject  which  is 
stretched  very  w'ide  :  it  is  made  to  include  both  memory  and 
gesture  and  dress.  Memory  again  includes  not  only  the  art 
of  learning  a  speech  by  heart  and  keeping  the  whole  of  a  case 
in  mind,  but  also  the  art  of  illustration  ;  for  an  advocate  with  a 
well-stored  mind  would  of  course  be  able  to  produce  a  much 
greater  effect  than  one  who  knew  nothing  but  his  case.  Ac- 
cordingly the  tenth  book  is  devoted  to  a  sort  of  review  of 
Roman  literature  as  profitable  to  the  orator.  One  may  say 
of  the  whole  that  it  is  extremely  well  adapted  for  its  purpose  \ 
it  would  be,  for  an  aspiring  advocate  of  fliir  intelligence,  an 
admirable  guide  in  his  reading.  As  a  contribution  to  literary 
history  it  is  disappointing:  the  remarks  are  sensible,  but 
obvious :  the  chief  use  of  them  to  us  is  that  Quinctilian's  si- 
lence or  depreciatory  candor  lessens  our  regret  for  many 
works  which  contemporaries  praised.  Even  here  we  cannot 
trust  him.  He  tells  us  that  the  only  lyric  poet  worth  reading 
is  Horace,  and  very  properly  criticises  the  occasional  unfit- 
ness of  that  poet  for  the  study  of  youth.  Of  course  Catullus 
is  still  more  unfit  for  miscellaneous  reading,  but  Quinctilian 
passes  him  over  altogether.  The  writer  upon  whom  he  is 
fullest  is  Seneca,  whom  he  reserves  to  the  last  because  he 
was  the  chief  representative  of  the  fashion  against  which 
Quinctilian  was  inclined  to  protest.  The  protest  is  candid 
and  respectful,  and  not  instructive  :  he  says  nothing  which  any 
cool  reader  of  Seneca  might  not  say  for  himself;  he  says 
nothing  of  the  moral  contrasts  which  are  the  most  remarkable 
thing  in  Seneca,  perhaps  because  he  is  not  himself  in  opposi- 


i 


174 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


QUINCTILIAN. 


75 


tion.  This  makes  his  criticism,  such  as  it  is,  of  the  early 
orators  of  the  empire  interesting,  because  he  is  the  only  writer 
who  has  no  political  bias  against  them.  Upon  Lucan  he 
makes  the  obvious  and  false  observation  that  he  would  have 
been  a  very  great  writer  if  he  had  lived  to  correct  the  fire  and 
exuberance  of  his  youth  by  his  maturer  judgment.  History 
does  not  supply  a  single  case  of  a  writer  who  has  written  a 
work  as  vast  and  powerful  as  the  "Pharsalia"  before  attain- 
ino-  his  maturity,  and  has  afterwards  chastened  and  refined 

himself. 

As  to  etiquette,  Quinctilian  is  not  uninstructive.     ^\  e  learn 
that  the  toga  had  been  rehabilitated,  and  that  the  vicious 
custom  of  speaking  in  the  lacerna  had  been  abolished  :  for  the 
writer  assumes  that  an  advocate  will  wear  the  toga,  and  requires 
to  be  told  how  to  wear  it.     We  are  half-way  to  the  state  of 
things  described  by  Tertullian,  when  the  toga  was  made  up  ni 
the  most  becoming  way,  and  damped  so  that  it  might  be  fitted 
into  graceful  folds,  after  which  the  wearer  had  to  slip  it  on, 
if  he  could,  without  disarranging  them.     As  to  other  matters, 
Quinctilian  is  very  particular  in  his  directions :  for  instance, 
he  rebukes  Pliny  the  Elder  for  prohibiting  a  gesture  which 
would  ruffle  the  hair,  since  Pliny  very  properly  objected  to 
elaborate  hair-dressing.    The  author  describes  the  tone  appro- 
priate to  each  of  many  famous  phrases  of  Cicero,^  and  what 
would  be  the  appropriate  motion  of  the  fingers  to  express 

every  word. 

The  declamations  which  have  come  to  us  under  the 
name  of  Quinctilian  are  full  of  fliults  which  he  rebukes,  but 
they  are  more  sober,  less  unreal,  and  less  brilliant  than  those 
which  we  know  from  the  elder  Seneca.  There  is  much  less 
about  tyrannicide,  less,  too,  about  fathers  disowning  their  sons ; 
there  is  an  attempt  every  now  and  then  at  actuality :  for  in- 
stance, there  are  several  declamations  on  the  subject  of  suicide 
as  limited  by  human  laws,  and  there  is  a  reference  to  the  act- 
ual legislation  of  Marseilles.  Again,  a  young  man  is  disowned 
because,  in  spite  of  his  father's  disapproval,  he  insisted  on  ful- 
filling his  promise  to  provide  for  the  family  of  a  poor  friend. 


The  father  was  clearly  unreasonable,  as  the  son  had  been 
taken  by  pirates,  and  sold  for  a  gladiator,  and  the  friend  took 
his  place  and  was  killed.  It  is  noticeable,  too,  that  the  class 
of  themes  which  arose  out  of  the  imaginary  rights  of  ravished 
women  has  nearly  disappeared. 


»  XI.  iii.  148. 


E.  g.  XI.  iii.  97- 


176 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


FRONTINUS. 


177 


CHAPTER  IV. 

FRONTIXUS. 

Another  decorous  and  loyal  writer  was  Sextus  Julius  Fron- 
tinus,  who  survived  Quinctilian  for  eight  years  and  Domitian 
for  seven,  and  who  was  employed  under  Domitian  as  a  land- 
surveyor,  and  afterwards  commanded  against  the  Lingones  in 
Gaul  and  the  Silures  in  Britain,  and  his  final  employment  as 
a  consular  was  the  charge  of  the  aqueducts  at  Rome.     Every 
office  produced  a  book,  and  his  military  service  produced  two. 
His  work  on  land-surveying'  has  only  reached  us  in  a  few  frag- 
mentary excerpts  :  "De  Agrorum  Qualitate,"  *'De  Controver- 
siis,"  "  De  Limitibus,"  "  De  Controversiis  Aquarum."     It  was 
written  under  Domitian  ;  but  after  the  invasion  of  Dacia,  and 
as  he  mentions  his  work  as  early,  it  has  been  suggested  that 
there  must  have  been  another  Frontinus  who  wrote  on  the 
same  subject.     He  wrote  a  tactical  work,  perhaps  in  Greek— 
at   any  rate,  ^lian   spoke  respectfully  of  his  knowledge  of 
Greek  tactics,  and  Vegetius  uses  him  for  Roman  tactics.    This 
work  has  been  lost ;  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  illustrative 
matter  has  been  collected  as  an  appendix  to  the  manual  of 
military   devices  which   has  reached  us  under  the  title  of 
*'  Stratefrematon."  The  first  treats  of  what  has  to  be  done  before 
en^rao-inir,  the  second  of  what  has  to   be  done  in   and   after 
action,  the  third  of  forming  and  raising  sieges.     The  anec- 
dotes are  not  particularly  authentic  or  accurate— for  instance, 
we  are  told  that  it  was  Croesus  instead  of  Cyrus  who  frighten- 
ed his  enemies'  cavalry  by  his  camelry — but  they  are  seldom 
too  far  from  fact  to  be  suggestive.     The  writer  observes  that 
it  would  be  easy  to  supplement  his  collection,  and  it  seems  to 

'-  The  proper  title  of  this  class  of  works  is  gromatic,  from  groma,  or 
gnt7Ha,  a  surveyor's  pole. 


^1 


have  been  the  fashion  to  do  so  to  such  an  extent  that  what  he 
had  inserted  in  one  place  was  put  in  another ;  whence  it  some- 
times followed  that  the  interpolation  has  displaced  the  origi- 
nal passage.  The  interpolations  are  identified  by  the  formu- 
Ise  which  introduce  them.  The  original  work  consisted  of 
instances  of  a  special  kind  of  ingenuity,  each  instance  with 
the  name  of  one  commander;  but  the  interpolations  link  the 
instances  together  with  "the  same  man,"  or  "likewise,"  or 
"  also,"  or  give  the  story  as  a  tradition.  The  fourth  book,  so 
called,  is  full  of  stories  which  appear  in  the  earlier  ones  : 
many  of  the  rest  seem  to  be  taken  from  Valerius  Maximus. 
The  compiler  in  a  pompous  preface  claims  to  be  fulfilling  a 
promise  which  he  had  made  in  the  interpolated  preface  of  the 
first  book  ;  so  that  it  is  not  unlikely  that  he  was  really  intent 
on  giving  all  the  stories  which  circulated  under  the  name  of 
Frontinus. 

The  last  work  of  Frontinus  is  his  best :  it  is  an  account  of 
the  aqueducts  of  Rome,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  man  who 
has  to  administer  them,  not  from  that  of  a  man  who  has  to 
construct  them.  He  gives  a  list  of  them,  and  the  distance  of 
the  source  of  supply  from  Rome,  and  the  length  of  each  aque- 
duct, and  what  proportion  of  it  is  carried  upon  arches.  Occa- 
sionally he  ventures  a  doubt  whether  the  aqueduct  was  worth 
building:  the  Aqua  Alsietina  was  not  used  to  drink  and  was 
not  wanted,  and  Frontinus  can  only  suppose  that  Augustus 
objected  to  wasting  good  water  on  a  sham  sea-fight.  The 
author  seems  inclined  to  a^rree  with  "  Vitruvius  and  the 
plumbers  "  that  the  true  meaning  of  a  "  quinary  "  pipe  is  not  a 
pipe  holding  five  times  as  much  as  a  pipe  with  an  opening 
round  or  square  of  a  twelfth  or  a  sixteenth  of  a  foot,  but  a  pipe 
made  by  folding  a  piece  of  metal  five  twelfths  or  sixteenths 
of  a  foot  in  width  into  a  square  or  round  channel.  The  water- 
supply  of  Rome  was  not  felt  to  be  abundant  until  the  Aqua 
Claudia  had  been  completed.  As  late  as  the  reign  of  Augustus 
the  senate  had  to  decree  that  the  number  of  public  fountains 
should  neither  be  increased  nor  diminished.  Even  when  Fron- 
tinus wrote,  the  right  of  private  persons  to  tap  an  aqueduct 
was  jealously  limited.    It  was  feared  that  the  pipes  would  leak 

II.— 8* 


i 


lyS 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUBE. 


TACITUS. 


179 


if  they  were  tapped,  and  so  the  rule  was  that  the  water  could 
only  be  drawn  from  a  reservoir,  and  this  involved  the  erection 
of  joint  private  reservoirs,  which  were  under  the  superintend- 
ence of  Frontinus ;  it  being  his  business  to  choose  suitable 
spots  within  and  without  the  city.  Still,  he  insists  on  the  rule 
that  water  privileges  are  absolutely  personal  :  they  do  not 
pass  to  heirs,  or  pass  with  the  lands.  Apparently  it  was  essen- 
tial to  reserve  the  whole  of  the  emperor's  patronage,  though  it 
is  scarcely  possible  that  the  successors  of  subscribers  to  a  pri- 
vate reservoir  can  have  been  refused  when  they  applied  for  a 
new  privilege.  On  the  other  hand,  baths  had  a  prescriptive 
right  to  their  supplies:  Nerva  is  praised  for  restoring  the 
water-rents  to  the  state;  Domitian  had  put  them  into  his  privy 

purse. 

He  treats  Domitian  upon  the  whole  respectfully  :  he  praises 
him  in  his  earliest  work  for  relieving  all  Italy  from  its  alarm 
lest  the  state  should  assert  its  rights  over  the  strips  of  land 
which  fell  outside  the  rectangles  which  were  surveyed  for  pri- 
vate  ownership  ;  he  gives  in  the  *'  Strategematon  "  an  honorable 
place  to  the  way  in  which  he  (we  are  to  understand  his  generals 
acting  under  his  auspices)  baffled  the  Germans ;  he  speaks  of 
him  as  "a  high  commander,"  but  apparently  his  respect  is 
paid  quite  as  much  to  the  office  as  to  the  man.     There  is 
nothing  of  the  homage  to  Domitian  personally  which  we  find 
in  Martial  or  even  Quinctilian.     Perhaps  Frontinus  had  too 
much  self-complacency  to  feed  another's  vanity.     This  rather 
grew  upon  him :  he  wrote  upon  the  business  of  his  earlier 
offices  when  he  had  retired  from  them  ;  he  wrote  on  the  busi- 
ness of  his  last  soon  after  his  appointment.     He  crowned  his 
career  by  forbidding  his  heirs  to  spend  anything  on  his  mon- 
ument: he  hoped  the  deserts  of  his  life  would  perpetuate  his 
memory.     His  style  is  admirably  direct  and  simple  :  perhaps 
it  would  be  better   if  his    technical    vocabulary  were    more 
copious. 


f\ 


CHAPTER  V. 

TACITUS. 

Tacitus  stands  alone  in  the  Flavian  period  :  he  is  the  only 
v/riter  who  would  not  resemble  the  Augustan  age  if  he  could. 
In  his  early  works  he  is  still  to  some  extent  under  the  influence 
of  the  neo-classical  fashion  of  which  Quinctilian  was  the  theo- 
rist. The  older  he  grew,  the  further  he  withdrew  from  ordinary 
speech  into  a  systematic  exaggerated  mannerism,  founded  part- 
ly upon  Sallust,  partly  on  one  side  of  the  work  of  the  rhetori- 
cians and  of  Seneca.  One  can  trace  the  growth  of  this  man- 
nerism from  its  beginning,  in  the  "  Agricola  "  and  "  Germany," 
through  its  development  in  the  "  Histories  "  to  its  culmination 
in  the  "Annals."  The  "Dialogue  on  Oratory"  is  so  like 
ordinary  Latin,  and  has  so  few  of  the  peculiarities  of  Tacitus, 
or  even  of  the  "  silver  age,"  that  it  has  been  doubted  whether 
it  was  his  work  at  all,  for  the  same  reason  as  modern  readers 
might  doubt  the  genuineness  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  early  essays  in 
the  Edinburgh  Revieiv  if  he  had  not  collected  them  himself. 
Tacitus  himself  was  a  famous  orator:  he  was  selected  by  the 
senate  to  conduct  the  prosecution  of  Marius ;  which  is  a  proof, 
stronger  than  the  friendly  admiration  of  the  younger  Pliny, 
that  he  ranked  among  the  first  orators  of  the  day.  We  may 
well  believe,  as  Pliny  tells  us,  that  the  characteristic  of  his  ora- 
tory was  o-f/ij'orr/c,  which  is  inadequately  translated  "dignity." 
That  Tacitus  was  an  orator  at  all  proves  that  he  had  the 
power  of  keeping  his  mannerism  under  control,  though  (te^voti^q 
probably  includes  a  good  deal  of  proud  reserve.  Still,  sarcas- 
tic innuendoes  can  only  be  occasional  ornaments  of  oratory, 
while  they  may  be  made  almost  the  staple  of  history.  Of 
course,  too,  a  history  is  a  long  work  compared  with  the  long- 
est oration,  and,  if  the  author's  idiosyncrasy  is  such  as  to  find 


i8o 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


relief  in  mannerism,  the  mannerism  has  room  to  grow.     The 
perfect  transparency  of  Caesar's  style  is  unique,  but  Livy  and 
even  Sallust  resemble  Caesar  in  telling  a  straightforward  story. 
Livy  strives  to  tell  his  story  fully;  Sallust,  though  he  over- 
lays his  story  with  reflections,  strives  to  gives  facts  and  reflec- 
tions alike  in  the  curtest  possible  phrases  :  still,  both  tell  their 
story,  and  tell  it  to  the  reader.    Tacitus,  on  the  contrary,  seems 
always  to  be  soliloquizing  about  events  which  he  despises  too 
much  to  describe  plainly.     He  often  expresses  his  contempt 
for  his  subject,  especially  in  the  "Annals;"  and  even  in  the 
preface  to  the  '' Histories  "  he  says  that  he  has  reserved  the 
reigns  of  Nerva  and  Trajan  for  his  old  age,  as  a  subject  at 
once  more  fruitful  and  safer  to  handle.     We  can  understand 
that  it  was  difficult  to  write  of  the  reign  of  Domitian  without 
giving  offence  to  families  which  had   risen  by  abetting  his 
tyranny.     But  it  is  strange  that  he  should  have  felt  the  subject 
of  the  ''  Histories  "  barren  :  the  civil  wars  which  accompanied 
and  followed  the  fall  of  Nero  were  among  the  most  dramatic 
events  in  Roman  history,  and  the  checkered  campaigns  of 
Domitian  in  Dacia  were  interesting  in  a  way  that  Trajan's 
perfectly  organized  military  promenades  can  hardly  have  been. 
We  should  have  been  surprised  if  a  historian  of  the  Indian 
empire  had  found  the  Chinese  wars  more  interesting  than  the 
days  of  the  IMutiny,  or  the  Sikh  or  Afghan  campaigns.     Of 
course  Trajan  was  a  masterly  commander,  and  it  was  possible 
to  dwell  upon  his  operations  in  detail  with  entire  complacen- 
cv,  while  the  scenery  of  his  exploits  was  unfamiliar,  and  very 
meagre  descriptions  were  acceptable  to  Roman  curiosity.     It 
is  true,  also,  that  the  wars  of  Trajan  were  an  attractive  subject 
to  a  Roman  aristocrat,  because  they  were  comparatively  Hke 
the  wars  of  the  republic,  to  which  Tacitus  looks  back  with  im- 
placable regret.     The  dull  feud  which  always  raged  between 
the  senate  and  the  emperor,  unless  the  emperor  was  a  general 
of  approved  merit  like  Vespasian  or  Trajan,  or  could  find  a 
distraction,  like  Hadrian,  in  endless  tours  of  inspection,  bore 
no  resemblance  to  the  struggles  between  the  fathers  and  com- 
mons, or  to  the  rivalries  of  military  chiefs,  each  of  which 
Tacitus  thought  a  happier  subject  than  his  own. 


TACITUS. 


i8i 


Tacitus  is  a  writer  who  is  inspired  by  his  antipathies,  like 
Balzac  and  Thackeray  :  he  always  succeeds  best  in  analyzing 
what  disgusts  him.  The  sum  and  centre  of  Roman  history  in 
his  judgment  is  precisely  the  fatal  conflict  between  the  ruler 
and  the  opinion  of  the  capital  as  represented  by  the  aristocracy. 
He  passes  over  all  the  questions  which  seem  fundamental  to 
a  modern  reader  :  what  was  the  position  of  the  provinces  under 
the  empire ;  what  was  the  power  of  the  army ;  what  was  the 
character  of  that  singular  institution,  the  praetorian  guard, 
which  in  the  first  century  appears  as  the  bulwark  of  the  em- 
peror against  the  senate,  and  to  a  certain  extent  against  the 
armies  of  the  frontier ;  in  the  third  century,  as  the  bulwark  of 
the  senate  against  the  emperor  and  the  armies  of  the  frontier. 

It  is  true  that  in  the  "  Histories,"  and  still  more  in  the  "An- 
nals," Tacitus  is  at  an  awkward  distance  from  his  subject.  In 
the  first  place,  he  is  a  continuator  :  he  tells  us  at  the  opening 
of  the  "  Histories  "  that  many  writers  had  treated  the  820  years 
from  the  foundation  of  the  city,  so  he  begins  at  once  with  the 
821st,  although  he  is  profoundly  dissatisfied  with  his  immedi- 
ate predecessors.  Down  to  the  battle  of  Actium  the  history 
had  been  the  history  of  the  Roman  people,  and  had  been 
written  with  eloquence  and  freedom,  the  two  going  naturally 
together ;  afterwards  there  was  nothing  but  flatterers  or  pam- 
phleteers. The  latter  were  the  most  eloquent,  but  Tacitus 
distinctly  aims  at  impartiality,  at  any  rate  in  the  "Histories:" 
he  boasts  that  he  had  received  no  benefit  and  no  injury  from 
Galba,  Otho,  or  Vitellius,  and  that  he  was  under  equal  obliga- 
tions to  all  the  members  of  the  Flavian  dynasty ;  so  that  he 
could  treat  the  worst  fairly.  It  is  obvious  that  Tacitus,  like 
other  continuators,  was  at  a  disadvantage  compared  with  his- 
torians of  the  older  school,  who  either  gave  a  complete  history 
of  the  city,  or,  like  Sallust  and  Arruntius,  treated  a  single  epi- 
sode. In  either  case  the  staple  of  the  narrative  was  a  com- 
pilation from  the  writings  of  previous  authors :  the  compiler 
relied  upon  his  superiority  in  style  and  judgment ;  and  in  either 
case  was  expected  to  tell  everything  that  he  knew.  The  sta- 
ple of  the  work  of  the  historians  of  the  empire  was  the  tradi- 
tion of  good  society:  the 'best  source  for  the  secret  history, 


l82 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


which  it  was  the  principal  endeavor  of  every  writer  to  give, 
was  practically  inaccessible.     We  read  that  after   Mucianus 


had  entered  Rome  as  re 


i^ent,  the  leaders  of  the  independent 


party  in  the  senate  appealed  to  him  to  allow  the  senate  to  in- 
spect the  "Imperial  Commentaries:"  whence  it  would  appear 
who  was  responsible  for  the  different  accusations  which  had 
thinned  their  ranks.     The  senate  knew  who  had  conducted 
the  prosecutions,  or  who  would  have  conducted  them  if  the 
victims  had  not  anticipated  condemnation  by  suicide  j   but 
the  ostensible  prosecutors  always  professed  that  they  acted  on 
the  emperor's  orders,  or  at  least  that  they  had  some  special 
reason  to  propitiate  (he  emperor:  the  "Imperial  Commenta- 
ries "  contained  confidential  and  trustworthy  information  upon 
this  and  other  points.     But  they  were  obviously  reserved  for 
the  exclusive  use  of  the  emperor.     Nero  during  the  best  part 
of  his  reign  never  thought  of  producing  them,  when  Suillius 
declared  that  he  had  prosecuted  Asiaticus  by  the  orders  of 
Claudius;    instead,  he    simply  pledged  his  word  that   they 
proved   the  falsehood  of  Suillius's  defence,  as  "his  father" 
Claudius  had  never  ordered  any  prosecution  at  all.     In  de- 
fault of  such  documents,  writers  had  to  draw  upon  the  official 
records  (which  were  very  tedious  and  full  of  trivialities  and 
falsifications),  and  the  oral  tradition  of  good  society,  which 
was  full  of  partialities,  supplemented  by  the  memoirs  of  the 
agents,  which  were  incomplete  and  colored  by  personal  pre- 
possessions.    There  was  no  publicity,  and  under  most  reigns 
curiosity  was  unsafe.     Tacitus  gives  as  a  reason  for  the  un- 
satisfactory way  historians  had  treated  the  period  between  the 
battle  of  Actium  and  the  fall  of  Nero,  that  men  in  general 
knew  nothing  of  the  public  business,  which  was  no  business 

of  theirs. 

And  this  feeling  tells  upon  Tacitus  himself.  He  never 
cares  to  explain  any  of  the  administrative  measures  of  the 
emperor :  he  notes  them  in  passing,  with  a  word  or  two  of 
praise  if  he  thinks  it  deserved.  '  For  instance,  the  centurions 
had  been  in  the  habit  of  taxing  those  among  the  rank  and  file 
who  were  best  off,  to  pay  for  furloughs  and  relief  from  fatigue- 
duty;  and  if  they  preferred  to  stay  in  camp  and  attend  to 


TACITUS. 


183 


their  ordinary  duties,  still  the  centurions  secured  their  black- 
HTiail  by  heaping  extra  work  upon  them  till  they  yielded.    One 
would  imagine  the  natural  remedy  would  have  been  to  have 
raised  the  centurions'  pay,  and  to  have  allowed  the  rank  and 
file  their  holidays  at  regular  intervals  without  payment.     In- 
stead, Otho,  when  he  decided  to  redress  a  grievance  that  had 
been  festering  at  least  since  the  accession  of  Tiberius,  simply 
charged  the  fees  for  furloughs  on  the  exchequer.    Vitellius,  the 
private  soldier's  emperor,  of  course  maintained  Otho's  reform, 
and  Tacitus  informs  us  that  even  good  princes  did  the  same. 
Here  the  event  is  explained,  though  at  much  less  length  than 
Tacitus  thinks  necessary  in  dealing  with  a  state  trial  of  second- 
ary importance.     But  very  often  the  narrative  is  so  brief  as 
to  be  obscure  to  all  except  contemporaries.     What  were  the 
surcharges*  of  2  per  cent,  and  2\  per  cent,  that  were  abolished 
by  Nero  and  had  not  been  re-established  when  Tacitus  wrote? 
Were  the  indirect  taxes  which  Nero  wished  to  abolish  alto- 
gether the  taxes  of  the  whole  empire,  or,  as  Dean  Merivale 
thinks,  simply  such  indirect  taxes  as  were  levied  in  Italy  or 
the  towns  which  had  the  privileges  of  colonies?    According  to 
Tacitus,  it  was  the  people  of  Rome  who  complained ;  and  yet 
the  abolition  of  the  taxes,^  whatever  they  were,  was  to  be  a 
boon  to  the  human  race.     Again,  what  was  the  nature  of  the 
occasion  when  the  solvency  of  the  state  was  in  danger  and  pro- 
tected by  an  advance,  apparently  from  the  exchequer  to  the 
treasury,^of320,ooo/.?  What  was  the  precise  nature  of  the  finan- 
cial measures  by  which  Tiberius  averted  a  general  bankruptcy? 
In  fact,  the  personalities  of  history  have  a  much  larger  in- 
terest for  Tacitus  than  for  most  classical  historians;  and,  as 
it  has  been  noticed,  this  peculiarity  grew  upon  him :  it  is  far 
more  conspicuous  in  the  "  Annals  "  than  in  the  "  Histories," 
partly,  no  doubt,  because  the  period  covered  by  the  part  of 
the  "  Histories  "  we  have  left  is  so  full  of  military  revolts  and 
national  insurrections,  that  it  was  impossible  to  treat  the  fate 
of  individual  nobles  as  of  paramount  importance.     Besides, 
while  the  armies  were  fighting  out  the  question  who  should  be 
emperor,  the  emperor  who  was  in  possession  of  the  capital  for 
»  "  Ann."  XIII.  li.  2.         '        ""  lb.  1.  I.  '  lb.  xxxi.  2. 


i84 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


the  time  being  was  not  likely  to  molest  the  nobility  who  gave 
him  a  compulsory  allegiance  ;  which,  so  far  as  it  went,  was 
quite  sincere;  for,  when  armies  were  in  the  field,  the  intrigues 
of  the  senate  were  powerless.  But  in  quiet  times  the  really 
significant  events  were  increasingly  impersonal,  and  Tacitus's 
ideal  of  history  is  a  narrative  of  the  achievements  of  famous 
individuals,  and  he  imagines  that  the  next  best  thing  is  a  nar- 
rative of  the  baffled  achievements  of  a  few,  like  Corbulo  and 
Agricola,  who  might  have  done  more  but  for  the  empire;  and 
the  more  or  less  dignified  sufferings  of  the  more  numerous 
notabilities,  great  and  small,  who,  thanks  to  the  empire,  had  to 
fight  out  their  quarrels  by  secret  denunciations  in  the  palace, 
instead  of  by  the  more  manly  and  less  deadly  struggles  of  the 
forum  and  the  senate-house. 

The  feeling  that  the  empire  lowered  the  standard  of  indi- 
vidual life  is  surprisingly  strong  in  Tacitus,  considering  that 
he  rose  himself  higher  and  more  rapidly  than  he  could  have 
done  under  the  republic;  but  it  never  occurs  to  him  to  rank 
ia  carriere  ouverte  aux  talents  as  any  compensation  for  the  evils 
of  the  empire.     In  his  earliest  work  of  all,  the  "  Dialogue  on 
Oratory,"  we  have  already  a  clear  perception  how  the  empire 
dwarfed  Roman  life.     Maternus  has  to  mutilate  his  tragedy 
of  "  Cato,-'  and  the  reader  is  hardly  expected  to  be  so  well 
satisfied  as  Maternus  professes  to  be  with  the  compromise  of 
putting  the  same  speeches  into  the  mouth  of  Thyestes.     It  is 
roundly  laid  down  that  the  empire  in  establishing  order  had 
ruined  oratory.     Tacitus  does  not  disparage  the  transcenden- 
tal explanation  that  genius,  and  therefore  oratorical  genius,  has 
times  and  seasons  of  its  own,  incalculable  to  man:  he  dwells, 
with  rather  exaggerated  emphasis,  on  the  mischief  done  to 
eloquence  by  an  exclusive  and  fantastic  rhetorical  training; 
but  he  insists  that  the  decisive  cause  is,  that  orators  are  of 
much  less  consequence  than  they  used  to  be.     He  professes, 
indeed,  to  think  that  this  is  a  change  to  the  advantage  of  every 
one  but  the  orators  :  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  have  the 
eloquence  of  the  Gracchi  sounding  again  in  the  forum  at  the 
price  of  having  to  vote  upon  their  laws. 

AVe  cannot  fix  the  period  at  which  the  dialogue  was  written 


TACITUS. 


185 


precisely:  it  purports  to  have  been  held  75  a.d.,'  the  sixth 
year  of  the  reign  of  Vespasian ;  but  the  author  speaks  as  if 
he  had  to  go  back  some  distance  to  recover  the  memories  of 
his  first  youth,  when  he  resorted,  with  exaggerated  expectation, 
to  the  most  famous  of  such  orators  as  were  still  to  be  found 
in  his  days.  Any  time  in  the  reign  of  Titus  or  the  early  years 
of  Domitian  would  suit  these  indications  tolerably  well ;  at 
any  time  after  90  a.d.,  the  severities  of  Domitian's  govern- 
ment had  grown  so  excessive  that  the  deliberately  cheerful 
tone  of  the  writer  would  be  strange. 

The  dialogue  is  beautifully  written,  with  an  evident  imita- 
tion of  Cicero's  great  dialogue  "  De  Oratore  "—  upon  a  small- 
er scale.     Aper,  whom  we  only  know  from  the  dialogue,  and 
Julius  Secundus,  who  is  a  hero  of  Quinctilian's,  are  meant  to 
be  contrasted,  something  as  Antonius  and  Crassus  are  con- 
trasted in  Cicero.     Tacitus  reports  and  extenuates  the  unfa- 
vorable estimate  current  upon  each  of  his  heroes  exactly  in 
Cicero's  vein,  and  he  marks  the  transition  from  the  first  part 
of  the  dialogue  to  the  second  by  the  same  device  of  introduc- 
ing fresh  speakers.     In  Cicero,  Crassus  and  Antonius  first 
discuss  the  question  whether  the  orator  is  to  have  any  culture 
besides  what  is  necessary  to  his  business  as  advocate,  and 
then  describe  alternately  what  are  the  necessary  conditions 
of  his  education,  whether  he  takes  the  wider  or  the  narrower 
view  of  his  profession.     In  Tacitus,  the  first  stage  is  a  discus- 
sion of  the  comparative  merits  of  the  oratorical  and  poetical 
career,  conducted  by  Aper  and  Maternus,  who  is  almost  as 
obscure  as  a  poet  as  Aper  is  as  an  orator.     Quinctilian  sets  his 
tragedies  far  below  those  of  Pomponius  Secundus:  apparently 
his  fame  was  largely  due  to  a  tragedy  called  "Nero,"  which 
was  an  effective  pamphlet  against  the  misdoings  of  a  person- 
age disguised  under  the  name  of  Vatinius.     The  main  point 
of  Maternus's  speech  is  that  a  poet  is  as  famous  as  an  orator, 
and  lives  a  happier  and,  upon  the  whole,  a  safer  life.     Aper's 

•  The  absence  of  allusion  to  the  fate  of  Marcellus  Epiius,  who  was  con- 
victed of  conspiracy  against  Vespasian,  in  78  A.D.,  proves  this  :  there  are 
no  allusions  in  the  body  of  the  dialogue  in  "  De  Oratore  "  to  the  future  fate 
of  the  characters. 


1 86 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


reply  is  what  would  be  called  "realist:"  he  compares  the 
ridiculous  position  of  Saleius  Bassus,  who  has  to  beg  people 
to  come  and  hear  him  at  his  own  expense,  with  the  glorious 
position  of  Marcellus  Eprius  and  Vibius  Crispus,  whom  it  was 
worth  an  emperor's  while  to  court.     Their  adhesion  is  a  real 
boon  to  the  emperor,  while  Saleius  must  be  thankful  if  the 
imperial  munificence  should  enrich  him  with  a  sum  a  little 
over  the  equestrian  census.     The  contrast  between  the  style 
of  Maternus   and  Aper  is  interesting:   Aper  would  be  like 
Cicero  if  he  could  :  the  long  sentences  are  not  unlike,  although 
a  little  overlabored.     They  come  too  thick  together,  and  there 
is  too  much  logic  in  their  structure  and  too  little  swell  for  the 
illusion  to  be  perfect:  the  short  sentences  lack  Cicero's  sim- 
plicity and  animation.     There  is  a  gain  in  other  ways:  with- 
out encumbering  the  style,  greater  weight  and  significance  is 
given  to  individual  words.     For  instance,  we  are  told  that 
Marcellus  Eprius  had  no  bulwark  against  the  anger  of  the 
fathers  but  his  own  eloquence.     Cicero  might  have  carried 
the  figure  so  far:  Aper  goes  on  :  "Qua  accinctus  et  minax 
disertam  quidem  sed  inexercitatam  et  ejusmodi  certaminum 
rudem  Helvidii  sapientiam  elusit "— "  That  was  a  weapon  to 
be  girt  with  and  to  brandish,  good  to  baffle  Helvidius  and  his 
philosophy,  that  might  be  well  spoken,  but  lacked  exercise 
and  practice  in  such  strife."     Here  is  another  phrase,  which 
has  a  curious  felicity  beyond  the  age  of  Cicero.     If  the  orator 
comes  forward  with  something  fresh  and  newly  conned,  and 
his  spirit  quakes  a  little,  "  his  very  anxiety  gives  success  a 
grace  and  panders  to  the  pleasure" — "Ipsa  solicitudo  com- 
mendat  eventum  et  lenocinatur  voluptati." 

The  speech  of  Maternus,  we  are  told,  is  full  of  daring  flow- 
ers, fitter  for  a  poet  than  for  an  orator:  a  modern  reader 
hardly  recognizes  anything  beyond  the  bounds  of  prose,  except 
where  Maternus  speaks  of  Fame  (the  orator's  fame)  as  "pale" 
(with  fear).  The  prose,  however,  has  become  musical  and 
simple:  the  tendencies  of  the  silver  age  get  free  play;  abla- 
tives absolute  replace  conditional  clauses;  each  member  of 
the  sentence  is  generally  reduced  to  a  noun  or  two  and  a 
verb  or  two.     He  winds  up  with  a  wish  that  the  statue  on  his 


TACITUS. 


187 


tomb  may  have  a  smile  on  its  face  and  a  crown  on  its  head, 
and  that  his  memory  may  run  no  risk  of  official  honor  or  con- 
demnation. 

At  this  point  Messalla  comes  in,  and  apologizes  for  his 
intrusion,  as  he  finds  company;  when  reassured,  he  compli- 
ments Secundus  on  his  life  of  Julius  Grcecinus,  and  Aper, 
rather  ironically,  on  his  still  continuing  to  declaim  and  spend- 
ing his  leisure  in  the  studies  of  a  Greek  rhetorician  rather 
than  of  a  Roman  orator.  This  brings  us  to  the  real  subject, 
the  decline  of  oratory,  which  Messalla  has  often  wished  to 
have  explained,  and  cannot  believe  that  Aper  seriously  denies. 

Aper's  denial  is  hardly  serious :  he  will  not  allow  that  the 
orators  of  the  late  republic  and  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  are 
ancients  at  all;  he  even  quotes  an  aged  Briton,  still  alive, 
who  had  fought  against  Caesar,  and  so  might  have  heard 
Cicero.  This  is  a  cumbrous  way  of  saying  that  the  classical 
period  was  not  over,  and  that  the  orators  whom  censorious 
contemporaries  ranked  as  ancient  were  classical  writers  com- 
pared to  their  predecessors.  Aper  throws  his  real  strength 
into  a  contention  that  the  oratory  of  the  age  of  Cicero  and 
Messalla  and  Pollio  was  really  overrated,  and  still  more  over- 
praised ;  that,  in  fact,  few  who  praised  it  could  have  listened 
to  it  with  patience.  He  just  admits  that  Cicero  can  still  be 
read  with  some  approach  to  satisfaction,  and  that  Pollio's 
vocabulary  is  choicer  than  Cicero's,  as  Cicero's  was  choicer 
than  his  predecessors' ;  but  Cicero  is  very  long,  spends  much 
space  on  technicalities,  and  has  a  good  many  mannerisms. 
As  for  Pollio,  his  significance  is  that  he,  like  a  Cicero,  marks 
a  stage  of  the  gradual  progress  to  the  refinement  and  anima- 
tion of  the  fashionable  speakers  of  the  day.  Even  this  is  too 
ra>uch  honor  for  Messalla,  who  is  gently  ridiculed  for  always 
preluding  with  a  deprecatory  reference  to  his  health.  Aper 
insists  that  the  speaking  of  his  own  day  is  much  terser  and 
more  entertaining,  much  fuller  of  quotable  bits,  and  much  fit- 
ter for  the  ears  of  a  fiistidious  audience  than  the  speaking  of 
the  golden  age:  when  admirers  of  the  past  praise  its  speakers 
for  their  "  sound  and  healthy  style,"  this  is  only  a  confession 
that  such  speakers  had  little  vigor.     Messalla  takes  no  pains 


i88 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


to  meet  Aper's  criticisms;  he  does  not  pretend  that  all,  or 
nearly  all,  the  orations  of  the  Ciceronian  age  were  worth  read- 


ms: 


O  J 


he  does  not  care  to  deny  that  the  average  speaker  of  his 
own  day  commanded  a  more  brilliant  style.     His  case  is  that 
none  of  the  foshionable  speakers  had  left  any  durable  reputa- 
tion, while  the  dullest  speakers  of  the  age  of  Cicero  belonged 
in  a  way  to  literature.     It  would  have  been  invidious  to  retort 
Aper's  criticism  in  detail  upon  contemporary  speakers  or  those 
of  the  last  generation,  so  Messalla  assumes  the  decline  of 
eloquence,  and  only  discusses  the  reasons  for  it.     Even  these, 
he  maintains,  are  obvious,  and  his  explanation  is  rather  reti- 
cent:  symptoms  are  constantly  substituted  for  causes:  that 
children  were  left  to  Greek  nurses  and  pedagogues,  instead 
of  being  brought  up  by  their  mother  and  some  elderly  relative 
who  was  willing  to  act  as  governess,  was  an  effect  of  the  gen- 
eral decline  in  fiimily  pride;  that  rhetorical  training  should 
have  been  substituted  for  philosophical  culture  was  a  conse- 
quence of  the  growing  poverty  of  thought,  which  told  upon 
oratory  as  upon  other  things.     The  habit  of  speaking  in  the 
pcenula  was  no  doubt  unfavorable  for  oratorical  animation, 
but  animated  speakers  would  never  have  given  in  to  the  habit ; 
and  when  matters  were  reformed,  as  we  learn  they  were  from 
Juvenal,  to  the  extent  that  the  advocate  always  took  off  his 
wrapper  before  he  began,  eloquence  did  not  revive.     If  the 
public  had  cared  for  its  orators,  they  would  not  have  been 
reduced   to   reserve  their   set  speeches   for  the   centumviri. 
Messalla's  reserve  is  obviously  calculated:  he  sees,  as  has 
been    already  stated,  that  there   were  privileged  periods   at 
which  a  constellation  of  genius   appears,  and  that  the   tur- 
moil of  the  last  century  of  the  republic  was  admirably  fitted 
to  develop  oratorical  talent.     But,  after  all,  it  is  left  to  Ma- 
ternus,  the  uncalculating  poet,  to  close  the   discussion   for 
the  time  with  an  eloquent  harangue  on  the  price  of  political 

repose. 

There  is  more  apparent  originality,  both  of  subject  and  treat- 
ment, in  the  next  work  of  Tacitus  :  for,  though  it  was  the  fash- 
ion in  his  circle  to  compose  edifying  biographies  as  a  protest 
against  a  period  of  tyranny  that  was  over,  none  of  these  have 


TACITUS. 


189 


reached  us  except  the  "  Agricola."  This  is  at  once  a  political 
programme  and  a  panegyric  on  his  father-in-huv,  a  cautious 
and  respectable  officer,  who  performed  considerable  services 
in  Britain,  and  was  allowed  more  opportunities  of  distinguish- 
ing himself  than  an  emperor,  who  was  not  a  great  general 
himself,  could  commonly  allow  the  commander  of  a  distant 
frontier.  No  doubt  the  successes  of  Agricola  against  the  bar- 
barous Caledonians,  who  had  neither  arms  nor  discipline, 
passed  for  the  exploits  of  a  heaven-born  general  in  patriotic 
circles,  where  it  was  hoped  that  the  empire  would  be  discred- 
ited by  the  numerous  misfortunes  of  the  checkered  and  costly 
campaigns  against  the  Dacians  and  their  allies. 

Agricola  escaped  uninjured  from  the  zeal  of  his  friends;  he 
even  had  offers  of  further  employment,  though  Domitian's 
intimates  were  allowed  to  suggest  that  they  had  better  be  de- 
clined. The  real  offence  of  Domitian  in  the  matter  seems  to 
have  been  that  he  did  not  press  Agricola  to  accept  the  emol- 
uments of  the  office  he  refused;  and  this  was  aggravated  by 
what  passed  for  an  improper  curiosity  as  to  the  course  of  his 
last  illness. 

It  is  clear  from  the  preface  that  the  life  was  written  soon 
after  the  accession  of  Trajan,  and  the  author  apologizes  for 
the  stiffness  of  his  style  on  the  ground  that  under  the  reign  of 
Domitian  he  had  had  no  practice.  Already  he  was  meditat- 
ing a  work  on  his  own  times,  which  was  to  begin  with  an 
indictment  on  the  tyranny  that  had  gone  by,  and  end  with  a 
testimony  to  the  happiness  that  had  come  in  its  place.  The 
book  is  an  essay  on  the  advantage  of  being  a  good  and  loyal 
subject,  and  this  is  put  forward  with  the  air  of  discovery. 
Agricola  was  a  tribune  of  the  commons  under  Nero,  and  he 
did  not  give  himself  the  airs  of  a  Gracchus  or  a  Thrasea;  he 
was  quaestor  under  a  corrupt  superior,  whom  he  did  not  imi- 
tate or  denounce.  He  was  praetor  with  nothing  to  do  but  to 
preside  over  the  games,  and  he  did  not  attempt  to  do  any- 
thing. Vespasian  picked  him  out  to  be  the  legate  of  a  muti- 
nous legion  ;  he  kept  his  men  in  good  order,  and  pretended 
that  he  had  found  them  so.  He  was  employed,  and  discharged 
his  employments  well,  and 'got  more  credit  because  he  sought 


IQO 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


none.  When  in  command  he  gave  his  subordinates  due  credit, 
though  it  was  one  of  his  few  imprudences  to  give  offence  by 
harsh  language  (soon  forgotten  on  his  side)  when  he  was  not 
satisfied.  Nothing  that  Tacitus  tells  us  of  his  father-in-law 
proves  that  he  was  as  important  as  Suetonius  Paulinus  or 
Cerealis,  or  superior  to  Poppceus  Sabinus,  who  is  sneered  at 
for  attaining  imperial  friendship  and  prolonged  command  by 
being  up  to  his  work  and  not  above  it;  but  neither  Sabinus 
nor  Paulinus  nor  Cerealis  had  the  good  fortune  to  have  a 
jrreat  writer  for  a  son-in-law. 

The  style  of  the  "Agricola"  is  not  yet  the  mature  style  of 
Tacitus :  it  is  sometimes  rather  bald  than  severe,  rather  con- 
torted than  condensed.  The  epigrammatic  obscurity  is  con- 
fined to  reflections,  and  seldom  affects  the  narrative.  In  his 
later  works  Tacitus's  obscurity  seems  due  to  a  proud  reserve; 
he  is  full  of  thoughts,  and  will  not  let  them  overflow;  in  the 
"Agricola"  he  is  obscure  when  he  deviates  into  a  pretentious 
little  digression.  Here,  for  instance,  is  what  he  says  of  Agric- 
ola's  married  life:  "Vixeruntque  mira  concordia,  per  mutuam 
caritatem  et  invicem  se  anteponendo,  nisi  quod  in  bona  uxore 
tanto  major  laus  quanto  in  mala  plus  culpai  est."  Apparently 
he  means  that  the  love  of  both  was  equal  and  equally  merito- 
rious, except  that  the  wife  deserved  most  credit,  as  marriage  is 
more  to  a  woman  than  to  a  man.  Such  liberality  in  treating 
the  relation  of  the  sexes  is  not  conspicuous  in  Tacitus's  later 
writino-s,  where  we  should  not  have  had  to  remark  that  the 
qualifying  clause  (beginning  with  nisi)  refers  back  to  viutuam, 
ihouMi  it  logically  ought  to  refer  to  invicem  se  anteponendo. 
There  is  the  same  sententious  obscurity  in  a  passage  on  Agric- 
ola's  proetorship,  when  he  was  ////  longe  a  luxuria  ita  famce 
propior,  because  there  were  people  who  thought  it  distin- 
guished to  avoid  vulgar  expense  ;  though,  after  all,  Tacitus  does 
not  venture  to  say  that  Agricola  distinguished  himself  much. 
When  Cicero  tells  us  that  Crassus  the  orator  was  elegantium 
parcissimus,  as  Scaevola  the  jurist  \\2ls parconim  elegantissi?nus, 
he  is  quite  as  piquant  and  less  puzzling.  But,  apart  from  such 
surface  blemishes,  the  "Agricola"  is  a  masterpiece  of  biogra- 
phy; it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  more  eloquent  page  in  Latin 


TACITUS. 


191 


than  the  peroration,  which  begins  with  a  skilfully  veiled  apol- 
ogy for  Agricola's  personal  appearance,  who  looked,  it  seems, 
very  amiable  and  gentlemanlike,  and  rather  insignificant. 

There  is  nothing  equal  to  this  peroration  in  the  "Germa- 
nia,"  which  was  written  almost  immediately  after  the  "Agric- 
ola," in  the  second  consulship  of  Trajan,  and  is,  upon  the 
whole,  a  maturer,  though  a  less  interesting,  work.  It  is  at  once 
a  tribute  to  Pliny  the  Elder,  a  guide  to  the  country  which  it 
was  hoped  the  emperor  might  undertake  to  conquer,'  and  a 
pamphlet  against  the  corruptions  of  Rome.  Possibly  Tacitus 
himself  had  served  on  the  German  frontier,  for  in  the  "  His- 
tories "  he  describes  the  topography  of  Castra  Vetera  at  what 
seems  disproportionate  length.  The  work  is  more  remarka- 
ble for  insight  than  for  method;  and  one  rather  pines  for  the 
good  faith  of  Herodotus,  who  never  leaves  us  in  the  least 
doubt  as  to  the  sources  of  his  second-hand  intelligence.  Taci- 
tus's accepitnus  does  not  even  tell  us  whether  he  is  quoting 
from  books  or  from  travellers  or  from  natives.  He  has  no 
clear  conception  of  the  differences  of  race  beyond  the  Elbe, 
which  is  excusable,  as  he  tells  us  that  Roman  knowledge  of 
that  river  and  its  neighborhood  had  gone  back  since  the  days 
of  Augustus.  On  the  southeastern  frontier  he  is  aware  of 
differences  of  language,  but  he  lays  more  stress  upon  differ- 
ences of  customs.  The  Sarmatians,  who  always  moved  with 
their  cattle  when  they  changed  pasture,  are  distinguished 
clearly  in  Tacitus's  mind  from  the  Germans;  but  the  Lygii  and 
the  Venedi,  who  are  just  as  certainly  Slavonic,  were  settled  to 
the  same  extent  as  the  Germans  were,  and  Tacitus  was  not 
aware  that  they  spoke  a  different  language,  or  that  the  Fenni 
and  Estii  were  further  from  the  kindred  of  Rome  and  Greece 
than  any  of  the  races  of  Europe,  except  perhaps  the  Basques. 
So  far  as  his  opportunities  extended,  Tacitus  was  a  good  eth- 
nologist: he  notes  the  German  physiognomy  and  language  of 
the  Caledonians,  the  Iberian  affinities  of  the  Silures;  if  he  had 
known  that  Slavonic  was  spoken  generally  beyond  the  Elbe, 
he  would  have  noticed  it,  and  we  may  almost  infer  from  his 

^  Trajan  had  commanded  upon  the  Rhine,  and  was  the  first  to  com- 
mence the  fortification  of  the  frontier  of  the  Agri  Decumates. 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 
llence  that  German  was  the  language  of  fade  on  the  farthest 
Baltic  coasts  known  to  '"^^^^ f-'^''^^.^^^  ;,  better,  that  is, 
In  general   the  d«"f' °"  °    .^™     '%he  cmitatus  is 
clearer,  than  the  description  of  "-'^     °^^^;  imagination, 

tolerably  well  explan,ed  :  tt  was    tr.k  n     to  ^"^^^       ^ 

--=:hicn^:rrr:s-.f^^^ 

hi    fol  enters,  except  that,  in  a  general  way,  a  ch.ef  w>th  a 

'  "lt\r  ell  Xt  tl  e  h"  exactly  were,  and  doubtful 

possible  to  tel   what  tne  i  difficulty  about  the 

if  the  author  knew     ^^^^JS^or^Ucs  to  the  hereditary  or 
relation  of  the  local  elective  .  .      ,        osition 

mans,  bke  most  otne    sa^a.es    «  ^^^^^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^^_^ 

"^'  'Sus  s  a   pai      to  be  emphatic  and,  for  bim,  almost 
mans,  1  acitus  is  at  pains  lu  t-  ^^^  ^^^^^ 

^         5^    ••   ^  2  TK  xviii  ''.         Mb.vni.  3.  ID.  xv.  1. 

1  "  Germ.    xii.  3.  id.  xmh. -. 


TACITUS. 


193 


gifts  in  a  way  worthy  of  a  French  writer  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  remarks  upon  the  law  of  hostages  and  the  po- 
lygamy of  the  rulers  are  more  to  the  point,  though  modern 
readers  will  find  it  difficult  to  believe  that  masculine  caprice 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  latter.  In  other  points,  too,  he 
may  be  thought  credulous  :  he  narrates  that  the  Germans  de- 
liberate over  all  things  of  importance  drunk  as  well  as  sober, 
without  the  least  suspicion  that  their  sober  deliberations  were 
often  compromised  by  the  boasts  to  which  they  had  commit- 
ted themselves  in  their  cups.  One  may  notice  also  a  little  in- 
consistency in  the  description  of  German  dwellings.  We  are 
told  in  two  consecutive  sentences^  that  they  are  altogether 
without  ornament,  and  that  in  some  neighborhoods  they  are 
adorned  with  different-colored  earths. 

(The  style  of  the  "Germany"  is  already  the  mature  style 
of  Tacitus,  and  the  note  of  sarcasm  is  already  predominant. 
There  is  nothing  much  bitterer  in  any  of  his  writings  than  the 
passage  in  which  the  fall  of  the  Cherusci  is  traced  to  their 
becoming  peaceable,  good  neighbors;^  and  the  sneer  at  Rome 
is  bitter  enough  when  we  read  that  the  Germans  do  not  call 
it  the  way  of  the  world  to  corrupt  and  be  corrupted.^  The 
bitterness  is  quite  impartial  :  when  the  Germans  go  quietly 
into  slavery  for  a  gambling  debt,  they  call  it  honor,  and  Taci- 
tus calls  it  madness.* 

Of  the  early  works  of  Tacitus,  the  "Dialogue  on  Oratory" 
and  the  "  Germany  "  would  probably  have  been  forgotten  if 
they  had  not  been  by  the  author  of  the  "  Histories  "  and  the 
"Annals."  The  "Histories"  and  the  "Annals"  were  never 
popular  :  they  were  superseded  by  Suetonius,  who  confined 
himself  to  what  was  really  interesting  to  the  Roman  public. 
The  emperors  were  the  state,  and  all  that  the  world  cared  to 
remember  was  the  incidents  of  their  reigns,  and  the  authentic 
or  apocryphal  anecdotes  that  illustrated  their  character.  Most 
of  the  details  of  the  struggles  in  the  senate  and  the  frontier 
wars  lost  their  interest  for  the  public  as  soon  as  they  were 
over.  In  aristocratic  circles,  it  was  natural  that  all  these  bat- 
tles should  be  fought  again  keenly  for  two  or  three  genera- 

*  "Germ."  xvi.  3.         ^  lb.  xxx^vi.  2.         '  lb.  xix.  3.         *  lb.  xxiv.  4. 

II. -Q 


194 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUBE. 


tions,  as  long  as  representatives  of  the  heroes  or  victims  kept 
their  place  in  high  society ;  but  few  families  under  the  empire 
lasted  long.    The  consequence  is,  that  both  the  "  Annals  "  and 
the  "Hisrories"  have  reached  us  in  fragments.     The  "An- 
nals" consisted  of  sixteen  books.     Of  these  the  greater  part 
of  the  fifth,  the  seventh,  eighth,  ninth,  tenth,  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eleventh,  and  the  last  half  of  the  sixteenth,  are 
lost!*    The  "  Histories  "  have  been  mutilated  yet  more  severe- 
ly •  out  of  fourteen  books  we  have  lost  the  last  nine  and  a 
half,  perhaps  rather  more.     Here  it  is  conceivable  that  an- 
tiquity may  have  exercised  a  choice:   the  first  five  books 
would  have  contained  a  complete  account  of  the  wars  which 
followed  the  accession  of  Galba,  incomparably  the  most  in- 
teresting and  picturesque  part  of  the  whole ;  the   reign  of 
Vespasian  must  have  been  nearly  barren,  and  the  reign  of 
Domitian  probably  appeared  simply  as  a  period  in  which  the 
delafores  raged  more  furiously  than  ever.    The  narrative  of  the 
Dacian  campaigns  would  have  been  interesting  if  it  had  been 
frank  and  impartial,  but  it   was  Tacitus's   conviction  that  a 
Roman  historian  ought  to  find  Roman  defeats  too  painful  for 
description  ;   and  we   should  have   found  Domitian  severely 
blamed  for  calamities  whose  extent  would  have  been  left  un- 
certain, while  his  part  in  them  was  measured  by  his  deserved 
unpopularity  in  the  class  to  which  Tacitus  belonged.     The 
opening  of  the  ''  Histories  "  is  curious  and  perhaps  unfortu- 
nate :  ft  is  fixed  too  strictly  by  the  calendar ;  Tacitus  does 
not  begin  with  the  death  of  Nero,  nor  with  Galba's  arrival  in 
Rome,''nor  with  his  recognition  by  the  senate,  but  with  his  ac- 
cession to  the  consulate.     The  result  is,  that  we  have  only  a 
very  incomplete  account  of  his  transactions  on  his  way  through 
Italy  :  we   are  told   incidentally  of  a  massacre  of  unarmed 
troops  just  outside  Rome,  of  the  execution  of  two  consulars, 
of  the  discontent  of  the  German  army,  of  their  enthusiasm  for 
Verginius,  and  his  supposed  desire  to  profit  by  it  if  he  had 
only'' dared  ;  but  all  these  are  alluded  to  as  known  from  earlier 
writers,  or  perhaps  from  the  official  gazette. 

As  it  happens,  the  collapse  of  the  rule  of  Nero  and  the  ac- 
cession of  Galba  are  some  of  the  obscurest  events  in  ancient 


TACITUS. 


195 


history  :  Tacitus  makes  it  quite  clear  that  the  army  of  Italy 
and  the  common  people  of  Rome  were  at  bottom  attached  to 
Nero  to  the  last :  it  is  tantalizing  that  he  does  not  explain 
the  intrigues  by  which  they  were  both  induced  to  put  on  the 
appearance  of  revolt.  In  the  "Annals"  it  is  true  that  some 
explanation  must  have  been  given,  but  the  "Annals"  were 
written  later  than  the  "  Histories."  Another  obscure  point  is 
the  rising  of  Vindex  :  the  accepted  theory  tended  to  minimize 
the  importance  of  the  collision  between  him  and  Verginius ; 
Tacitus  without  explanation  or  controversy  tends  to  maxi- 
mize it. 

These  defects  do  not  make  themselves  felt  after  the  first 
few  pages.  From  the  first  mention  of  Galba's  adoption  of  a 
successor  the  reader  is  carried  on  without  a  break  to  the 
butchery  of  Vitellius.  The  war  in  Germany  and  Northeast- 
ern Gaul  is  a  less  satisfactory  subject,  and  by  bad  luck  we 
have  lost  the  end  of  the  story,  and  do  not  know  upon  what 
terms  Civilis  was  allowed  to  capitulate.  And  the  end  of  the 
Jewish  war  is  only  known  from  the  windy  rhetoric  of  Josephus, 
and  one  or  two  excerpts  from  Tacitus  in  Sulpicius  Severus,  a 
late  Christian  writer;  from  which  it  is  clear  that  Tacitus  did 
not  believe  the  legend  which  Josephus  tried  to  circulate,  in 
excuse  for  his  enthusiasm  in  favor  of  his  captors,  that  Titus 
could  and  would  have  sav'ed  the  Temple  if  the  insane  obsti- 
nacy of  the  Jews  had  permitted  him.  On  the  contrary,  Taci- 
tus tells  us^  that  if  the  city  had  been  permitted  to  capitulate, 
one  of  the  conditions  would  have  been  that  the  inhabitants 
should  abandon  their  city  :  a  condition  they  regarded  as  worse 
than  death. 

Galba  is  treated  with  surprising  leniency,  and  Vitellius  with 
surprising  harshness.  Otho  had  a  good  right  to  expect  to 
succeed  Galba,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  state  suffered 
by  his  taking  advantage  of  the  disappointment  and  discon- 
tent of  the  prcetorians  to  displace  a  harsh,  unpopular,  and  in- 
efficient ruler.  However,  Tacitus  will  have  it  that  the  military 
insurrection  was  a  crime  of  the  worst  kind  ;  he  sets  the  act 
by  which  Otho  gained  power,  and  the  act  by  which  he  left  it, 

1  "  Histories,"  V.  xiii.  4, 


\i 


196 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


over  asrainst  each  other :  one  was  as  shameful  as  the  other 
was  glorious.  What  seems  to  shock  Tacitus  most  is,  that  the 
movement  was  completely  spontaneous.  Two  common  sol- 
diers contracted  to  transfer  the  Roman  empire,  and  they  did 
transfer  it.  That  the  chief  of  a  province  should  revolt,  with 
the  assurance  that  he  had  sympathizers  in  the  senate  who 
would  instal  him  legitimately  if  he  succeeded,  was  not  intol- 
erable as  times  went;  it  was  a  crime  for  the  prefect  of  the 
praetorians  to  intrigue  in  his  own  interest ;  but  all  order  and 
discipline  were  subverted  if  the  troops  were  to  choose  for 
themselves.  Besides,  Tacitus  is  compelled  again  and  again 
to  recognize  the  abiding  popularity  of  Nero,  and  he  is  angry 
with  Otho  for  having  profited  by  it.  He  is  more  concerned 
for  the  respectability  of  the  central  administration  than  for  its 
popularity  in  the  capital,  or  its  beneficence  in  the  rest  of  the 
empire.  Vitellius  was  no  more  suspicious  than  Galba  :  he 
did  not  order  more  executions  of  nobles,  he  ordered  fewer 
executions  of  soldiers,  even  counting  the  hundred  and  twenty 
victims  who  suffered  for  thinking  their  zeal  against  Galba 
and  Piso  a  title  to  reward.  But  Vitellius  was  an  elderly  man, 
with  a  strong  tendency  to  over-eat  himself.  Such  capacity  as 
he  had  was  that  sort  of  perception  of  what  is  fair  that  goes 
with  an  easy  temper;  and,  to  judge  by  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
German  army  in  his  cause,  he  had  this  perception  in  a  very 
high  degree.  The  army  had  an  instinctive  appreciation  of 
his  kindliness ;  but  Tacitus  is  only  struck  by  his  self-indul- 
gence. He  made  the  same  mistake  as  Mucianus ;  lie  un- 
derrated what  Antonius  could  do  by  advancing  with  forces 
inadequate  to  the  task  before  them.  Believing  that  it  was 
impossible  that  the  crisis  should  arrive  as  soon  as  it  did,  he 
did  not  keep  himself  ready  to  meet  it,  and,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  he  broke  down  under  it.  Till  it  came  he  en- 
joyed the  privileges  of  his  position,  and  no  doubt  his  good 
nature  made  it  easier  for  him  to  accept  the  invitation  pressed 
upon  him  by  loyal  landholders  and  corporations  than  to  re- 
fuse them  ;  and  every  time  he  accepted  their  hospitality  was 
remembered  against  him  by  the  implacable  aristocracy,  greedy 
of  all  opportunities  of  degrading  the  monarchy,  and  much  too 


»« 


.. 


TACITUS. 


197 


resolute  to  be  propitiated  by  the  sincere  endeavors  of  Vitellius 
to  make  his  office  as  constitutional  as  possible.  In  fact,  to 
writers  who  came  after  Domitian  this  seemed  perhaps  an  ag- 
gravation of  his  offence  :  after  Domitian  the  affectation  that 
the  Republic  still  subsisted  was  impossible.  The  best  em- 
perors governed  through  the  senate  :  they  kept  their  procura- 
tors and  the  claims  of  their  private  exchequer  within  bounds, 
they  dispensed  with  degrading  homage,  but  they  did  not  pre- 
tend to  treat  their  subjects  exactly  as  equals.  If  they  lost 
their  temper  in  the  senate,  they  did  not  say  that  it  was  noth- 
ing new  for  one  senator  to  disagree  with  another.  If  Vitellius 
had  been  a  modern  ruler,  his  gastronomic  excesses  would  not 
have  been  branded  as  decisive  of  the  civil  war. 

The  truth  is,  that  both  Otho  and  Vitellius  fell  before  the 
contempt  of  the  aristocracy,  and  Tacitus  accuses  both  of  hav- 
ing been  unequal  to  the  situation  they  had  seized.  Otho 
fought  too  soon,  partly  out  of  an  impatience  of  suspense,  nat- 
ural to  a  voluptuar}',  but  prudence  and  patience  were  hardly 
possible  when  he  knew  that  his  officers  were  treating  over  his 
head.  Vitellius,  who  had  been  raised  to  the  empire  by  am- 
bitious subalterns,  fell  because  one  of  them  speculated  on  be- 
traying him.  If  opinion  at  Rome  had  accepted  either  as  it  ac- 
cepted Galba,  who  fell  by  his  own  mistakes,  their  subordinates 
would  have  been  loyal.  But  Tacitus  treats  the  pretension  of 
both  as  preposterous,  and  only  treats  Otho  with  very  qualified 
respect  on  account  of  his  soldierly  bearing  during  the  war 
and  the  gallantry  of  his  end.  Besides,  he  had  reasons  to  re- 
spect the  feeling  of  many  important  personages,  who  had  sym- 
pathized with  Vespasian,  without  having  declared  for  him. 
From  the  first  news  of  Vespasian's  proclamation,  all  the  upper 
class  were  disposed  to  calculate  on  his  success :  and  this  ex- 
plains the  ferocious  resentment  with  which  Tacitus  details  the 
homage  paid  to  each  pretender  on  his  accession.  The  supe- 
riority of  Vespasian  in  the  long-run  was  so  obvious  that  he  had 
no  intention  of  pushing  forward  into  Italy,  and  the  battle  of 
Cremona  was  due  to  the  ambition  of  a  single  partisan. 
The  burning  of  the  Capitol  and  the  bloody  fighting  at  the 
entrance  of  Rome  were  due  to  the  attempt  to  carry  out  the 


f 


iqS  latin  literature. 

abdication  of  Vitellius  prematurely;  which  seems  to  have 
been  chiefly  clue  to  the  ambition  of  Vespasian's  brother,  who 
wished  to  have  his  share  in  the  foundation  of  the  dynasty, 
and  partly  to  the  general  incompetency  of  elderly  Romans, 
which  allowed  Vitellius  to  be  forced  back  into  the  palace  for 
want  of  proper  arrangements,  although  he  himself  would  have 
been  glad  to  carry  out  the  capitulation  to  which  he  had  con- 
sented in  the  interest  of  his  family.  Here  Tacitus's  narrative 
is  ambiguous  :  he  gives  all  manner  of  discordant  rumors, 
and  does  not  express  an  opinion  of  his  own.  Part  of  the  diffi- 
culty was,  clearly,  that  the  common  people  as  well  as  the  sol- 
diery were  still  on  the  side  of  Vitellius,  whose  good -nature 
and  kindly  interest  in  the  public  shows  won  popularity  of  a 
kind  that  Tacitus  is  glad  to  depreciate.  He  gloats  over  the 
brutality  with  which  the  rabble  exulted  over  Vitellius's  fall,  as 
a  contrast  to  the  servility  with  which  they  had  applauded  his 
extravagance.  At  the  same  time  the  nobility  were  no  better: 
they  were  ostentatiously  loyal  to  Otho  and  Vitellius,  and  claim- 
ed credit  on  Vespasian's  accession  for  having  joined  Sabinus 
and  Domitian  in  the  Capitol.  ,  Their  treachery  disgusts  Taci- 
tus: he  will  not  allow  that  when  they  deserted  Vitellius  for 
Vespasian  they  were  moved  by  the  public  good.  Much  as 
he  disliked  Fabius  Valens,  he  takes  leave  of  him  with  the  ob- 
servation that  he  was  renowned  by  the  perfidy  of  others.  The 
ascendency  of  Mucianus  and  Marcellus  was  quite  as  scanda- 
lous as  that  of  Vinius  and  Icelus  under  Galba,  or  that  of  Val- 
ens and  Asiaticus  under  Vitellius;  if  it  was  shorter,  if  it  came 
to  an  end  with  the  arrival  of  Vespasian,  Tacitus  does  not  say. 
Another  point  on  which  he  would  have  been  equally  myste- 
rious is  the  real  relation  of  the  revolt  of  Civilis  to  the  move- 
ment in  favor  of  Vespasian.  It  is  quite  clear  that  most  of  the 
hi£:her  officers  whom  Vitellius  had  left  on  the  Rhine  were 
ready  to  find  or  make  an  opportunity  of  abandoning  him.  It  is 
certain  that  Civilis  in  the  first  instance  declared  for  Vespa- 
sian ;  certain  also  that  he  went  on  fighting  after  the  army,  to 
the  great  disgust  of  the  rank  and  file,  had  been  brought  to 
swear  allegiance  to  Vespasian  ;  and  that,  when  certain  Gallic 
cantons  proclaimed  the  Gallic  empire,  he  joined  his  forces  to 


TACITUS. 


199 


theirs,  though  without  swearing  allegiance  to  their  cause. 
After  the  first  defeat  he  was  allowed  to  capitulate  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  been  acting  in  the  interest  of  Vespasian. 
Tacitus  seems  to  lean  to  the  opinion  that  Civilis  meant  to 
prepare  himself  to  take  the  lead  in  a  German  conquest  of 
Gaul ;  though  it  is  hard  to  see  that  he  had  any  part  in  the 
death  of  Hordeonius  Flaccus,  or  that  he  took  the  initiative 
in  the  Gallic  insurrection,  which  seems  to  have  broken  out 
spontaneously  on  the  news  of  the  burning  of  the  Capitol. 
Until  these  events,  he  did  nothing  incompatible  with  his  pro- 
fessions of  devotion  to  Vespasian. 

A  still  more  extreme  instance  of  Tacitus's  unwillingness  to 
be  at  pains  to  investigate  facts  is  his  account  of  the  origin  of 
the  Jewish  nation,  which  is  placed  at  the  opening  of  the  fifth 
book.    It  is  evident  the  writer  had  never  taken  trouble  to  speak 
to  Josephus  or  to  read  him,  much  less  to  read  the  Septuagint. 
Herodotus  is  always  careful  to  give  the  native  account,  if  pos- 
sible, of  all  questions  of  national  antiquities:  Tacitus  seems  to 
have  set  himself  to  give  at  second-hand  all  the  speculations 
about  the  origin  of  the  Jews  which  Greek  writers  had  been 
able  to  invent  or  to  collect  among  their  neighbors.     It  is  pos- 
sible to  trace  some  remote  thread  of  fact  through  most,  except 
the  suggestion  meant  to  do  them  honor,  that  they  were  con- 
nections of  the  Homeric  Solymi.     The  suggestion  that  yiidcei 
is  a  corruption  of  Idcei^  from  Ida  in  Crete,  is  obviously  absurd, 
but  it  may  point  to  the  latest  form  of  a  real  tradition  of 
the  Philistine  migration  which  gave  its  name  to  Palaestine. 
The  Assyrian  mixed  multitude  who  occupied  part  of  Egypt, 
and  eventually  retired  into  the  cities  of  the  Hebrews  and  the 
nearer  parts  of  Syria,  are  obviously  our  old  acquaintances  the 
Shepherd  Kings.     It  is  harder  to  say  what  can  have  been  the 
foundation  for  what  was  obviously  the  commonest  story,  that 
the  Jews  were  the  descendants  of  a  horde  of  diseased  and  filthy 
immigrants  expelled  from  Egypt  by  King  Bocchoris,  who  came 
to  the  throne,  according  to  the  chronology  of  M.  Brugsch,  733 
B.C.     As  Bocchoris  w'as  burned  by  Sabaco,  King  of  the  Ethio- 
pians, it  might  be  a  question  whether  any  of  the  expelled  im- 
migrants were  Ethiopians,  and  whether  this  was  the  substra- 


\  It' 


200 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


M 


turn  of  fact  in  another  story  about  the  Ethiopians  who  left 
their  country  in  the  time  of  King  Cepheus.  There  is  no  trace 
in  the  monuments  of  any  such  measure  of  King  Bocchoris, 
and  the  whole  story  is  made  much  more  suspicious  by  being 
mixed  up  with  a  preposterous  parody  of  the  Exodus.  Moses 
placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  exiles,  and  by  the  help  of  a 
herd  of  wild  asses  found  water  for  them  in  the  wilderness,  and 
at  the  end  of  seven  days  led  them  to  Jerusalem.  Apart  from 
this  the  story  is  plausible,  and  perhaps  general  tradition  may 
warrant  us  in  admitting  an  enforced  migration  from  the  Delta 
to  Palestine  in  the  eighth  century  B.C.  Jewish  institutions  are 
less  grossly  caricatured  than  Jewish  history,  although  it  is 
difficult  to  guess  what  is  meant  by  the  statement  that  among 
themselves  the  Jews  were  singularly  licentious  in  sexual  mat- 
ters, or  whether  the  limitation  of  immortality  to  the  souls  of 
those  who  died  for  the  law  on  the  scaffold  or  the  battle-field 
lay  in  popular  belief  or  in  the  ignorance  of  Tacitus.  We  have 
no  means  of  checking  what  Tacitus  has  to  tell  of  Velleda,  the 
German  prophetess  who  supported  Civilis;  but  German  be- 
liefs were  simpler  than  Hebrew,  and  the  Romans  in  trying  to 
master  them  made  fewer  mistakes. 

The  real  greatness  of  Tacitus  as  a  philosophical  historian 
lies  in  his  analysis  of  the  conditions  of  Roman  public  life,  and 
his  speculations  as  to  the  power  of  human  conduct  to  modify 
them.  Such  a  sentence  as  this,  on  the  temper  of  the  praeto- 
rians when  Otho  entered  their  camp,  is  the  measure  of  his  pow- 
er :  "Julius  Partialis,  a  tribune,  was  the  officer  of  the  watch 
on  duty.  He,  stunned  at  such  a  monstrous  sudden  crime,  or 
may  be  fearing  that  corruption  had  spread  further  in  the  camp, 
and  that  he  would  pull  against  the  stream  at  his  peril,  gave 
ground  to  general  suspicion  that  he  was  in  the  plot.  And  the 
rest  of  the  tribunes  and  centurions  preferred  a  certainty  to  an 
honorable  risk.  And  the  condition  of  their  minds  was  that 
few  had  daring,  many  good-will,  and  all  consent  for  an  execra- 
ble deed."  So,  too,  the  often  -  quoted  phrase  that  Otho  did 
everything  like  a  slave  to  be  master,  and  the  bitter  jest  that 
"Otho  had  not  yet  authority  to  prevent  a  crime;  he  was  al- 
ready able  to  order  one ;"  and  the  yet  bitterer  epigram  that 


TACITUS. 


201 


I 


"when  the  day  had  been  spent  in  guilt  the  turn  of  the  worst 
evil  came — men  had  to  rejoice." 

A  more  elaborate  picture  is  the  revolt  of  the  German  army. 
All  the  complicated  influences  at  work  are  unravelled.  "Vi- 
tellius  had  taken  pains  when  he  inspected  the  winter-quarters 
of  the  legions:  one  of  the  legates  thought  he  had  been  slight- 
ed by  Galba ;  another  was  in  danger  of  being  punished  for 
peculation.  The  army  itself  had  only  joined  Galba  after 
Nero's  death,  and  then  had  been  anticipated  by  troops  lower 
down  the  Rhine.  Then  the  Treveri  and  Lingones,  and  any 
other  states  that  smarted  under  harsh  decrees  of  Galba  or  the 
loss  of  territory,  came  into  close  contact  with  the  legions  in 
their  winter-quarters;  whereupon  there  was  much  seditious 
talk,  and  civilians  corrupted  the  soldiery,  and  their  good-will  to 
Verginius  was  at  the  service  of  anybody  else.  The  state  of 
the  Lingones  had  sent,  after  its  old  custom,  a  present  to  the 
legions,  right  hands  joined  as  a  token  of  hospitality.  Their 
ambassadors  were  made  up  into  a  show  of  mourning  and  dis- 
honor, went  through  the  parade-ground  and  the  quarters  com- 
plaining of  their  own  injuries,  the  favor  shown  to  their  neigh- 
bors, and,  when  the  soldiers  were  inclined  to  hearken,  of  the 
peril  of  the  army  and  the  despite  done  thereto.  And  they  were 
nearly  ripe  for  sedition,  when  Hordeonius  Flaccus  bade  the  am- 
bassadors go  away,  and  that  by  night,  that  they  might  leave  the 
camp  more  secretly.  Thereupon  rose  a  shrewd  rumor,  for 
most  affirmed  them  slain,  and  that  but  for  their  own  better  heed 
all  the  briskest  of  the  troops  who  complained  of  things  as  they 
were  would  be  killed  in  the  dark  and  the  rest  know  nothing. 
So  a  silent  league  bound  the  legions  together:  the  soldiers 
of  the  auxiliary  forces  were  brought  in,  though  at  first  suspect- 
ed, as  though  squadrons  and  cohorts  were  being  mustered  to 
surround  and  charge  the  legions.  Soon  it  was  seen  they 
brooded  more  fiercely  on  the  same  offences,  for  it  is  easier 
among  bad  spirits  to  consent  for  war  than  for  concord  in 
peace.  Still  the  legions  of  Lower  Germany  were  brought  to 
swear  allegiance  to  Galba  on  the  solemnity  of  the  First  of 
January.  With  much  delay,  and  but  few,  and  those  in  the 
front  rank,  swore  aloud,  the  rest  kept  silent,  each  waiting  for 

H.— 9* 


202 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


his  neighbor  to  be  bold,  as  mortal  nature  is  made  to  follow 
and  be^^loath  to  begin."  ^  There  is  a  touch  of  satire  further 
on,  when  we  learn  that  a  part  of  the  army  swore  allegiance  to 
the  senate  and  people  of  Rome,  and  a  few  days  after  to  Vi- 
tellius  on  the  ground  that  their  former  oath  was  empty. 

The  declaration  of  the  Syrian  army  needed  less  explana- 
tion, for  Vespasian  was  a  very  different  commander  to  Vitel- 
lius ;  and  although  Mucianus  was  in  command  of  a  larger 
force,  he  preferred  being  the  first  subject  of  the  empire  to  be- 
ing emperor:  for  what  he  wanted  for  himself  was  license  and 
luxury,  not  power.     There  were   too  many  scandals    about 
him  for  it  to  be  safe  for  him  to  reign  in  his  own  name.    Taci- 
tus makes  a  mystery  of  him.     "  He  was  notorious  alike  in 
prosperity  and  adversity.     When  young  he  had  been  lavish 
in  attentions  to  great  friends  ;  soon,  when  his  means  were  im- 
paired and  his  estate  but  slippery,  and  the  anger  too  of  Clau- 
dius seemed  upon  him,  he  appeared,  as  he  lay  in  retreat  in 
Asia,  as  near  an  exile  as  afterwards  near  a  prince.     He  was 
a  mixture  of  luxury,  energy,  courtesy,  arrogance,  evil  ways 
and  good:  excessive  in  pleasures  when  at  leisure,  great  in 
virtues  as  often  as  it  served  his  turn.     In  public  a  man  to 
praise,  his  privacy  was  of  ill-report.    Still,  various  alluring  arts 
gave  him  power  over  subordinates,  over  kinsmen,  over  col- 
leagues, enough  to  make  it  easy  for  him  to  grant  a  sway  too 
hard  to  hold.""     This  reminds  us  of  the  over-elaboration  in 
the  "Agricola;"  further  on  we  learn  that  Mucianus  contrived 
to  make  a  parade  of  his  politic  adhesion  to  Vespasian. 

It  is  very  noticeable  that  Vespasian  is  nowhere  character- 
ized in  the  part  of  the  "  Histories  "  which  has  come  down  to 
us.  Tacitus's  rule  in  the  "  Histories  "  seems  to  be  to  describe 
every  important  personage  upon  his  first  appearance,  and 
again  when  he  disappears  from  the  scene.  It  is,  therefore, 
deliberate  reticence  that  leaves  us  to  judge  of  Vespasian 
almost  exclusively  by  his  deeds,  with  only  a  touch  of  comment 
here  and  there.  Vespasian  set  the  example  of  a  frugal  table; 
he  was  admirably  firm  against  largess  to  the  soldiery,  and  had 
the  better  army  for  it;  he  refused  redress  for  the  exactions 
»  "  Hist."  I.  lii.-lv.  '  lb.  I.  x. 


TACITUS. 


203 


devised  by  Mucianus,  "  though  in  the  beginnings  of  his  em- 
pire he  was  less  stiff  in  holding  his  ground  when  wrong,  till, 
between  base  counsellors  and  the  indulgence  of  fortune,  he 
learned  and  dared  to  be  unjust."  '  Vespasian's  elder  brother, 
who  was  taken  and  massacred  by  the  partisans  of  Vitellius, 
after  the  latter  had  been  hustled  out  of  his  attempt  to  abdi- 
cate by  their  boisterous  loyalty,  was  always  considered  the 
ornament  of  the  family  while  both  were  in  a  private  station. 
All  this  seems  as  if  Tacitus  had  little  esteem  for  his  first  em- 
ployer, though  "  no  doubt  it  was  the  interest  of  the  common- 
wealth that  Vitellius  should  be  conquered."  Less  is  said  of 
Titus,  but  the  notices  are  kindly  in  the  main,  while  there  are 
abundant  hints  given  in  advance  of  the  fatal  idiosyncrasy  of 
his  younger  brother  and  successor.  In  general,  Tacitus  does 
not  flatter  his  own  side.  No  one  is  more  severely  handled 
than  Antonius  Primus,  who  actually  decided  the  overthrow  of 
Vitellius,  and  seems  to  have  survived  his  disappointment  in 
the  partition  of  the  spoils  with  decorum.  It  is  one  of  the 
evils  of  war  that  he  obtained  an  amnesty,  having  been  con- 
demned under  Nero  for  forgery:  he  is  the  worst  of  men  in 
peace,  in  war  above  contempt.  Of  all  the  commanders  who 
actually  took  part  in  the  war  on  Vespasian's  side,  Messalla 
was  the  only  one  who  brought  a  good  character  to  the  cause. 
Cornelius  Fuscus  is  treated  with  some  approach  to  respect, 
though  his  character  seems  to  have  lacked  solidity  :  he  dread- 
ed anxiety,  and  he  liked  excitement ;  he  laid  down  his  rank 
as  senator  for  the  sake  of  a  quiet  life;  he  took  the  lead  in  his 
native  town  for  Galba,  and  was  rewarded  with  a  place  as  proc- 
urator, in  which  he  threw  himself  energetically  into  the  cause 
of  Vespasian,  "delighting  more  in  perils  than  in  their  reward." 
In  fact,  it  is  doubtful  whether  unblemished  characters  were 
common  in  any  camp.  It  is  clear  that  the  senate  was  always 
inclined  to  screen  informers,  even  when  an  interregnum  left 
their  hands  free;  examples  were  made  of  the  worst  cases,  but 
any  general  measure  would  always  have  touched  very  influen- 
tial men,  who,  when  their  position  was  assured,  often  were 
dignified  and  bountiful  enough.     Many  rising  men  had  done 

*  "Hist."  II.  Ixxxii.  3  ;  Ixxxiv.  2. 


W 


204 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


questionable  things;  there  was  a  general  feeling  at  the  end 
of  each  tyrant's  reign  that  the  survivors  ought  to  be  safe. 
Besides,  it  is  obvious  that  under  the  constitution  the  senate 
must  have  been  recruited  with  a  constant  stream  of  imperial 
nominees,  who  were  naturally  more  imperialist  than  the  em- 
peror, because  the  more  they  could  harass  families  whose 
consideration  dated  from  the  days  of  the  republic,  the  more 
of  the  patronage  of  the  empire  was  free  for  their  own  promo- 
tion. Tacitus,  who  measured  the  merits  and  demerits  of  all 
emperors  by  their  respect  for  the  dignity  of  the  senate,  and 
their  willingness  to  allow  it  a  real  share  of  the  administration, 
systematically  keeps  silence  as  to  the  standing  cause  of  the 
servility  upon  which  he  spends  so  much  indignation. 

This  makes  Tacitus  unjust  to  all  the  emperors  who  did  not 
repress  all  accusations  of  high-treason.     For  a  hundred  years 
before  the  empire  the  nobles  had  been  given  to  bitter  quarrels 
among  themselves,  which  were  aggravated  by  the  ambition  of 
those  who  wished  to  push  into  their  number;  but  these  quar- 
rels had  often  come  to  nothing  under  the  republic:  the  pros- 
ecution was  unsparing,  but  the  court  was  considerate.    Under 
the  empire  every  prosecution  came  before  the  senate,  every 
prosecution  had  a  political  character,  every  prosecution  in- 
volved the  charge  of  treason ;  for  Augustus,  by  an  oversight, 
had  made  all  discreditable  conduct  treasonable,  as  part  of 
his  laborious  and  unsuccessful  endeavors  to  make  the  upper 
classes  at  any  rate  respected  and  respectable.      Lastly,  the 
imperialist  majority  in  the  senate  insisted  that  every  charge 
of  treason  should  be  treated  seriously:   acquittals  were  the 
rule  in  state  trials  under  the  republic,  convictions  were  the 
rule  under  the  empire.     The  only  remedy  the  nobility  had 
was  to  frown  persistently  upon  all  who  conducted  state  prose- 
cutions, and  especially  upon  all  who  conducted  them  of  their 
own  accord;  and  whenever  an  emperor  succeeded  who  wished 
to  protect  the  nobility,  both  classes  professed  that  they  had 
been  coerced  by  the  fallen  tyrant.     Even  when  a  real  crime 
had  been  committed,  it  was  generally  mixed  up  with  a  more 
or  less  imaginary  charge  of  treason ;  and  then  the  condemna- 
tion was  more  invidious  than  the  crime.     Genuine  loyalty  was 


TACITUS. 


■05 


extremely  rare,  and  nearly  all  rulers  felt  it  necessary  to  treat 
visible  disaffection  as  a  capital  offence.  Any  sign  of  disre- 
spect was  construed  into  disloyalty,  and  this  led  to  endless 
elaborations  of  homage,  soon  carried  to  a  point'  intolerable 
to  self-respect.  The  least  approach  to  a  parade  of  reserve 
was  itself  a  proof  of  disaffection,  for  the  majority  visited  any 
resentment  they  might  feel  for  their  own  abasement  upon  those 
who  refused  to  share  it.  The  emperors  were  embarrassed  also 
by  another  difficulty,  which  Tacitus  half  hints  at  in  a  phrase 
which  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Galba — that  the  Romans 
could  not  bear  either  thorough  slavery  or  thorough  freedom. 
The  vastness  of  the  empire  and  the  corruption  of  the  times 
made  a  single  ruler  necessary :  no  serious  politician  denied 
this;  Tacitus  insists  upon  it  repeatedly.  But  though  all  real 
power,  or  almost  all,  was  in  his  hands  or  those  of  his  dele- 
gates, he  was  not  a  sovereign  and  the  rest  of  the  Romans  his 
subjects:  they  were  free  and  independent  citizens,  though  his 
will  counted  for  almost  everything,  theirs  for  almost  nothing. 
The  only  rationale  of  this  which  the  most  audacious  emperors 
put  forward  was  that  they  were  superhuman.  As  a  rule,  em- 
perors were  deified  after  death  :  an  emperor  who  chafed  under 
republican  fictions  anticipated  his  apotheosis,  and  so  multi- 
plied the  difficulties  of  those  who  regretted  the  republic. 
Tacitus  is  the  echo  of  their  indignation.  He  blames  the  em- 
perors almost  exclusively  for  their  misgovernment  of  the  cap- 
ital ;  if  he  blames  them  for  rapacity  in  the  provinces,  or  for 
military  failures  on  the  frontier,  it  is  only  because  these  scan- 
dalize the  opinion  of  the  capital.  The  proof  is  that  rulers 
who,  like  Tiberius  or  Claudius,  did  much  for  the  provinces 
receive  no  credit  from  Tacitus. 

In  most  things,  indeed,  Tacitus  is  rather  illiberal:  he  has 
no  sympathy  whatever  with  the  progressive  innovations  of 
Claudius.  He  is  positively  shocked  that  he  should  have  given 
the  officers  of  his  exchequer  jurisdiction  in  civil  and  criminal 

*  This  point  was  often  reached  earlier  than  a  modern  could  imagine. 
For  instance,  a  senator  made  himself  ridiculous  by  an  ineffectual  proposal 
to  have  the  decrees  of  the  day  on  which  Tiberius's  arrangements  for  the 
succession  were  ratified  engraved  in  letters  of  gold  in  the  senate-house. 


206 


LA  TllSr  LITER  A  TURE. 


causes;^  he  has  no  eyes  for  the  administrative  convenience  of 
the  change ;  he  only  sees  that  it  was  monstrous  for  freedmen 
to  exercise  the  same  jurisdiction  as  consulars.  So,  too,  he 
distinctly  approves'^  the  vote  of  the  senate  for  the  execution 
of  a  whole  household,  over  four  hundred  in  number,  who 
passed  the  night  under  the  same  roof  as  their  master,  who  was 
killed  by  a  slave  to  whom  he  had  refused  freedom,  and  records 
that  the  populace  was  in  favor  of  mercy,  or,  as  we  should  say, 
justice. 

The  "Annals"  are  decidedly  gloomier  than  the  "Histo- 
ries," probably  simply  because  the  writer  was  older :  he  sees 
evil  everywhere  ;  his  recognition  of  merit  always  has  the  air 
of  paradox.  All  the  emperors  were  tyrants,  and  it  was  natu- 
ral that  under  a  tyrant  everything  should  go  wrong ;  that  all 
offices  should  be  filled  by  servile  instruments  of  tyranny,  that 
virtue  should  have  no  alternative  but  retreat  or  martyrdom. 
When  he  takes  leave  of  a  noble  like  Lepidus  or  L.  Piso,  who 
were  always  in  high  place,  and  lived  to  the  end  of  their  days 
without  peril  and  without  shame,  Tacitus  always  pauses  to 
observe  upon  the  singularity  of  their  fate.  The  prudence 
which  preserved  them  is  always  treated  as  a  discovery:  the 
natural  course  for  a  virtuous  man  being  that  of  silent  or  pub- 
lic protest ;  for  the  virtuous  man  was  presumably  a  Stoic,  and 
a  Stoic  was  bound  to  be  instant  in  the  assertion  of  his  princi- 
ples. Tacitus  himself  was  sceptical  as  to  the  value  of  philos- 
ophy, especially  of  Stoicism.  It  is  mentioned  to  the  honor  of 
Agricola  that  his  early  tendency  to  philosophize  more  deeply 
than  became  a  Roman  was  checked  in  time ;  and  Helvidius 
Priscus  is  praised  for  making  it  the  object  of  his  studies  to 
strengthen  him  for  public  life,  while  most  contemporary  Stoics 
only  cared  to  talk.  Besides,  Tacitus  had  two  strong  convic- 
tions quite  at  variance  with  the  Stoic  creed:  he  disbelieved 
in  providence,  he  disbelieved  in  fate.  He  is  never  weary  of 
illustrating  the  thesis,  as  old  as  Ennius,  that  the  gods  care  no 
more  for  the  righteous  than  the  wicked,  whence  it  follows  that 
Providence,  in  the  Stoic  sense  of  a  power  overruling  all  things 
for  the  best,  is  a  fiction.  He  excludes  fate  with  providence 
»  "  Ann."  XII.  Ix.  "^  lb.  XIV.  xlii-xlv. 


TACITUS. 


207 


in  order  to  make  room  for  prudence,  but  even  then  he  has  not 
excluded  the  gods  from  the  affiiirs  of  mortals. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  important  contrasts  between  Taci- 
tus and  Sallust.  Sallust  never  discusses  the  question  at  all : 
he  has  no  occasion  to  go  beyond  the  sphere  of  human  pru- 
dence and  human  passion,  in  which  he  finds  the  reason  for 
everything.  Tacitus  does  not  escape  so  easily :  he  is  never 
sure  that  the  gods'  wrath  is  not  formidable,  because  it  is  use- 
less to  count  upon  their  justice:  he  never  gets  beyond  the 
epigram,*  "  The  gods  care  not  to  protect  us,  and  yet  they  care 
to  avenge  us."  All  misfortunes,  like  the  grandeur  and  down- 
fall of  Sejanus,  are  referred  quite  simply  to  the  anger  of  the 
gods.  All  precedents  which  enable  men  to  scan  their  inscru- 
table ways  are  anxiously  recorded:  for  instance,  when  Vitel- 
lius  assumed  the  office  of  chief  pontiff  on  the  day  that  the 
Gauls  had  sfnitten  the  Romans  on  the  river  Allia,  it  is  an  as- 
tonishing proof  of  his  own  blindness  and  that  of  his  friends. 
He  is  afraid  to  dispute  the  legend  of  the  strange  bird  which 
appeared  to  excited  eyes  during  the  last  night  of  Otho,  and 
he  investigates  the  miracles  of  Vespasian  with  the  utmost  sim- 
plicity. When  he  has  proved  that  they  were  not  invented  to 
flatter  Vespasian,  he  is  satisfied,  and  takes  no  pains  to  get 
behind  the  formal  report  of  the  physicians,  who  evidently 
thought  Vespasian  might  safely  undertake  to  heal  patients 
who  might  be  well  without  help  when  they  pleased.  In  the 
same  way  Tacitus  accepts  the  prophecies,  whatever  they  were, 
which  were  supposed  to  be  fulfilled  by  the  accession  of  Ves- 
pasian, in  an  ironical  spirit,  as  if  superhuman  wisdom  were 
always  useless  for  human  guidance.  Vespasian  was  not  the 
least  influenced  by  the  prophecies  which  all  the  world  agreed 
he  had  fulfilled;  the  Jews  thought  that  they  justified  their 
own  insane  resistance.  All  the  omens,  great  and  small,  which 
were  noticed  in  a  town  that  canvassed  everything,  are  sol- 
emnly recorded  for  what  they  may  be  worth.  Tacitus  gives 
no  decision:  he  writes  as  if  it  were  his  object  to  give  posterity 
the  materials  for  forming  one.     The  will  of  the  gods  seems  to 

^  "  Hist."  I.  iii.  fin. :  Non  esse  curam  diis  securitatem  nostram,  esse  ul- 
tionem  ;  cf.  Lucan,  iv.  807. 


208 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


TACITUS. 


209 


count  for  a  good  deal  in  the  order  of  the  world,  but  their 
judgment  has  no  respect  to  individual  worth :  they  prosper 
and  punish  communities  as  instruments  of  their  designs  :  per- 
haps it  is  safe  to  assume  that  they  are  offended  by  the  neglect 
of  the  established  ceremonies  of  propitiation.  The  transition 
from  Seneca  to  Tacitus  is  like  the  transition  from  Shaftesbury 
to  Bolingbroke :  Tacitus  failed  long  ago  to  find  any  trace  of 
"  moral  attributes," 

Here  he  has  the  advantage  of  appealing  from  theory  to 
what  he  takes  for  facts,  but  his  criticism  of  fiitalism  suffers 
from  his  Roman  contempt  for  "minute  philosophy."  Appar- 
ently he  leans,  like  Pope,  to  a  belief  in  a  power 

Who  binding  nature  fast  in  fate 
Left  free  the  human  will. 

The  only  alternative  which  he  recognizes  is  the  crude  fatal- 
ism of  the  Oriental — what  will  happen,  will  happen  whatever 
we  do.  He  does  not  understand  the  Stoic  doctrine  of  "con- 
fatalia" — that  conditions  were  fated  as  well  as  results — and 
therefore  he  does  not  discuss  it.  He  gives  his  measure  by 
uniformly  describing  a  natural  death  as  a  "fatal"  one,  as 
though  fate  was  set  aside  whenever  a  man  killed  himself  or 
was  killed.  The  extreme  instance  of  this  loose  way  of  think- 
ing which  he  records  and  shares  is  a  passage  on  the  Rhine 
being  unusually  low  during  the  revolt  of  Civilis.'  "In  time 
of  peace  this  would  have  been  nature  or  chance,  in  war  it 
seemed  fate  and  the  anger  of  the  gods."  This  makes  his  so- 
lemnity less  impressive.  Plato's  doctrine  of  the  inward  mis- 
ery of  tyrants  is  hardly  established  by  the  quotation  of  Tibe- 
rius's  letter^  when  asked  to  sanction  the  prosecution  of  Cotta 
Messalinus.  Tiberius  probably  meant  nothing  by  his  out- 
burst, except  that  he  felt  it  a  great  tax  to  write  to  the  senate ; 
and,  as  his  selfcontrol  was  impaired  by  solitude  and  indul- 
gence, he  actually  swore  at  himself  in  a  despatch;  which  ap- 
peared phenomenal  because  the  ancients  were  not  addicted 

1  "  Hist."  IV.  xxvi.  2. 

*  Quid  scribam  vobis,  patres  conscripti,  aut  quo  modo  scribam  hoc  tem- 
pore di  me  deaeque  pejus  perdant  quam  perire  me  quotidie  sentio,  si  scio. 
—"Ann."  VI.  vi.  i. 


\\\ 


to  that  special  form  of  profmity,  and  generally  were  capable 
of  decorum  in  their  public  acts.  The  eloquence  of  Tacitus 
has  rather  blinded  us  to  the  fact  that  it  was  really  very  pro- 
voking for  Tiberius  to  be  asked  to  put  another  old  friend  on 
his  trial,  because  there  was  more  or  less  reason  to  think  he 
spoke  disrespectfully  of  the  senate  and  the  emperor  in  his 
cups.  His  annoyance  broke  out  in  an  irritable  confession  of 
his  failing  powers,  after  which  he  settled  the  case  sensibly 
enough. 

In  fact,  the  whole  account  of  the  reign  of  Tiberius  is  a  mas- 
terpiece of  detraction  :  the  emperor  gets  no  credit  for  his  faith- 
fulness to  old  friends,  very  little  for  his  munificence  on  all 
public  occasions.  Though  one  of  the  most  splendid  instances 
of  it  comes  in  the  last  year  of  his  reign,  we  are  told  that  Tibe- 
rius retained  that  virtue  long,  while  putting  off  all  others — as 
if  he  put  that  off  at  last.  The  instances  of  his  honest,  manly 
dislike  to  flattery  are  carefully  enumerated,  not  without  a  cer- 
tain sympathy;  but  we  are  reminded  that  many  attributed 
such  modesty  to  self  distrust,  and  not  a  few  to  a  craven  spirit, 
dead  alike  to  fame  and  virtue.  Tacitus  is  pitiless  to  his  re- 
peated and  undignified  professions  of  his  sincere  desire  to 
abdicate,  and  his  efforts  to  cover  his  despotism  with  antiquated 
forms.  He  is  especially  angry  when  an  old  law  worked  with- 
out straining  in  favor  of  the  new  despotism ;  as  if  the  mon- 
archy was  bound  systematically  to  soften  republican  proced- 
ure, especially  by  depriving  prosecutors  of  their  legal  rewards. 
Tiberius  held  that  the  laws  would  lose  all  effect  if  the  machin- 
ery for  enforcing  them  was  suddenly  thrown  out  of  gear; 
Tacitus's  comment  is,  that  a  detestable  race  of  informers,  who 
can  hardly  be  kept  in  check  by  punishment,  were  warmed  to 
life  by  rewards;  which,  though  a  fair  retort  from  a  political 
opponent,  comes  short  of  historical  impartiality.  Again,  Tibe- 
rius quite  honestly  regretted  the  precipitate  execution  of  a 
Roman  knight  who  had  been  foolish  enough  to  read  an  elegy 
on  Drusus,  the  son  of  Tiberius,  At  a  time  when  he  was  ex- 
pected to  die,  after  having  been  rewarded  for  an  elegy  com- 
posed after  the  death  of  Germanicus.  Accordingly  he  rebuked 
the  senate,  who  passed  a  rule  that  for  the  future  no  capital 


2IO 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


TACITUS. 


211 


sentence  should  be  registered  or  executed  for  ten  days.  Tac- 
itus's  comment  is,  that  after  the  sentence  was  recorded  the 
senate  had  no  power  to  recall  it,  and  Tiberius  grew  no  milder 
in  the  time.  This  is  literally  true,  though  the  senate  fre- 
quently waited  on  the  chance  of  his  interference,  though  no 
one  was  ever  punished  for  the  delay,  which  the  irritable  old 
man  occasionally  resented.  The  instances  of  moderation  are 
all  mentioned  in  their  place,  but  without  comment  or  empha- 
sis, except  an  occasional  regret  that  when  Tiberius  knew  what 
was  best  he  so  often  chose  to  do  what  was  worse. 

Sometimes  the  harshness  of  the  historian  makes  his  elabo- 
rate pictures  enigmatical.  For  instance,  a  son  accused  of 
high-treason  a  Hither  already  sentenced  to  exile,  and  after  a 
time  wished  to  abandon  the  charge,  which  had  broken  down, 
as  the  slaves  could  not  or  would  not  swear  to  anything  against 
their  old  master.  Tiberius  insisted  that  the  son  should  carry 
the  prosecution  through,  and,  when  the  father  was  convicted, 
inflicted  no  greater  penalty  than  exile,  even  taking  pains  to 
insist  that  he  should  not  be  banished  to  an  island  without  wa- 
ter. The  scandal  is  emphasized  with  all  the  art  of  Tacitus ; 
but  it  does  not  appear  upon  what  principle,  if  any,  Tiberius 
acted.  Had  he  real  grounds  for  believing  that  impotent  mal- 
ice had  turned  an  exile  into  a  conspirator,  while  resolved  to 
treat  him  as  insignificant  when  convicted.'*  Again,  it  is  a 
crime  of  Tiberius  that  he  allowed  the  law  of  high-treason  as 
extended  by  Augustus  to  be  put  in  force;  it  is  not  a  merit 
that  for  some  time  he  exerted  himself  to  check  the  fantastic 
developments  it  seemed  likely  to  receive  from  the  ingenious 
malignity  of  Roman  idlers.  Even  m  his  later  years  he  did 
not  encourage  prosecutions  for  such  purely  constructive  dis- 
respect as  swearing  falsely  by  the  deity  of  Augustus,  or  break- 
ing up  his  consecrated  image  for  old  silver,  both  of  which 
seemed  deadly  crimes  to  eager  prosecutors  when  the  law  and 
Tiberius's  rule  were  new.  In  general,  a  modern  historian 
would  blame  what  Tacitus  blames,  but  less  severely.  But  in 
the  matter  of  Hortalus,  Tacitus  blames  Tiberius  for  simple 
good  sense.  It  was  an  excusable  mistake  of  Augustus  to  give 
a  worthless  and  harmless  man  a  small  fortune  because  he  was 


the  grandson  of  a  celebrated  orator,  and  it  was  hoped  that  his 
marriage  might  keep  up  an  illustrious  family;  but  when  Hor- 
talus made  an  opportunity  of  begging  in  the  senate  for  a  fur- 
ther supply,  Tiberius  could  only  refuse,  and  it  is  surprising  he 
should  have  conceded  so  much  as  he  did  to  the  facile  and  fac- 
titious sympathy  of  the  senate. 

The  campaigns  of  German icus  and  Corbulo  are  the  only 
part  of  the  history  of  the  early  empire  on  which  Tacitus  dwells 
with  any  complacency:  it  was  the  great  fault  of  all  the  emper- 
ors till  the  days  of  Domitian  and  Trajan  that  they  took  no 
care  to  extend  the  empire.  The  two  generals  who  showed 
some  inclination  to  renew  the  traditions  of  conquest  seem  to 
be  overrated.  Corbulo  was  clearly  very  jealous  of  other  com- 
manders, and  inclined  to  leave  them  to  difficulties;  Germani- 
cus  was  reckless  and  irresolute,  and  very  much  less  careful  of 
his  men's  lives  than  Tiberius.  Tiberius  invaded  Germany  three 
times,  and  each  time  he  defeated  the  enemy  and  brought  his 
army  back  safe;  and  the  only  result  was  that  his  admirers 
hoped  another  campaign  might  bring  the  enemy  to  submis- 
sion. It  would  be  curious  to  know  why  he  invariably  went 
back  to  Gaul  for  winter-quarters — because  he  could  not  main- 
tain himself  in  Germany,  or  because  Germany  was  too  poor  a 
country  to  support  an  army  of  occupation.^  Tacitus  thinks 
the  policy  of  Germanicus  too  obvious  for  explanation;  that 
of  Tiberius  seems  to  have  struck  him  as  curious  and  interest- 
ing. Tiberius  was  not  at  all  disposed  to  non-intervention; 
he  had  too  keen  a  sense  of  the  possibihties  of  a  German  inva- 
sion of  Italy.  He  told  the  senate  that  Maroboduus,  who  for 
a  long  time  maintained  a  powerful  kingdom  in  Bohemia  and 
Bavaria,  was  more  formidable  to  the  Roman  people  than  King 
Pyrrhus  or  King  Philip,  and  was  delighted  when  his  kingdom 
collapsed  and  he  had  to  take  refuge  on  Roman  territory. 
What  he  dreaded  was  the  consolidation  of  any  power  in  Ger- 
many strong  enough  and  durable  enough  to  direct  the  force 
of  the  race  against  more  desirable,  lands.  It  was  easy  enough 
to  keep  the  Germans  at  war  among  themselves,  for  every  ruler 
disgusted  his  family  and  tribe  after  fifteen  or  twenty  years  of 
rule — ^just  like  the  rulers  of  Norway  in  the  interval  between 


■j 


212 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Harold  Harfager  and  Harold  Hardrada,  and  the  rulers  of 
France  since  the  revolution  of  1789.  On  the  eastern  frontier 
the  policy  of  the  empire  was  somewhat  more  decided,  though 
it  did  not  go  beyond  the  lines  marked  out  by  Pompeius  after 
his  great  command.  No  attempt  was  made  to  conquer  Par- 
thia,  but  full  advantage  was  taken  of  the  readiness  of  the 
dynasty  to  have  a  possible  pretender  kept  in  Italy  till  the 
throne  became  vacant.  He  was  generally  called  upon  after 
a  palace  revolution :  he  received  a  Roman  escort,  and  never 
succeeded  in  establishing  himself  permanently  among  sub- 
jects to  whom  he  had  become  a  stranger;  but  the  Romans 
never  regarded  their  prestige  as  affected  by  the  failure  of  their 
proteges,  while  the  Parthian  monarchy  gradually  weakened 
itself  by  internal  dissensions.  Tacitus  is  rather  indifferent 
than  contemptuous  when  he  speaks  of  the  pretensions  of  the 
emperors  to  confer  a  diadem  which  their  nominees  could  not 
retain.  He  is  less  ironical  in  his  treatment  of  the  Roman 
claim  to  a  protectorate  in  Armenia.  The  Parthian  pretender 
had  rather  a  better  chance,  upon  the  whole,  than  the  Roman ; 
but  even  the  Parthian  pretender  had  to  reckon  with  Rome, 
because  the  small  states  of  Upper  Mesopotamia  leaned  to  the 
power  which  held  the  road  to  the  Mediterranean;  while  the 
small  states  between  Armenia  and  the  Caucasus  were  depend- 
ent on  the  commerce  of  the  Black  Sea,  which  also  was  in  the 
hands  of  Rome. 

The  dissensions  of  the  imperial  family  fill  a  larger  space 
than  the  frontier  warfare  in  the  "Annals"  of  Tacitus,  and 
there  is  no  part  of  his  narrative  that  is  more  puzzling — we 
never  know  what  evidence  he  had  for  the  majority  of  his 
charges.  We  know  that  he  used  the  memoirs  of  the  younger 
Agrippina;  he  does  not  seem  to  have  used  the  memoirs  of 
Tiberius,  and  no  public  documents  except  the  trial  of  Locusta 
would  throw  much  light  on  the  alleged  assassination  of  Clau- 
dius and  Britannicus.  In  the  case  of  Drusus,  we  know  the 
story  told  by  Apicata,  the  divorced  wifeof  Sejanus,  eight  years 
after  the  time,  which  Tiberius  believed,  and  the  Roman  peo- 
ple improved  upon.  According  to  the  latest  version,  every- 
thing passed  after  the  fashion  of  a  schoolboy's  theme.     Seja- 


TACITUS. 


213 


nus  told  Tiberius  that  his  son  was  going  to  poison  him,  and 
so  lured  the  suspicious  father  to  force  the  poisoned  cup  on 
the  unsuspecting  son.  Tacitus  rejects  this  story,  and  hardly 
thinks  of  testing  Apicata's,  who,  after  her  divorce,  can  only 
have  learned  Sejanus's  plans  from  slaves  who  deceived  him 
and  perhaps  her.  Though  a  slave  of  Drusus  and  a  slave  of 
Sejanus  confirmed  her  story  under  torture,  a  modern  court, 
and  even  a  modern  historian,  would  have  doubted. 

The  case  of  Germanicus  is  equally  perplexing.  Plancina 
seems  to  have  tried  to  bewitch  him;  and  when  Tacitus  de- 
scribes her  death,  which  followed  closely  on  Agrippina's,  he 
takes  her  guilt  for  granted.  In  the  narrative  of  the  trial  he 
does  not  go  beyond  strong  hints  that  Livia's  patronage,  which 
saved  her  from  sharing  her  husband's  condemnation,  was  ex- 
ercised unjustly.  Clear  facts  are  not  distinguished  from  sus- 
picions: the  whole  proceedings  passed  for  an  act  of  laudable 
vengeance  for  the  death  of  Germanicus,  whom  it  was  allefied, 
but  not  proved,  that  Piso  had  poisoned  with  his  own  hand  at 
a  banquet.  What  was  proved,  according  to  Tacitus,  was  that 
Piso  had  behaved  as  if  he  wanted  to  make  himself  indepen- 
dent in  his  province,  and  that  he  had  attempted  to  resume 
possession  forcibly  after  being  dismissed  by  his  superior  offi- 
cer, whose  authority  to  do  so  he  contested  with  some  plausibil- 
ity. He  committed  suicide  ;  and  Tiberius,  who  apparently  did 
not  believe  in  the  story  of  the  poisoning,  and  had  most  prob- 
ably sent  Piso  to  Syria  as  a  check  on  Germanicus,  professed 
that  if  he  had  awaited  sentence  he  would  have  saved  his  life. 

The  catastrophe  of  the  house  of  Germanicus,  who  seem  to 
have  been  fairly  represented  by  Caligula,  falls  within  the  part 
of  the  "Annals"  which  has  been  lost  to  us,  so  that  it  is  un- 
certain how  Tacitus  distributed  the  blame  between  the  jeal- 
ousy of  Tiberius,  the  intrigues  of  Sejanus,  and  the  ungoverna- 
ble temper  of  Agrippina  and  her  sons.  Enough  is  said  to 
make  it  clear  that  the  heirs  were  jealous  of  the  minister  and 
expected  to  share  the  power  of  .the  reigning  monarch — an- 
other proof  that  an  avowed  monarchy  would  have  answered 
better  than  the  preponderating  influence  of  a  single  family 
disguised  under  republican  forms.' 


214 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


The  influence  of  Sejanus  over  Tiberius  is  treated  as  a  fatal 
mystery;  and  the  elaborate  character  of  the  favorite  explains 
nothing,  and  is  not  meant  to  explain  anything.  The  concep- 
tion that  there  are  classes  of  character  with  common  tenden- 
cies does  not  occur  to  Tacitus.  All  his  generalizations  (and 
he  is  fond  of  generalizing)  extend  to  mankind  at  large,  and 
they  are  almost  always  pessimistic.  The  inbred  depravity  of 
mortals  is  a  favorite  formula,  which  recurs  with  the  fatal  facil- 
ity of  the  ablative  absolute  to  explain  everything.  Like  Sal- 
lust,  too,  Tacitus  likes  to  dwell  on  the  impossibility  of  carrying 
any  movement  through  that  requires  general  co-operation. 
He  takes  a  sort  of  malicious  pleasure  in  analyzing  the  failure 
of  attempts  to  punish  delation,  to  organize  the  senate  and 
people  for  the  defence  of  the  capital,  or  to  reform  manners 
by  public  authority.  The  nobility  of  the  old  republic  were 
irreclaimable :  so  long  as  they  had  any  money  they  could  not 
abandon  the  ostentation  of  splendor  and  power;  the  multipli- 
cation of  gastronomic  oddities  passed  for  splendor  among  a 
semi -barbarous  race;  a  dish  of  nightingales'  tongues  was 
accepted  as  a  luxury  well  worth  the  price;  it  was  a  mark  of 
spirit  and  taste  to  import  and  slaughter  a  menagerie  for  every 
banquet.  The  fashion  lasted,  Tacitus  says,  till  the  accession 
of  Vespasian ;  and  then  a  thrifty  old  emperor  and  thrifty  old 
courtiers,  who  had  formed  their  habits  in  the  provinces,  were 
strong  enough  to  set  a  new  fashion.  Naturally  he  does  not 
inquire  into  the  question,  which  seemed  so  important  to  Juve- 
nal, how  this  reformation  affected  the  majority  who  were  used 
to  depend  upon  the  munificence  of  the  great.  Tacitus  counts 
it  pure  gain  that  the  rich  ceased  to  waste  their  substance  in 
w^iys  that  gave  them  no  selfish  pleasure  or  profit,  though  ready 
to  sneer  at  an  old  age  of  shabby  power,  and  the  influence  of 
a  rich,  childless  old  man,  which  is  strong  enough  to  protect 
its  owner  under  good  and  bad  rulers  alike. 

In  truth,  the  severe  self-repression  of  Tacitus  is  often  a 
mask  for  caprice:  he  is  not  faithful  to  any  doctrine  or  to  any 
plan.  He  never  carried  out  his  intention  of  following  the 
History  of  the  Flavian  dynasty  with  a  History  of  Nerva  and 
Trajan.     His  success  had  been  sufficiently  marked  to  enable 


TACITUS. 


215 


him  to  compete  with  the  reputation  of  a  Fabius  Rusticus,  a 
Pliny,  or  a  Cluvius  Rufus,  on  the  ground  of  the  early  empire. 
In  the  "Annals"  he  expresses  an  intention,  if  he  lives,,  of  go- 
ing back  to  the  reign  of  Augustus ;  as  if  he  wished  to  carry 
his  cynical  frankness  right  through  the  imperial  period — per- 
haps he  suspected  that  the  reign  of  Trajan  was  a  fitter  theme 
for  flatterers  than  for  historians. 

His  contempt  for  his  subject  seems  to  make  him  inaccu- 
rate :  he  tells  us  that  Augustus  was  the  only  ruler  between  Sulla 
and  Claudius  who  enlarged  the  Pomerium,  forgetting,  if  he 
ever  knew,  that  Julius  had  begun  the  work  which  Augustus 
simply  carried  out.  In  the  same  way  he  tells  us  that  the  gift 
which  the  Knights  dedicated  on  the  recovery  of  Livia  had  to 
be  taken  to  Antium  because  there  was  no  temple  of  Eques- 
trian Fortune  at  Rome.  Such  a  temple  certainly  existed  in 
the  age  of  Augustus:  we  have  to  choose  between  believing 
that  Augustus,  the  restorer  of  temples,  demolished  this,  and 
suspecting  that  Tacitus,  who  knew  that  the  offering  was  dedi- 
cated at  Antium,  invented  the  reason  which  determined  the 
pontiffs.  Again,  it  is  impossible  to  reconcile  his  account  of 
the  relationships  and  successions  of  the  Parthian  royal  family 
vv'ith  Josephus,  an  earlier  writer  who  must  have  been  fiimiliar 
vi'ith  the  facts.  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  how  the  younger 
Agrippa  could  figure  among  the  vderes  7'cgcs  in  a.d.  54:  he 
had  only  been  in  possession  of  the  principality  of  Chalcis  six 
years,  and  that  principality  was  neither  venerable  in  itself  nor 
an  ancient  possession  of  the  house  of  Herod. 

In  such  matters  there  is  some  excuse  for  carelessness  or  un- 
certainty:  it  is  more  noticeable  that  Tacitus  makes,  or  seems  to 
make,  Felix  governor  of  Samaria,  while  Cumanus  is  governor 
of  Judaia;  while. Josephus  makes  Cumanus  the  successor  of 
Festus,  himself  the  successor  of  Festus  in  both  offices.  Even 
at  Rome  all  the  details  of  administration  are  slurred  over, 
even  in  such  an  important  matter  as  the  fashion  in  which  Ti- 
berius appointed  the  consuls;  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
more  than  once,  when  Tacitus  takes  leave  of  an  official,  it  is 
i^ard  to  reconcile  his  summary  of  his  services  with  the  Fasti. 

Most  of  these  sacrifices  to  a  fastidious  taste  and  more  fas- 


-11 


A 


2l6 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


tidious  style  occur  in  the  "Annals,"  and  have  been  collected 
in  support  of  one  of  the  most  ingenious  paradoxes  of  literary 
history.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  "Annals"  were 
forged  in  the  fifteenth  century  by  Poggio  Bracciolini,  and  it 
is  certainly  curious  how  little  unambiguous  mention  is  to  be 
found  of  them  either  in  antiquity  or  the  middle  ages.  Sul- 
picius  Severus  quotes  with  very  little  change  the  passage  on 
the  martyrdoms  in  Nero's  reign;  John  of  Salisbury,  in  the 
twelfth  century,  speaks  of  Tacitus  as  an  author  who  described 
the  cruelties  and  downfall  of  tyrants.  St.  Jerome,  in  his 
Chronicle,  speaks  of  thirty  volumes  of  histories  from  the  death 
of  Augustus.  Perhaps  this  is  the  clearest  testimony  of  all:  it 
is  absolutely  decisive,  unless  we  suppose  that  Poggio  con- 
trived to  get  all  the  MSS.  of  the  Chronicle  interpolated  to 
support  his  forgery.  His  testimony  proves,  in  all  probability, 
that  the  "Annals"  and  "Histories"  had  been  already  ar- 
ranged as  a  continuous  work,  though  it  is  possible  to  discredit 
it  on  the  ground  that  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  how  the  "An- 
nals" can  have  been  compressed  into  sixteen  books,  or  the 
"  Histories  "  into  fourteen,  while  even  the  "  Histories  "  cannot 
have  been  extended  into  thirty  books.  It  is  possible  and 
comparatively  easy  to  contend  that,  instead  of  Sulpicius  Sev- 
erus copying  Tacitus,  Poggio  Bracciolini  copied  Sulpicius 
Severus.  It  is  certain  that  John  of  Salisbury  would  have 
reckoned  Otho  and  Vitellius,  not  to  mention  Galba,  as  tyrants 
like  Domitian  ;  so  that  it  would  be  possible  to  think  that  he 
was  speaking  of  the  "  Histories,"  although  what  he  says  cer- 
tainly fits  the  "Annals"  better,  for  Tiberius,  Gains,  and  Nero 
bad  more  opportunity  to  display  their  "cruelty"  before  their 
"downfall  "  than  Otho  or  Vitellius. 

The  strong  point  of  the  hypothesis  is  that  about  1422  and 
1423  Poggio's  correspondence  proves  that  he  was  hesitating 
between  a  professorship  and  some  literary  enterprise,  and 
finally  decided  upon  the  latter  as  more  profitable.  There  is 
enough  mystery  about  the  matter  to  suggest  that  he  was  med- 
itating a  magnificent  forgery,  especially  as  the  mystery  recurs 
at  the  time  when  the  fragment  containing  the  latter  half  of  the 
"Annals"  was  upon  the  point  of  being  sold. 


TACITUS. 


217 


It  is  hardly  fatal  to  the  theory  that  another  MS.  containing 
the  whole  remains  of  the  "Annals"  and  "  Histories  "  was  pro- 
duced long  after  Poggio's  death,  and  purchased  by  Leo  X. ; 
for  of  course  it  may  be  maintained  that  Poggio  improved  with 
practice,  and  left  the  second  part  of  his  work  ready  to  be  cop- 
ied in  an  archaic  hand.  Nor  is  it  fatal  that  the  two  principal 
MSS.  from  which  the  rest  are  held  to  be  derived  are  both,  on 
the  face  of  them,  much  older  than  the  fifteenth  century,  for 
one  of  the  most  suspicious  circumstances  is  that  Po^o-io  is 
anxious  to  get  an  old  MS.  of  Tacitus  in  Lombardic  letters, 
and  to  get  into  communication  with  a  skilful  copyist.  Still  it 
is  very  hard  to  suppose  that  two  forgers  (for  by  the  hypothesis 
Poggio  employed  two  copyists  at  least),  working  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  before  pala30graphy  was  at  all  scientifically 
studied,  should  have  done  their  work  so  well  as  to  escape  all 
suspicion  till  the  nineteenth  century  was  three  parts  over. 
There  is  the  further  difficulty  that  all  MSS.  of  the  once  well- 
known  "  Histories"  must  Lave  disappeared  except  those  which 
Poggio  procured  for  his  accomplices,  and  that  the  accomplices, 
to  keep  fiith  with  their  employer,  gave  up  those  MSS.  to  him 
or  his  agents  to  be  destroyed,  and  that  this  was  punctually 
done  not  only  in  Poggio's  life,  but  after  his  death,  when  the 
temptation  to  sell  the  second  MS.  of  the  "Histories"  either 
before  or  after  the  enlarged  copy  would  have  been  very  strong. 

Nor  is  the  attestation  of  the  "  Histories  "  so  very  much 
clearer  than  that  of  the  "Annals:"  we  know,  indeed,  from 
the  life  of  the  emperor  Tacitus  that  Tacitus  the  consular  had 
written  something  which  passed  under  the  name  of"  Augustan 
History,"  for  the  emperor  ordered  that  every  public  library 
should  have  ten  copies  of  his  w^orks  taken  because  they  were 
getting  rare,  and  it  was  to  be  feared  that  careless  readers  might 
destroy  the  few  existing  copies.  What  is  really  decisive  is  the 
letter  of  the  younger  Pliny,  in  which  he  describes  his  uncle's 
death  as  a  contribution  to  the  historical  work  on  which  his 
friend  was  then  engaged,  which  canonly  have  been  the  "  His- 
tories." 

But  in  truth  the  discussion  is  idl^e  )  it  is  simply  incredible 
that  Poggio  or  any  other  scholar  of  the  fifteenth  century  could 

II.— 10 


o  LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 

2  lo 

have  written  two  pages  of  the  "  Annals."    The  style  of  the 
"  Ann       •  is  the  u'nique  style  of  the  "  Histories,"  wuh  Us  man- 
nerisms a  little  exaggerated:  it  is  in  no  sense  a  car.cature 
an    no  inference  can  be  drawn  from  the  undoubted  difference 
of  one,  though  this  is  not  quite  explained  by  the  difference 
o  lubkct      The  "  Annals  "  are  more  personal  than  the     H.s- 
°or  es  "  because  an  interest  in  personalities  had  grown  upon 
he  author :  this  is  a  part  of  the  reaction  from  the  hopes  which 
Titan's  accession  had  inspired.     The  author  thinks  worse  of 
the  world  as  a  whole,  and  its  larger  events  seem  dim  and 
sLow      they  fail  to  dwarf  the  details  which  are  still  able  to 
stin.:  besides,  the  matter  is  in  itself  more  depressing  for  in- 
stead of  the  conflict  between  armies  we  have  the  conflict  be- 
tween the  emperors  and  the  nobility,  and  this  conflict  .s  made 
still  more  depressing  by  the  persistent  assumption  that  the 
victims  were  alwavs  innocent.     This  assumption  is  strained 
very  far  in  the  case  of  Barea,  who  had  allowed  a  town  in  his 
province  to  defend  its  art  treasures  by  force  against  an  im- 
perial agent.     According  to  Tacitus,  to  put  such  a  governor 
on    his    trial   for    treason  was    an   attack  upon  virtue   itself. 
Barea  may  have  been,  and   probably  was,  virtuous  :    he  can 
hardly  have  been  loyal ;  and  we  cannot  trust  1  acitus  that  the 
charge  of  treason   rested  so  much  as  he  implies  upon    the 
•   charge  of  magic,  or  that  the  pathetic  denials  of  Barea  s  daugh- 
ter were  unimpeachably  sincere.  ,    ,<-    r  i 

But  the  style  does  not  fall  off,  at  least  in  the  first  half  of  the 
"  Annals,"  with  the  author's  loss  of  interest  in  his  subject.    It 
mav  even  be  said  to  gain  both  in  concentration  and  flexibi  - 
ityi  there  are  still  passages  in  the  "  Histories"  which  are  al- 
most impersonal,  ordinary  narrative  that   any  accomplished 
and  reserved  writer  might  have  written.     There  is  nothing  im- 
personal in  the  "Annals;"  the  accent  of  personal  scorn  or 
suspicion  or  indignation  breaks  out  everywhere;  where  noth- 
ing else  is  characteristic  there  is  always  the  severe  repression 
and  the  endless  variety  of  phrase.     The  stately  architectural 
structure  of  the  age  of  Cicero  and  Livy  has  quite  disappeared  ; 
the  clauses  are  at  once  fragmentary  and  elaborate  ;  the  sen- 
tences would  be  incoherent  if  they  were  not  condensed  ;  po- 


r ACITUS. 


219 


sition  and  emphasis  are  made  to  do  the  work  of  grammatical 
subordination  and  conjunctions  and  auxiliary  verbs.  The  ab- 
lative absolute  and  long  compound  substantives  and  adjectives 
attain  their  fullest  development.  It  is,  perhaps,  a  sign  that 
the  richness  of  suggestion  is  passing  over  into  decay  that 
nothing  is  quite  simple  ;  there  is  a  touch  of  fancy  or  reflec- 
tion everywhere,  even  when  nothing  is  really  added,  and  the 
author  is  only  reinventing  with  superfluous  ingenuity  phrases 
which  had  been  rubbed  threadbare.  For  instance,  he  is  very 
fond  of  marking  evening,  but  he  never  says  simply  "  at  even- 
ing," but  "as  the  day  waned  to  evening,"  or  "when  the  day 
was  turned  about  to  evening."  In  the  same  way  Tacitus  can 
never  say  simply  a  man  killed  himself,  even  when  he  does  not 
know  or  care  to  mention  the  manner  of  death,  he  prefers  to 
say  "he  devised  his  own  death,"  sihi  mortem  aviscivit.  But, 
after  all,  the  style  of  the  "  Annals  "  is  a  matchless  instrument 
for  expressing  and  stimulating  thought  and  imagination  of  a 
certain  order. 


220 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK, 


SUETONIUS. 


221 


CHAPTER    VI. 
SUETONIUS. 

Suetonius  Tranquillus  was  a  litterateur  of  a  new  kind. 
He  was  at  once  a  grammarian  and  an  official ;  he  was  em- 
ployed as  secretary  to  Trajan  and  to  Hadrian  ;  he  was  dis- 
missed from  the  latter  office  for  disrespect  to  the  Empress  Sa- 
bina,  with  whom,  according  to  some,  he  had  an  intrigue.  He 
was  not  a  rich  man,  and  his  own  marriage  was  unlucky,  so 
that  he  had  to  obtain  the  rights  of  a  father  of  three  children 
from  Trajan  by  the  intercession  of  the  younger  Pliny. 

He  has  none  of  the  pretensions  or  the  prepossessions  of  the 
senatorian  WTiters :  one  may  call  him  unprejudiced  or  un- 
scrupulous. He  does  not  aim  at  blackening  any  emperor  in 
the  way  that  Tacitus  aims  at  blackening  Tiberius  or  Nero  ;  he 
has  still  less  of  the  genuine  though  not  unofficial  enthusiasm 
of  Velleius  j  he  is  a  gossip,  and  speaks  evil  of  ever}'  one  with- 
out an  intention  of  doing  harm. 

His  "Lives  of  the  Caesars  "  are  his  principal  work,  and  they 
are  very  tantalizing,  as  they  are  to  us  a  substitute  for  history. 
They  are  not  orderly  biographies,  but  biographical  portraits, 
and  the  chronological  skeleton  which  we  cannot  supply  was 
still  accessible  when  he  wrote.  Pie  is  careless  of  truth  of  de- 
tail, but  all  the  stories  which  he  gives  might  have  been  or 
ought  to  have  been  true.  They  illustrate  a  sound  view  of  the 
character  which  is  under  discussion.  Very  few  French  or 
English  elogcs  have  the  easy  mastery  we  find  in  Suetonius's 
"  Lives  of  the  Caesars,"  or  at  least  in  the  first  six.  Whether 
materials  or  courage  to  be  frank  failed  the  author,  the  last  six 
are  comparatively  meagre.  Of  Galba,  Otho,  and  Vitellius 
there  was,  of  course,  little  to  say  ;  their  administration  was  too 
short  to  have  a  well-marked  character,  and  Suetonius^s  plan 


i 


\ 


does  not  lead  him  to  dwell  at  length  on  the  events  of  their 
rei'^ns.  Even  on  his  plan  more  should  have  been  said  of 
Vespasian  and  Domitian,  but  the  treatment  of  the  events  of 
their  reigns  is  even  more  meagre  in  proportion,  just  because 
tradition  was  fresh ;  and  he  could  take  for  granted  the  vague 
knowledge  of  events,  which  was  all  he  ever  thought  it  neces- 
sary to  communicate  as  a  framework  for  personal  anecdotes. 

The  life  of  Julius,  if  nothing  has  been  lost,  begins  abruptly, 
as  if  the  author  did  not  care  to  give  the  traditional  glories  of 
the  Julian  house,  which  must  have  been  hackneyed  when  he 
wrote.  The  first  thing  we  are  told  is  that  he  lost  his  father  at 
the  a^e  of  sixteen,  and  the  year  after  parted  wdth  a  rich  wife 
to  whom  he  had  been  betrothed  in  his  nonage,  in  order  to  es- 
pouse the  daughter  of  Cinna,  the  last  chief  of  the  Marian 
party.  He  makes  up  for  this  reticence  by  a  long  list  of  all 
the  conspiracies  of  which  Caesar  was  suspected  in  his  early 
years.  He  came  back  to  Rome  from  his  stay  in  Bithynia, 
about  which  there  was  scandal  that  Suetonius  takes  care  to 
retail,  in  order  to  see  if  he  had  a  chance  with  Lepidus ;  and 
as  he  disapproved  of  Lepidus,  and  did  not  believe  in  his 
chances,  he  went  to  Rhodes  to  be  out  of  the  way  and  study 
rhetoric,  after  which  he  distinguished  himself  against  Mithri- 
dates  and  the  pirates. 

After  his  term  of  office  in  Spain  he  came  back  before  the 
time  to  claim  full  citizenship  for  the  Latin  colonies,  and  to 
conspire  with  Crassus  to  massacre  a  competent  number  of 
senators  to  secure  the  consulate  to  Sylla  and  Autronius, 
while  Crassus  and  he  were  to  be  dictator  and  master  of  the 
horse.  Suetonius  does  not  give  a  single  hint  of  Caesar's  share 
in  the  conspiracy  of  Catiline,  the  most  formidable  of  all.  The 
author's  reticence  appears  to  be  imposed  by  the  pressure  of  a 
loyalty  which  he  does  not  share  ;  for  the  treatment  of  the 
Civil  War  is,  upon  the  whole,  impartial.  We  are  told  cynically 
how  Caesar  made  a  party  by  bribing  all  the  surroundings  of 
Pompeius  and  great  part  of  the.  senate  with  gifts  or  easy  loans, 
while  everybody  of  lower  rank,  who  visited  him  by  invitation 
or  otherwise,  received  splendid  presents.  He  helped  every- 
body in  difficulties  who  was  riot  too  f^ir  gone  to  be  helped 


222 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


SUETONIUS. 


223 


decently,  and  hinted  that  he  should  be  able  to  help  these  too 
if  there  came  a  civil  war. 

Suetonius  does  not  trouble  himself  to  make  the  negotiations 
which  preceded  the  Civil  War  intelligible.  He  tells  us  that 
the  tribunes  who  had  fled  to  Caesar's  camp  were  only  the  pre- 
text of  the  Civil  War,  and  gives  a  list  of  the  different  conject- 
ures as  to  the  real  cause.  "Pompeius  was  in  the  habit  of 
saying  that  as  Caesar  could  not  finish  the  works  he  set  afoot 
out  of  the  means  of  a  private  citizen,  nor  fulfil  what  he  had 
taught  the  people  to  expect  of  his  coming,  he  decided  to  con- 
found everything  in  one  medley.  Others  say  he  feared  to  be 
compelled  to  give  account  of  all  he  had  done  in  his  first  con- 
sulship against  the  laws  and  auspices  and  the  tribunes,  since 
Marcus  Cato  had  given  notice  not  once  or  twice,  and  that 
with  an  oath,  that  he  would  put  him  on  trial  as  soon  as  ever 
he  had  let  his  army  go.  It  was  a  common  forecast  that  if  he 
came  back  a  j^rivate  man  he  would  have  to  plead  his  cause, 
after  the  precedent  of  Milo,  with  armed  men  round  about. 
This  has  been  made  more  credible  bv  the  testimonv  of  Asin- 
ius  Pollio,  who  says  that  in  the  battle  of  Pharsalia,  looking  on 
his  enemies  smitten  and  beaten  down  before  him,  he  uttered 
these  very  words  :  '  They  would  have  it  ;  after  all  my  achieve- 
ments I,  Gains  Caesar,  should  have  been  condemned  if  I  had 
not  asked  help  from  the  army.'  Some  think  he  was  caught 
by  the  habit  of  command,  and,  after  weighing  his  own  strength 
and  that  of  the  enemy,  took  occasion  to  snatch  the  mastery 
which  in  his  first  youth  he  had  desired."  ^ 

The  campaigns  are  hurried  over  in  two  short  chapters,"  in 
which  all  the  serious  risks  of  the  hero  are  completely  dis- 
guised :  one  hardly  knows  why,  for  there  is  no  approach  to 
adulation  ;  not  even  a  laudatory  comment  on  his  clemency, 
so  unknown  in  civil  wars.  Somethinsf  is  said  of  this  last  in 
the  long  enumeration  ofj^ersonal  traits  which  follows  the  sum- 
mary of  the  Civil  War;  but  it  is  put  on  a  level  with  his  kind- 
ness in  beheading  the  pirates  who  took  him  prisoner,  before 
he  kept  his  word  by  crucifying  them,  and  simply  putting  a 
confidential  slave,  who  had  undertaken  to  poison  him,  to 
*  Suet.  "Jul."  XXX.  ^  lb.  xxxiv.,  xxxv. 


4i>H 


It 


death.  This  praise  is  balanced  by  an  elaborate  indictment 
of  his  o-reed.  When  governor  in  Spain  he  borrowed  shame- 
lessly from  the  natives,  and  actually  plundered  several  Lusi- 
tanian  towns  without  provocation.  In  Gaul  he  pillaged  fanes 
and  temples  of  the  gods  that  were  full  of  offerings,  oftener  for 
plunder  than  for  punishment,  and  so  he  came  to  great  plenty 
of  gold,  and  could  offer  it  for  sale  in  Italy  and  the  provinces 
twenty-five  per  cent,  below  its  value.'  Here  it  is  doubtful  how 
t^r  Suetonius  understands  his  story  :  it  seems,  upon  the  whole, 
that  Caesar  only  offered  gold  in  practically  unlimited  quantity 
tbr  silver  at  the  legal  rate  of  exchange,  while  Suetonius  imag- 
ined that  the  legal  rate  of  exchange  was  as  high  as  it  was  in 
his  own  day.  Of  course  his  informants  knew  that  gold  even 
then  commanded  a  premium. 

But  after  commenting  on  Caesar's  virtues,  including  his 
efforts  to  restore  order  and  external  decency  by  considerable 
severities,  Suetonius  decides  with  startling  plainness  that 
everybody  thought  he  was  justly  put  to  death.  Suetonius  re- 
jects all  the  dramatic  incidents  of  Ccesar's  death  and  burial : 
he  does  not  believe  in  the  reproachful  cry  to  Brutus  or  in  the 
ironical  speech  of  Antonius  at  the  funeral ;  on  the  other  hand, 
he  believes  implicitly  in  all  the  omens  and  prophecies,  and  in 
Caesar's  own  feeling  that  his  time  was  come. 

In  the  life  of  Octavius  he  reaches  the  type  which  he  pre- 
serves thenceforward  :  he  begins  at  the  very  beginning  with 
the  legendary  history  of  the  Octavii,  the  leading  house  at  Ve- 
litrai,  which  had  come  down  in  the  world  in  the  century  before 
the  birth  of  Augustus.  Though  his  father  had  been  pra3tor, 
he  could  be  plausibly  accused  of  speculating  not  only  in  silver, 
but  in  the  jobs  of  the  Campus  Martius,  for  it  was  believed  he 
was  among  those  who  undertook  the  lucrative  office  of  dis- 
tributing bribes.  The  son  was  born  at  Rome,  and  the  place 
of  his  birth,  Suetonius  tells  us,  was  turned  into  a  chapel  long 
after  his  death,  while  the  cupboard  in  the  old  house  outside 
Velitrai,  which  served  as  his  nursery,  was  too  holy  to  be  enter- 
ed except  as  an  act  of  reverence,  for  when  the  owner  attempted 
to  use  the  place  as  a  bedroom  he  and  his  bed  were  turned  out 

^  Suet.  "Jul."] V. 


224 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


SUETONIUS. 


of  doors  by  miracle.  And  all  miracles  which  were  alleged  in 
the  honor  of  Augustus  are  admitted  without  hesitation,  though 
Suetonius  hardly  admires  him.  No  ancient  author  is  so  copious 
on  his  cruelty  up  to  the  war  of  Perusia,  and  the  official  tra- 
dition that  he  was  forced  to  consent  to  the  proscriptions  is 
treated  with  a  very  perfunctory  respect. 

The  contrast  between  his  virtues  and  vices  is  designedly 
drawn  out  as  a  riddle,  and  no  scheme  of  his  policy,  such  as 
we  find  even  in  Dio,  is  apparently  present  to  the  writer's 
mind.  The  list  of  his  domestic  measures  is  a  pretty  long 
one;  but  their  dates,  and  generally  their  details,  are  left  to 
conjecture.  It  seems  that  we  are  meant  to  feel  that  the 
praise  predominates;  but  a  modern  reader  will  feel  the  ad- 
missions are  too  great — for  one  thing,  if  Suetonius  is  to  be 
believed,  the  emperor  was  little  better  than  a  coward.  The 
most  mteresting  parts  of  the  book  are  the  purely  person^ll 
traits,  such  as  his  dislike  to  dwarfs  and  idiots  and  monsters 
of  all  kinds,  and  his  dislike  to  early  rising,  which  was  a 
singularity  in  Rome;  for  hard-working  men  began  early, 
while  Augustus  went  on  late.  He  agreed  with  a  good  many 
modern  statesmen  in  eating  at  irregular  hours,  though  he 
adhered  in  other  respects  to  the  extreme  foshion  of  Southern 
abstemiousness.  Suetonius  knew  his  autographs,  which 
were  careless  and  full  of  mannerisms;  he  inclined  to  pho- 
netic spelling,  and  did  not  divide  his  lines  neatly,  but  ran  them 
on  anyhow  till  he  came  to  the  end  of  his  word  or  phrase. 
He  was  a  purist  in  his  distaste  for  archaic  and  outlandish 
words,  but  his  partiality  for  certain  catchwords  bordered  upon 
slang.  One  may  add  that  he  was  naturally  cold-blooded,  for 
he  scraped  his  skin  till  he  was  sore. 

In  some  ways  the  life  of  Tiberius  is  more  instructive.  For 
one  thing,  it  admits  of  being  more  closely  compared  with 
Tacitus  than  any  other  of  the  earlier  lives;  for  another,  Sueto- 
nius is  not  so  overpowered  by  his  subject:  almost  always, 
when  he  difters  from  Tacitus,  he  seems  to  differ  for  the  better. 
The  long  enumeration  of  the  early  troubles  of  that  emperor 
and  his  hunted  childhood  explain  much  that  is  enigmatical  in 
his  later  life.     Even  the  genealogy  is  significant,  and  we  have 


225 


m\ 


to  thank  Suetonius  for  our  knowledge  that  the  Claudii  had  a 
burial-place  assigned  to  them  under  the  Capitol,  though  he 
obviously  does  not  know  whether  they  settled  in  Rome  in 
the  days  of  Romulus  or  Brutus.  The  family  pride,  or  rather 
one  should  call  it  haughtiness,  combined  very  oddly  with  a 
real  timidity,  partly  congenital  and  partly  the  result  of  cir- 
cumstance, to  train  the  emperor  to  the  singular  irony  and 
hypocrisy  which  marked  his  tyranny.  We  are  told  repeat- 
edly that  Augustus  had  a  poor  opinion  of  him,  pitied  the 
Roman  people  who  would  be  ground  so  slowly  between 
toothless  jaws,  and  hesitated  seriously  as  to  whether  he 
should  not  assign  the  succession  to  Germanicus,  or  even  to 
Agrippa,  his  own  grandson,  whom  he  visited  in  the  last  months 
of  his  life  to  see  whether  he  could  not  be  brought  home 
from  exile.  And  it  does  not  weaken  the  effect  of  this  that 
Suetonius  quotes  many  passages  from  Augustus's  letters  when 
he  has  resigned  himself  to  the  inevitable,  full  of  the  praise 
that  would  sooth  a  sensitive,  suspicious  officer  to  whom  the 
emperor  had  certainly  behaved  badly.  The  whole  narrative 
of  his  hard-drinking  youth  and  his  imprudent  retreat  to 
Rhodes,  and  the  abject  shifts  to  which  he  descended  when 
he  found  that  his  retirement  had  turned  into  a  disgrace,  dis- 
pose decisively  of  Tacitus's  solemn  paradox  that  he  was  of 
excellent  life  and  repute  while  he  was  a  private  citizen  or 
in  command  under  Augustus;  while  Suetonius  does  full  jus- 
tice to  his  really  admirable  services  as  a  general  both  before 
and  after  his  retirement  to  Rhodes. 

His  hesitation  in  proclaiming  his  assumption  of  the  em- 
pire is  explained  by  the  fear,  which  Tacitus  does  not  men- 
tion, that  the  armies  might  pronounce  in  favor  of  Germanicus, 
with  or  without  encourasfement  from  the  latter.  Nothinsr 
substantial  is  said  of  Germanicus's  campaigns,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  account  of  Libo's  conspiracy  is  much  clearer. 
The  author  does  not  care  to  explain  that  this  was  the  first 
specimen  of  the  persecution  tp  which  the  stupid  nobility 
were  liable,  nor  that  Libo  was  in  all  probability  crazy,  but  he 
does  not  throw  any  doubt  on  the  reality  of  the  conspiracy. 
Ihis  is  not  to  spare  Tiberius,  for  Suetonius  is  rather  depre- 


I- 


n. 


10' 


226 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


SUETONIUS, 


227 


ciatory  of  his  munificence  to  the  pubhc,  and  hints  that  his 
advance  of  a  Lirge  loan  from  the  exchequer  without  interest 
to  debtors  with  real  but  unavaiLible  assets  was  made  neces- 
sary to  mask  the  failure  of  his  schemes  to  compel  capitalists 
to  invest  two  thirds  of  their  resources  in  Italian  land.  In  the 
same  spirit  he  tells  us  that  when  Tiberius  was  "correcting  the 
morals  of  the  state,"  he  appointed  L.  Piso  (whom  Tacitus 
praises  for  his  moderation,  temper,  and  manliness)  prefect  of 
the  city,  because  in  the  course  of  a  three  days'  uninterrupted 
drinking-bout  he  had  found  him  "  a  friend  for  all  hours." 
Again,  when  the  aediles  took  up  the  question  of  sumptuary 
laws,  and  some  strict  senators  were  anxious  for  a  thorough  ref- 
ormation, Tacitus  gives  us  the  ironical  letter  of  Tiberius  and 
the  hollow  debate  in  the  senate;  Suetonius  tells  lis  the  regu- 
lations which  the  aediles  were  actually  set  to  carry  out. 

Suetonius  is  as  capricious  as  Tacitus  in  the  lives  of  Gains, 
Claudius,  and  Nero  :  in  every  case  the  life  up  to  the  accession 
is  better  than  the  life  after,  although  there  was  no  abrupt 
break  in  the  case  of  Claudius.  The  peculiarities  of  Claudius 
are  explained  at  great  length,  and  it  appears  that  an  extreme 
gaiuhcrie,  and  in  later  life  a  very  weak  memory,  were  the 
worst  of  them,  and  it  is  surprising  to  see  how  completely  they 
ruined  his  life.  He  was  treated  like  an  idiot,  and  then  the 
public  were  surprised  to  see  how  completely  he  was  in  the 
hands  of  his  household.  The  public  were  more  scandalized 
that  he  sometimes  made  mistakes  when  judging  in  person  than 
edified  at  his  resolution  to  break  through  the  system  of  keep- 
ing trials  pending  for  years.  If  a  party  to  a  trial  might  attend 
when  he  pleased  to  find  it  perfectly  convenient,  trials  would 
never  be  decided,  and  so  Claudius  always  gave  it  in  favor  of 
the  party  who  was  present,  and  is  the  true  father  of  the  prov- 
erb, "The  absent  are  always  in  the  wrong."  The  legend  that 
he  only  heard  one  side  has  the  same  respectable  origin. 
There  are  very  amusing  stories  of  the  way  advocates  used  to 
presume  on  his  good-nature:  they  would  never  allow  him  to 
rise  until  they  had  done  with  him  ;  they  would  call  after  him, 
and,  if  he  did  not  stop,  catch  at  the  fringe  of  his  toga.  One, 
after  apologizing  at  great  length  for  the  absence  of  a  witness, 


and  evading  the  inquiries  of  the  court  as  to  the  cause,  had  the 
ingenious  impudence  to  explain  at  last, "  He  is  dead;  I  sup- 
pose he  might  be  dispensed  with."  Another,  returning  thanks 
for  permission  to  reply,  added,  "After  all,  it  is  commonly 
granted."  Certainly  Claudius,  who  knew  himself  to  be  irrita- 
ble, and  that  it  was  easy  to  make  him  permanently  angry,  had 
a  riirht  to  boast  that  his  irritation  was  short  and  harmless,  if  he 
could  hardly  say  that  his  anger  was  always  justifiable.  The 
stories  of  his  censorship  are  less  piquant:  he  deprived  a 
wealthy  and  distinguished  Asiatic  knight  of  his  horse  (and  his 
equestrian  rank)  because  he  could  not  speak  Latin,  while  he 
passed  over  a  youthful  profligate  with  a  reprimand,  "There  is 
really  no  occasion  for  me  to  know  the  name  of  your  mistress." 
What  is  curious  is  that,  with  so  much  shrewd  good-nature, 
Claudius  combined  so  much  of  the  cruelty  of  an  overgrown 
schoolboy.  A  man  was  condemned  to  be  flogged  to  death  at 
Alba,  and  Claudius  thought  he  should  like  to  see  the  cere- 
mony; as  the  executioner  was  away,  Claudius  waited  patiently 
till  one  could  be  fetched  from  Rome.  When  a  forger  was 
brought  up  for  trial,  and  somebody  called  out  that  his  hands 
ought  to  be  cut  off,  he  actually  ordered  up  a  knife  and  a  chop- 
ping-block,  though  it  appears  from  Suetonius  that  he  was 
stopped  in  time. 

Our  author  is  so  neutral  and  phlegmatic  that  he  hardly 
gives  us  an  opportunity  of  distinguishing  the  cruelty  of  Clau- 
dius, who  was  a  diligent  and  public- spirited  administrator, 
from  that  of  Gaius  and  Nero,  who  were  both  thorough  egoists : 
he  recounts  the  worst  excesses  of  both  without  any  spontane- 
ous disgust.  It  is  therefore  surprising  how  full  he  is  on  the 
early  benevolence  of  both;  though  he  does  not  draw^  the  in- 
ference, it  seems  that  they  w^ere  both  much  inspired  at  first  by 
their  situation.  Before  their  accession  both  indulged  them- 
selves in  baseness ;  afterwards,  for  a  time,  both  exerted  them- 
selves to  be  worthy  of  their  place.  In  his  life  of  both,  Sue- 
tonius divides  their  good  and  evil  deeds  sharply  and  without 
chronological  order.  In  the  case  of  Nero  it  is  surprising  to 
find  not  only  the  persecution  of  the  Christians,  but  also  his 
artistic  exercises  placed  among  the  actions  which  were  either 


228 


LATIN  UTERATURE. 


commendable  or  blameless.  But  his  chariot  -  driving  and 
sin-ing  are  qualified  as  severely  as  Tacitus  could  qualify 
them,  though  Suetonius  does  not  seem  shocked  that  hcin- 
duced  senators  and  knights  to  perform  m  public  One 
notices  that  both  Gaius  and  Nero  had  the  feeling  that  the 
senate  was  the  fifth  wheel  which  was  likely  to  upset  the  coach. 
They  both  were  suspected  of  a  desire  to  abolish  the  senate 
and  manage  the  provinces  and  the  armies  by  Roman  knights, 
thouo-h  Nero  carried  his  hypocrisy  so  far  as  to  assign  amp  e 
alloN^nces  for  the  support  of  the  dignity  of  decayed  noble 

families.  .  , 

Of  all  the  emperors  there  is  none  whom  Suetonius  s  candor 
depreciates  more  than  Galba ;  if  he  is  to  be  trusted,  during 
the  later  part  of  his  rule  in  Spain  Galba  deliberately  elected 
as  a  matter  of  prudence  to  play  the  part  of  King  Log,  while 
his  personal  morality  was  almost  on  a  level  with  that  of  ii- 
berius.     Otho,  on  the  other  hand,  gains  a  good  deal  from  his 
narrative:  it  is  clear  that  he   retained  much  of  the  noble 
nature  of  his  father,  one  of  the  best  men  of  the  time.     For  ten 
years  he  was  an  exemplary  provincial  governor,  and  these 
years  were  a  better  clew  to  his  true  character  than  the  ele- 
gant ostentation  with  which  he  had  sown  his  wild  oats  before 
he  fell  in  love  with  his  own  wife,  whom  he  was  compelled  to 
abandon  to  Nero.     Suetonius  has  special  information  from 
his  father  (a  namesake,  and  no  doubt  a  client,  of  the  famous 
Suetonius  Paulinus)  that  Otho  had  a  genuine  conscientious 
abhorrence  of  civil  war,  and  would  not  have  had  Galba  mas- 
sacred upon  any  account,  if  he  had  thought  any  one  would 
ficrht  for  him.     It  is  noticeable  that  he  omits  all  mention  ot 
what  Tacitus  passed  over  lightly-the  strong  probability  that, 
if  the  war  between  Otho  and  Vitellius  had  been  protracted, 
their  officers  would  have  treated  over  their  heads  :  while  he  is 
more  respectful  than  Tacitus  to  the  negotiations  between  the 
principals.     Vitellius   fares   badly   with    him;    he   mentions 
hardlv  anything  to  his  praise,  except  his  honest  anxiety  that 
his  escort  should  have  their  breakfasts,  and  even  this  praise 
is  qualified  by  the  mention  of  the  way  in  which  Vitellius 
vouchsafed  to  guarantee  that  he  had  had  his  own. 


SUETONIUS, 


The  Flavian  dynasty  is  treated,  upon  the  whole,  with  marked 
respect,  "  though  Domitian   suffered  the  due  penalty  of  his 
cruelty  and  covetousness."     It  is  curious  that  though  Vespa- 
sian set  his  face  against  pedigree-makers,  who  might  have 
disguised  the  real  facts  by  their  inventions,  it  was  quite  im- 
possible for  Suetonius  to  ascertain  whether  his  great-grand- 
father was  a  thorough  Italian.     There  was  a  report  that  the 
ffreat-irrand father  came  from  beyond  the  Po,  and  was  a  con- 
itractor  for  the  gangs  of  harvestmen  and  vintagers  who  used 
to  come  out  of  Umbria  into  the  Sabine  country  properly  so 
called.      The  grandfather  had  served  on  the  side  of  Pom- 
ipeius,  the  father  had  never  served  at  all ;  but  this  was  too 
{much  for  Roman  loyalty:  historians  would  have  it  he  served 
fas  long  as  his  health  allowed,  and  only  differed  whether  he 
ihad  reached  the  rank  oi primipilus,  or  had  only  attained  to  be 
a  centurion  when  discharged.     He  earned  a  more  solid  dis- 
tinction as  a  revenue  farmer,  for  several  cities  set  up  statues 
and  inscriptions  in  his  honor.     After  this  he  lent  money  at 
interest  to  the  Helvetii.      Vespasian  himself  served  a  long 
round  of  offices  rather  above  his  means  before  he  came  to  the 
empire.     In  Nero's  reign  he  was  so  heavily  in  debt  that  he 
had  to  pledge  his  property  to  his  brother,  and  contract  for 
the  supply  of  mules  upon  the  highways  in  order  to  keep  up 
his  rank.     Even  this  was  not  enough  :  he  had  to  make  money 
out  of  rash  young  men  who  wanted  to  be  senators  in  despite 
of  their  fathers.     However,  he  never  sank  so  low  as  to  force 
himself  to  keep  awake  during  Nero's  performances  in  Greece. 
He  actually  wms  in  danger  of  death  until  the  revolt  in  Judaea 
broke  out,  when  he  seemed  insignificant  and  able  enough  to 
put  it  down.     Suetonius  abstains  from  all  reflection  upon  his 
household  arrangements,  though  his  wife  was  the  cast-off  mis- 
tress of  a  Roman  knight,  abandoned  by  her  own  father,  who 
afterwards  paid  Vespasian  the  compliment  of  proving  that 
she  was  not  only  a  freedwoman  but  a  freewoman.     Naturally 
enough,  after  his  wife's  death  he  took  a  real  freedwoman  for 
concubine  and  treated  her  almost  as  well   as  a  wife,  while 
upon  her  death  he  provided  himself  with  many  successors. 
Most  of  the  life  of  Vespasiai)  is  taken  up  with  the  presages 


230 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


of  his  accession  and  his  death,  and  with  his  humorous  econo- 
mies. The  best  of  the  latter  is  the  story  of  one  of  his  house- 
hold ^  who  wanted  an  appointment  for  somebody  he  called  his 
brother.  Vesj^asian  inquired  what  the  "brother"  was  to  pay, 
and  took  the  fee  on  the  appointment  himself,  and  told  the 
brother  to  find  another  "  brother  ;"  "  since,"  he  said,  "  the  one 
you  told  me  of  is  mine."  He  was  very  nearly  impartial  be- 
tween the  senate  and  the  knights,  for  he  decided  that,  if  a 
senator  began  abusing  a  knight,  the  latter  had  the  right  to 
retaliate. 

His  administration,  according  to  Suetonius,  was  nearly 
faultless,  only  he  raised  a  revenue  upon  contracts,  on  which 
no  ruler  who  respected  himself  properly  would  have  made  a 
profit.  It  is  strange  to  see  him  praised  for  not  punishing  a 
Cynic  philosopher  who  met  him  on  his  way  to  exile  and 
showed  him  no  sign  of  respect ;  and  for  commending  a  pleader 
who  ventured  to  say,  "  If  my  client  is  worth  a  hundred  million 
sesterces,^  what  is  that  to  Ccesar?"  Confiscations  seem  to 
have  offended  public  opinion  much  less  than  other  sources  of 
revenue,  which  only  offended  good  taste.  It  is  clear  from 
Suetonius  that  Vespasian  was  by  no  means  chary  in  spend- 
ing: he  actually  objected  to  do  his  public  works  cheap,  be- 
cause he  was  anxious  to  feed  "  the  poor  people."  His  action 
in  reference  to  the  standing  question  of  suits  in  arrear  was 
conspicuously  moderate:  he  only  issued  special  commissions 
to  overtake  the  work.  Domitian  had  to  go  further  :  he  quashed 
all  processes  that  were  over  five  years  old,  as  Augustus  had 
done,  and  enacted  that  whoever  recommenced  such  a  process 
should  do  so  at  his  peril.  The  impression  that  Suetonius 
gives  is  that  Domitian  was  a  capable  and  not  unpopular  ad- 
ministrator. He  by  no  means  endorses  Pliny's  view  as  to  the 
cruelty  with  which  he  punished  the  Vestals  who  had  been 
false  to  the  duties  of  their  station :  the  executions  which 
he  ordered  are  treated  as  if  they  were  just  of  a  piece  with 
the  restoration  of  the  exclusive  privilege  of  the  knights 
in  the  theatre.  Suetonius  states  expressly  that  there  was  no 
such  reaction  of  public  feeling  against  him  as  against  Nero. 
'  Suet.  "  Vesj)."  .\.\ii.  =  Not  quite  1,000,000/. 


SUETONIUS. 


231 


The  "  Lives  of  the  Caesars"  are  the  only  works  of  Suetonius 
which  have  reached  us  in  anything  like  integrity,  but  through- 
out classical  antiquity  he  continued  to  be  a  popular  compiler. 
Not  only  does  St.  Jerome  refer,  in  the  Preface  to  the  "Eccle- 
siastical Writers"  and  the  "Letter  to  Desiderius,"  to  his 
"Lives  of  Men  of  Letters"  as  a  model  which  he  was  asked  to 
imitate,  but  Servius  Probus,  Suidas,  and  Tzetzes,  and  the  au- 
thor of  the  "  Etymologicon  Magnum,"  continue  to  quote  him 
as  far  as  the  thirteenth  century;  in  the  Byzantine  period  he 
took  the  place  of  Varro. 

A  work  on  "  Grammarians  and  Rhetoricians,"  containing 
notes  which  in  neither  case  seem  to  go  below  the  Augustan 
ap-e,  is  printed  in  his  works  with  Lives  of  Terence,  Horace, 
Lucan,  Pliny  the  Elder,  and  Juvenal,  which  are  probably  ex- 
tracted from  the  work  which  St.  Jerome  imitated. 

In  addition  to  these,  he  wrote  probably  twelve  books  of 
Praia,  or  Miscellanies,  and  four  books  oi  Ludicra  ;  the  latter 
probably  cover  the  book  Tr^pi  'E\/\»/j'tVw»^  7rai^iu>y  kcu  tVytiurwi' 
("On  Greek  Sports  and  Public  Games"),  and  the  three  -n-fpi 
'Vwnaioji'  TTcuciwy  Kui  Oeiopiwy  ("On  Roman  Sports  and  Public 
Shows"),  which  Suidas  mentions:  the  latter  is  quoted  by  Ter- 
tullian,  and  it  is  thought  that  both  were  written  in  Greek  and 
in  Latin.  The  Prafa  probably  cover  the  treatises  on  proper 
names,  on  the  Roman  year,  which  included  much  archceology 
on  different  festivals,  besides  chronology,  on  the  names  and 
shapes  of  dresses  and  shoes,  on  Rome  and  its  laws  and  cus- 
toms, and  a  supplementary  course  of  philosophy  treating  of 
the  universe,  animal  nature,  and  perhaps  mineralogy  and  bot- 
any. A  defence  of  Cicero  as  a  politician  and  an  etymological 
dictionary  of  abuse  were  almost  certainly  written  in  Greek. 
His  work  on  the  pedigree  of  the  twelve  Caisars,  in  eight  books, 
is  probably  a  recast  of  that  which  we  possess. 

His  style  is  terse  in  a  very  high  degree:  he  has  no  preten- 
sion to  be  epigrammatic  or  abrupt ;  sometimes  he  is  elliptical 
through  carelessness.  The  only  "corrupt"  phrase  that  he 
can  be  convicted  of  using  is  "numerous"  in  the  sense  of 
"  many,"  which  shows  that  he  belonged  to  a  generation  which 
had  lost  its  hold  upon  the  traditional  meaning  of  the  word. 


232 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


FLORUS, 


233 


It  should  be  added  that  he  uses  technical  and  official  words 
more  freely  than  is  compatible  with  perfect  purity  of  style. 
He  requires  a  commentary  in  the  same  way  as  a  racy  Anglo- 
Indian  novel. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

FLORUS. 

L.  Ann/EUS  Florus  was  in  all  probability  the  last  survivor 
of  the  literary  movement  which  expired  in  the  second  century. 
Some  of  the  jMSS.  of  his  work  gave  his  name  as  Julius  Florus, 
a  poet  of  the  days  of  Hadrian,  who  rallied  him  on  his  work; 
a  good  many  critics  were  disposed  to  insist  that  his  name  was 
Seneca,  because  Lactantius  quotes  Seneca  as  having  distin- 
guished the  four  ages  of  Rome  which  coincide  exactly  with 
the  four  ages  of  Florus.  In  fact,  we  may  believe  that  he  was 
connected  both  with  the  house  of  Seneca  and  with  the  Florus 
whom  Hadrian  knew  ;  but  he  can  hardly  be  the  contemporary 
of  eitlier  Seneca  or  Hadrian,  as  he  speaks  of  an  interval  of 
nearly  two  hundred  years  between  Augustus  and  his  own  day. 
Now  Augustus  only  received  that  title  in  27  b.c.  :  conse- 
quently Florus,  if  he  used  language  with  any  accuracy,  must 
have  WTitten  between  a.d.  148  and  173,  even  if  we  suppose 
that  he  dates  from  the  accession  of  Augustus,  after  the  battle 
of  Actium,  not  from  his  decease,  which  would  be  the  more 
logical  way  of  putting  it,  as  the  author  complains  that,  during 
the  period  of  nearly  two  hundred  years  which  he  describes, 
the  empire  had  been  simmering  away  in  old  age,  till,  to  the 
surprise  of  all  the  world,  it  renewed  its  youth  for  a  season  un- 
der Trajan.  Augustus  was  a  conquering  emperor  up  to  the 
defeat  of  Varus,  and  therefore  the  old  age  of  the  empire  can- 
not be  fairly  dated  from  his  accession.  It  is  a  more  doubtful 
question  whether  the  author  wrote  after  Varus,  whose  not 
wholly  barren  campaigns  might  have  ranked  as  another  revi- 
val of  the  aged  empire.  There  is  one  more  clew  to  his  iden- 
tity which  deserves  mention.  A  certain  [P.]  Annius  Florus, 
in  the  introduction  to  a  lost  discussion  of  the  question  whether 


234 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


FLO  R  US. 


235 


Vergil  is  to  be  considered  an  orator  or  a  poet,  condoled  in 
the  reign  of  Domilian  with  a  friend  who  believed  that  the  em- 
peror had  deprived  him  of  the  prize  in  the  competitions  of 
the  Capitol,  in  a  style  which  is  very  like  the  Epitome— there 
are  the  same  airs  of  independence,  the  same  tendency  to 
windy  rhetoric;  the  author  congratulates  himself  that  he  is 
what  he  is,  an  independent  grammarian  of  Tarraco,  without 
even  a  salary  from  the  state,  rather  than  anything  else  from  a 
centurion  up  to  an  emperor,  though  everybody  would  think  it 
great  promotion  for  him  to  be  made  a  centurion.  All  the 
MSS.  of  the  Epitomist  give  either  the  prcenomen  of  Lucius  or 
none,  but  it  is  quite  admissible  that  P.  might  stand  for  Foeta 
instead  of  Puhlius.  The  best  MS.  gives  the  principal  name 
as  Julius,  and  this  again  has  been  explained  by  supposing 
that  it  is  a  clerical  error  for  Lucius. 

The  work  itself  falls  into  two  parts,  one  of  which  deals  with 
all  the  foreign  wars  down  to  the  conquest  of  Gaul  by  Caesar; 
the  second  deals  with  the  civil  strife  from  the  days  of  the 
Gracchi  to  the  battle  of  Actium,  and  one  or  two  of  the  more 
important  foreign  campaigns  of  Augustus.  The  arrangement 
is  curious,  and  does  not  harmonize  very  well  with  the  four  pe- 
riods into  which,  after  (the  Elder?)  Seneca,  the  whole  history 
is  divided:  the  years  of  the  monarchy  correspond  to  the  in- 
fancy of  Rome ;  the  years  in  which  the  Italian  peninsula  was 
conquered  correspond  to  the  vigor  of  youth:  it  is  in  that  age 
that  Rome  was  most  fruitful  in  great  men  ;  then  comes  the 
period  in  which  Rome  conquered  the  world,  which  is  divided 
into  two  halves,  marked  by  the  fall  of  Carthage  and  the  legis- 
lation of  the  Gracchi.  The  first  is  the  true  Golden  Age:  the 
second  is  a  time  of  calamity  within  and  even  without ;  with  the 
establishment  of  the  empire  under  Augustus  old  age  sets  in. 

The  work  was  undoubtedly  popular  through  the  middle 
ages  as  a  spirited  compendium  of  ancient  history:  the  writer, 
though  grandiloquent,  has  a  certain  insight:  he  observes  that 
the  history  of  Rome  is  the  history  of  the  world  :  his  way  of 
saying  that  Rome  conquered  all  known  nations  is  to  say  that 
she  pacified  them.  He  is  fond  of  philosophizing  about  the 
way  in  which  mild  climates  destroy  the  energy  of  vigorous 


races.  He  is  curiously  destitute  of  political  opinions;  he 
moralizes  or  pragmatizes  about  the  struggles  of  the  republic 
just  as  the  writer  of  a  modern  schoolbook  might  do :  he  has 
no  liking  or  disliking  for  the  empire,  nor  much  understanding 
of  it.  He  tells  us  (ii.  54)  that  Augustus  was  made  "  perpetual 
dictator."  One  cannot  tell  whether  he  sides  in  the  Civil  War 
with  Julius  or  Pompeius ;  almost  his  strongest  expression  of 
feeling  is  a  regret  that  Julius  did  not  succeed  in  stopping 
Pompeius  at  Brundisium,  and  so  end  the  Civil  War. 

Florus,  like  many  other  writers,  imagines  that  the  battles 
of  Pharsalia  and  Philippi  were  fought  on  the  same  site  :  this 
proves  that  he  is  not  exclusively  dependent  upon  Livy.     But 
he  follows  him  in  the  main,  and  most  MSS.  and  editions  call 
his  work  an  epitome  of  Livy's.     He  tries  to  improve  upon  his 
author  occasionally— for  instance,  Livy,  speaking  of  the  first 
Etruscan  campaign  of  Q.  Fabius  Maximus,  says  "he  drew  up 
towards  the  hills;"  according  to  Florus,  he  "seized  the  upper 
ranges,  whence  he  could  thunder  down   at  pleasure."     His 
style  is  monotonous  and  tricky;  he  is  much  given  to  intro- 
ducing figures  with  quasi,  not  so  often  with  vehif;  he  deals 
largely  in  frigid  exclamations  and  questions,  and  often  informs 
us  that  this  or  that  taxes  the  resources  of  language.     He  uses 
horror  and  its  derivatives  almost  as  expletives  in  the  way  in 
which  "  awful  "  is  used  now.     The  marshes,  the  prison,  chains, 
and  exile,  "  horrificaverant  Marii  majestatem,"  "had  added 
awe  to  his  majesty."     This  and  many  phrases  have  a  certain 
poetical  color,  as  "if  verse  were  breaking  down  into  prose— for 
instance,  we  have  radiarentur,  where  a  safer  writer  would  have 
said  iUustrarcntur,oi\\\Q  virtues  of  Augustus;  and  at  rare  in- 
tervals a  broken  phrase  reminds  us  of  Tacitus.     With  all  his 
faults  of  style  and  arrangement,  his  compendium  is  spirited, 
and  might  be  read  with  ease  and  pleasure  by  any  one  who, 
as  the  author  intended,  was  gaining  his  first  and  only  acquaint- 
ance with  Roman  history  from  it. 


236 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


THE  JURISTS, 


237 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

THE  JURISTS. 

The  reign  of  Hadrian  was  marked  by  an  important  legis- 
lative change.  Salvius  Julianus,  praetor  a.d.  131,  when  he 
drew  lip  his  edict,  codified  the  whole  body  of  Roman  equity 
as  it  then  existed,  and  his  work  was  sanctioned  by  an  impe- 
rial constitution  and  a  decree  of  the  senate,  and  became 
binding  on  all  his  successors:  they  retained  in  theory  the 
right  of  declaring  how  new  points  would  be  decided  during 
their  term  of  office,  but  they  lost  the  power  of  modifying  the 
law  as  a  whole.  Salvius  Julianus  belonged  to  the  liberal  and 
monarchical  school  of  jurists,  who  traced  up  their  tradition  to 
Ateius  Capito,  who  was  consul  a.d.  5.  He  did  not  attempt 
to  work  out  legal  principles  for  their  own  sake,  and  professed 
to  build  upon  precedent  and  tradition;  but  he  only  recog- 
nized precedents  which  were  sensible  and  convenient.  He 
had  the  generosity  and  discretion  to  speak  highly  of  his 
elder  rival,'  ^\.  Antistius  Labeo,  who  had  declined  the  con- 
sulate which  Augustus  pressed  upon  him,  though  his  re- 
publicanism was  not  too  stiff  to  accept  the  praetorsliip.  He 
died  A.D.  13,  at  about  the  age  of  seventy,  after  writing  400 
volumes,  a  task  to  which  he  devoted  himself  in  the  country 
for  the  half  of  every  year.  His  text-book,  which  only  oc- 
cupied three  books,  was  abridged  by  Javolenus  Priscus 
under  Trajan,  and  his  "Probabilia"  are  quoted  in  the  "Di- 
gest." Capito's  great  work  was  the  "  Conjectanea."  l\vo 
other  lawyers  of  the  Augustan  age  were  Bla^sus  and  Fabius 
Mela.  "     - 

Neither  Capito  nor  Labeo  gave  his  name  to  the  school 
which  he  founded.     At  first  Labeo,  as  the  cleverer  writer  and 

1  A.  Gellius,  Xlll.xii.  i. 


I 


^ 


the  more  independent  character,  seems  to  have  had  the  more 
distinguished   representatives.     The   first   was    M.   Cocceius 
Nerva,  the  grandfather  of  the  emperor,  who  was  consul  a.d. 
22,  a  year  before  the  death  of  Capito,  and  held  such  a  high 
position  that  Tiberius  was  distressed  by  his  suicide  eleven 
years  later.     The  heir  of  the  learning  of  Capito  was  Masurius 
Sabinus,  who  was  only  a  knight,  and  could  not  have  ventured 
to  enter  what  was  rapidly  becoming  the  close  profession  of  a 
public  teacher  of  law  without  the  special  encouragement  of 
Tiberius.     He  was  dependent  upon   his  pupils  for  mainte- 
nance, so  perhaps  admitted  more:  at  any  rate  he  gave  his 
name  to  his  master's  school,  and  his  "Answers"  were  a  pop- 
ular text-book,  upon  which  Pomponius,  Paulus,  and  Ulpian  all 
thought  it  necessary  to  comment.     He  also  wrote  three  books 
upon  civil  law,  which  were  introductory.     Sempronius  Procu- 
lus,  the  successor  of  Nerva,  does  not  seem  to  have  been  of 
much  more  importance  in  the  state  than  Sabinus.     His  first 
name  is  uncertain,  but  he  overshadowed  the  reputation  of 
Nerva's  own  son,  who  had  also  the  ambition  of  being  a  juris- 
consult, and  gave  his  name  to  the  school  of  Labeo.     Both 
Sabinus   and  Proculus  were   succeeded  by  men  of  position, 
who  in  turn  gave  their  names  to  schools  they  did  not  found. 
Q.  Cassius  Longinus,  the  pupil  of  Sabinus,  consul  a.d.  30,  w^as 
excerpted  by  Javolenus  Priscus,  and  gave  his  name  to  the 
Cassian  school.     Pegasus,  the  son  of  a  captain  in  the  fleet  of 
Misenum,  named  after  his  father^s  figure-head,  was  appointed 
prefect  of  the  city  under  Vespasian,  and  gave  his  name  both 
to  the  Senatus  Consult um  Fcgasianwn^  which  dealt  with  trusts 
and  legacies,  and  to  the  Pegasian  school.     The  last  conspic- 
uous representatives  of  this  school  were  Neratius,  who  filled 
high  office   under  Trajan,  and  was  thought  of  for  his   suc- 
cessor, and  Juventius  Celsus,  who  was  celebrated  for  the 
brusqueness  with  which  he  replied  to  silly  questions.     Cae- 
lius  Sabinus,  who  was  consul  suffect  a.d.  69,  and  was  the 
highest   legal    authority   under   Vespasian,  wrote    upon    the 
edict  of  the  curule  aidiles.     His  successor  was  the  learned 
and  eccentric   Javolenus   Priscus,  who   had   the   misfortune 
to  be  disliked  by  the  younger  Pliny  as  much  as  anybody 


238 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


THE  JURISTS. 


239 


who  was  not  a  delator  could  be.  Pliny  mentions  another 
Sabinian  contemporary/  Urseius  Ferox,  whose  answer  to 
a  friend  struck  him  as  learned  and  hesitating.  He  seems  to 
have  heard  Sabinus,  and  Salvius  Julianus  addressed  him. 

Besides  his  work  as  a  legislator,  Julianus  was  a  voluminous 
writer.    Out  of  his  ninety  books  "  Digestorum,"  fifty-eight  dealt 
with  the  topics  of  the  praetor's  edict,  and  were  completed  un- 
der Hadrian  ;  the  rest  were  written  under  Antoninus  Pius. 
Hadrian  was  careful  that  his  legislation  should  hamper  the 
activity  of  learned  lawyers  as  little  as  possible.    He  laid  down 
the  principle  that  every  senator  who  had  served  the  office  of 
prcetor  had  ipso  facto  the///^  rcspondcndi,  which  since  the  days 
of  Augustus  had  been  confined  to  such  lawyers  as  had  re- 
ceived an  express  imperial  authorization.    Moreover,  he  made 
the  privilege  more  valuable,  as  well  as  more  accessible,  by  de- 
creeing that  the  unanimity  of  jurisconsults  should  have  the 
force  of  law,  while  when  they  diftered  the  judge  was  at  liberty 
to  follow  which  he  pleased,  so  that  he  followed  one.     Other 
important  contemporaries  of  Julianus  were  L.  Fulvius,  Albur- 
nius  Valens,  and   Sextus  Pomponius,  praetor  a.d.   138,  who 
wrote  an  interesting  little  tract  on  the  history  of  Roman  law 
and  magistracies,  wliich  survives  in  a  mutilated  shape  in  the 
"  Di^^est."     AVe  have  also  an  interesting  quotation  from   the 
seventh  book  of  his  letters,'  where   he   says  that   up  to  his 
seventy-eighth  year  he  had  thought  learning  the  only  reason 
for  living.     He  wrote  a  handbook  and  thirty-five  books  of 
Commentaries  on   Sabinus.     M.  Vindius  Verus,  consul  a.d. 
138,  was  a  follower  of  Julian.     Sex.  Caecilius  Africanus,  who 
was  a  correspondent  of  Julian,  wrote  admiringly  of  the  twelve 
tables,  and  composed  nine  books  of  questions.     Terentius 
Clemens  was  one  of  the  first  writers  to  devote  himself  to  the 
working  of  the  Leges  Julia  et  Papia  Poppcca  on  the  interest- 
ing subject  of  inheritance.     He  was  followed  by  Junius  Mau- 
ricianus  (a  pupil  of  Julian),  who  wrote  on  the  same  subject, 
and  also  on  penal  law ;  by  Venuleius  Saturninus,  who  wrote 

1  "Ep."L  xxii.  I. 

'  Correspondence  on  legal  questions  formed  a  large  section  of  many 

lawyers'  works. 


on  all  points  of  practice  ;  and  by  L.  Volusius  Mscianus,  who 
conducted  the  legal  education  of  M.  Aurelius,  and  wrote  on 
trusts  (then  a  branch  of  the  law  of  inheritance)  and  on  the 
Judicia  Fiiblica.    Ulpiiis  Marcellus  wrote,  under  M.  Aurelius, 
thirty  books  "  Digestorum,"  and  one  "  Responsorum."    Gaius, 
"who  did  not  possess  the  jus  respondetidi,  wrote,  besides  his 
"  Institutes,"  which  were  published  a.d.  161,  seven  books  on 
daily  practice  that  were  called  golden,  and  six  books  on  the 
twelve  tables,  beside  works  on  the  law  of  trust  and  inheritance. 
He  seems  to  have  been  a  native  of  the  eastern  parts  of  the 
empire,  and,  according  to  Mommsen,  lived  and  taught  all  his 
life  in  the  Troad.     Cervidius  Scaevola  was  even  more  impor- 
tant than  Gaius,  for  he  was  the  tutor  of  Papinian.     His  forty 
books  "  Diirestorum  "  were  written  after  the  death  of  M.  Au- 
relius,  who  is  quoted  under  his  official  title  as  Divus  Marcus. 
Papirius  Justus,  about  the  same  time,  wrote  twenty  books  on 
imperial  constitutions,     ^milius  Papinianus  studied  with  the 
emperor   Septimius    Severus   under   Cervidius,  and   was   ap- 
13ointed  by  him  praetorian  prefect :  he  was  massacred  a.d.  212. 
His  works  date  from  the  reign  of  Severus:  he  wrote  nineteen 
books  of  "  Answers"  and  thirtv-seven  of  "Questions," besides 
works  on  the  law  of  marriage,  inheritance,  adultery,  and  police. 
Callistratus,  whose  fragments  are  full  of  Graecisms,  wrote  four 
books  on  the  rights  of  the  exchequer,  and  two  of"  Questions" 
under  Severus,  and  a  work  on  procedure  under  Severus  and 
Caracalla.    A  Claudius  Tryphoninus  wrote  on  Scaevola's  "  Di- 
gest."   Domitius  Ulpianus,  of  Tyre,  who  was  assassinated  a.d. 
228,  during  a  military  revolt  under  Alexander  Severus,  wrote 
his  voluminous  works  under  Caracalla.     There  were  eighty- 
three  books  on  the  Edict,  fifty-one  on  Sabinus,  a  book  of 
"  Rules,"  and  two  of  "  Institutes,"  which  we  still  have  in  frag- 
ments.    His  work  "  De  Excusationibus  "  dates  from  a.d.  211. 
Julius   Paulus  was  also  praetorian  prefect  under  Alexander 
Severus,  but  survived  him  :  though  he  belonged  to  the  western 
half  of  the  empire,  he  is  a  worse  writer  than  Ulpian.     He 
wrote  eighty  books  on  the  Edict  and  five  books  on  sentences 
(a  manual  for  his  son)  before  a.d.  212.     The  three  books  on 
"Decrees"  were  earlier;  his  '^Responsa"  date  between  a.d. 


/ 


240 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


222  and  235.  ^lius  Marcianus,  among  other  works,  com- 
posed six  books  of  "  Institutions."  Herennius  Modestinus, 
who  also  is  cited  in  the  "  Digest,"  was /n?A'^///^  vigiliim.oi 
head  of  police,  a.d.  244 


PART  VII. 

FRONTO  AND  HIS  SCHOOL. 


CHAPTER  I. 

FRONTO. 

As  Cicero  stands  at  the  head  of  one  literary  period,  Seneca 
of  another,  Quinctilian  of  another,  so  Fronto  stands  at  the 
head  of  a  period  too :  he  is  at  once  the  lawgiver  and  the  ex- 
ample of  his  associates  and  successors.  We  are  in  a  position 
to  judge  accurately  of  the  claims  of  Cicero  and  Seneca;  even 
Quinctilian's  reputation  is  intelligible:  he  was  an  admirable 
if  a  wearisome  stylist,  and  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  he  was  yet 
more  admirable  as  a  teacher.  But  Fronto  is  completely  in- 
explicable :  he  was  regarded  in  his  own  day  as  a  rival  to 
Cicero,  to  whom  even  Pliny  the  Younger  could  only  rank  as 
a  successor,  and  his  reputation  lasted  quite  as  long  as  that 
of  others  ;  he  had  a  great  name  in  the  fifth  century.  Most  of 
his  works  are  lost,  and  there  is  nothing  in  his  fragments  to 
explain  his  celebrity. 

He  came  at  an  unfortunate  time  :  his  pupil,  Marcus  Aure- 
lius,  wrote  his  private  meditations  in  Greek ;  and,  in  fact,  it 
may  be  said  that,  from  the  reign  of  Hadrian  onwards  till  the 
translation  of  the  empire  to  the  East,  the  intellectual  needs  of 
the  capital,  such  as  they  were,  were  supplied  by  the  eastern 
half  of  the  empire;  all  the  upper  classes  learned  Greek  in  the 
nursery,  and  it  was  the  language  of  fashionable  conversation. 
Even  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Claudius,  a  barbarian  chief, 
who  had  learned  Latin  and  Greek,  could  be  congratulated  by 
the  emperor  on  his  knowledge  of  "our  tongues."     All  people 

IL— II 


242 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


who  professed  to  be  serious  entertained  a  Greek  philosopher: 
their  only  reason  for  keeping  up  Latin  Hterature  at  all  was 
that  the  cleverest  people  who  had  received  a  literary  educa- 
tion wished  to  be  poets  or  historians  or  orators— an  ambition 
which  was  sustained  by  the  competitions  endowed  by  Domi- 
tian,  and  by  the  professorships  which  were  founded  by  his 
predecessors  and  successors.  Another  cause,  whose  opera- 
tion was  still  more  transitory,  was  the  revival  of  spirits  among 
the  aristocracy  on  the  death  of  Domitian.  They  felt  that  it 
had  been  unsafe  to  think  or  speak,  and  during  the  reign  of 
Trajan  oratory  and  history  were  zealously  cultivated,  and 
everybody  played  at  poetry. 

Besides,  for  those  who  could  not  be  idle,  there  was  a  more 
serious  work  provided  by  Hadrian's  legislation.  From  the 
reign  of  Augustus  jurists  had  shown  an  increasing  inclination 
to  write,  but  their  works  had  not  been  systematic ;  each  had 
dealt  with  the  particular  department  of  case  law  which  hap- 
pened to  attract  him.  But  matters  altered  after  the  decision 
of  Hadrian  that  the  city  praetors  should  lose  the  right,  which 
their  predecessors  had  enjoyed,  of  laying  down  the  law  accord- 
ing to  their  own  sense  of  equity  by  the  edict  which  they  pub- 
lished on  coming  into  office. 

Henceforth  all  prcetors  were  to  act  upon  the  same  standing 
edict,  which  was  called  \\\^  edict lun  pcrpduum,  and  the  process 
of  modifying  and  improving  the  law  passed  from  the  hands  of 
judges  into  the  hands  of  writers  of  text-books,  who  were  at  lib- 
erty to  prove  that  the  edict  meant  whatever  it  ought  to  mean. 
Henceforward  a  great  lawyer  could  only  hope  to  make  him- 
self felt  as  the  writer  of  a  text-book,  and  not  as  a  judge,  and 
consequently  Roman  law  competed  more  and  more  severely 
with  Latin  literature. 

But  there  was  one  province  where  the  aspirations  of  the 
literary  class  could  appeal  to  an  unexhausted  public.  Pleaders, 
Juvenal  tells  us,  had  a  better  chance  of  a  living  in  Africa  than 
Rome,  and  as  the  tribes  of  the  Atlas  had  been  effectually  re- 
pressed, the  commercial  importance  of  Carthage  steadily  in- 
creased throughout  the  second  century.  Its  administrative 
importance  made  it  the  centre  of  a  kind  of  literary  culture, 


PRONTO. 


243 


and,  as  Latin  was  the  language  of  administration,  it  was,  on 
the  whole,  more  likely  that  this  culture  would  be  Latin  than 
Greek.  It  naturally  had  some  peculiarities:  the  African  set- 
tlers of  Utica  and  Carthage  brought  with  them  the  plain 
speech  of  the  republican  period,  and  escaped  the  influence 
of  the  refinements  which  came  in  and  went  out  of  fashion  in 
the  capital,  even  more  completely  than  the  villagers  of  New 
England,  who  have  preserved  so  many  idioms  of  the  seven- 
teenth century. 

This  was  important,  because  the  literary  class  at  Rome  had 
reached  the  point  at  which  it  is  easier  to  make  books  about 
books  than  about  life,  and  of  course  for  such  a  purpose  the 
oldest  books  are  the  best.  Consequently,  an  African  settled  at 
Rome,  if  he  were  clever  enough,  was  in  the  best  position  to  put 
himself  at  the  head  of  an  antiquarian  revival. 

M.  Cornelius  Fronto  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  con- 
siderable  property,  though  he  speaks  in  a  deprecating  way  of 
his  modest  means,  which  is  not  surprising,  considering  that  his 
correspondence  dates  from  a  time  when  he  had  long  been 
familiar  with  emperors.    He  says  what  any  one  who  was  not  as 
scandalously  rich  as  Seneca  might  be  expected  to  say  in  writing 
to  an  emperor.     It  is  possible  that  his  brother,  who  was  also  a 
consul,  may  have  been  the  capitalist  of  the  family.     Fronto 
himself  was  a  distinguished  advocate,  and  apparently  had  more 
business  than  Quinctilian  ;  for  a  reflection  on  a  rhdor  might 
have  wounded  Quinctilian,  while  Fronto's  position  as  an  orator 
was  too  firmly  fixed  for  him  to  be  hurt  by  an  allusion  to  a 
causidicus.    Still,  the  position  of  the  orator  was  so  much  lower, 
and  that  of  the  emperor  so  much  higher,  that  it  was  promotion 
for  the  first  orator  of  the  day  to  be  appointed  private  tutor  to 
the  heir  of  the  empire.     Cicero  only  became  a  teacher  when  his 
career  as  orator  was  spoiled,  and  none  of  the  powerful  advocates 
of  the  earlier  empire  would  have  dreamed  of  accepting  such  a 
charge;  even  Seneca,  who  had  no  independent  position,  was 
intrusted  with  the  whole  education  of  Nero.     Fronto  was  only 
the  Latin  teacher  of  rhetoric:  he  was  liable  to  be  accused  of 
being  jealous  of  other  members  of  the  household  ;  he  frankly 
admitted  that  he  was  jealous  of  philosophy,  which  he  thought 


244 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


would   spoil   his   pupil   as  an   orator.     Characteristically  he 
thought  that  oratory  was  the  higher  and  more  difficult  study, 
and  that  philosophy,  where  there  was  no  trouble  in  framing  a 
prelude  or  in  picking  a  vocabulary,  was  a  refuge  for  laziness, 
which  was  rather  a  plausible  charge  when  we  consider  the  pains 
which  Epictetus  had  taken  to  purge  philosophy  from  all  spec- 
ulative and  rhetorical  ambition.     The  perfect  Stoic  tended  to  go 
through  a  round  of  duties  with  zealous,  disinterested  punctual- 
ity, without  caring  for  any  of  them,  or  putting  his  strength  into 
any.     Fronto  found  it  difficult  to  believe  that  his  pupil  was  as 
attentive  as  he  was  gifted  :  he  could  not  be  brought  to  see  that 
it  mattered  much  what  compound  of  a  verb  was  used,  and 
Fronto  has  to  admit  that,  if  any  one  chose  to  say  he  was  a 
senator  or  prefect,  and  superior  to  grammar,  nothing  could  be 
said   to   the  contrary ;  only,  after  all,  we  have  the  choice  of 
rough-hewing  language  with  mallet  and  crowbar  like  quarry- 
men,  or  carving  it  with  a  graver  and  light  hammer  like  jewel- 
lers.'    Fortunately,  in  the  same  letter  Fronto  explains  how  in 
his  judgment  language  might  be  made  as  precious  as  jewelry. 
If  we  speak  of  washing  the  face,  the  proper  word  is  colluere;  if 
of  washing  the  pavement  of  a  h^\\\,pclliierc ;  labere  is  the  proper 
word  for  washing  the  cheeks  with  tears;  lavare  for  washing 
clothes;  ablitere  is  the  right  word  for  washing  ^^dust;  eliiere 
for  washing  out  a  stain  ;  and,  if  the  stain  will  not  come  out 
without  risk  to  the  stuff,  then  it  is  worth  while  to  read  Plautus 
in  order  to  know  that  we  had  better  say  clavere.     Then  diltiere 
is  riiiht  for  wine  and  \\ox\^\ , prohierc  for  rinsing  out  the  throat, 
siihliicre  for  washing  down  a  horse's  legs. 

Again,  Aurelius  is  not  sufficiently  careful  in  the  order  of 
words :  he  does  not  see  why  one  ought  to  say  tricipiiem  Gerjo?iam 
and  7iavem  iriremem.  Of  course  Fronto  is  quite  right;  every- 
body knows  that  Geryon  had  three  heads,  and  that  a  trireme 
was  a  ship,  so  that  the  epithet  in  one  case,  and  the  substantive 
in  the  other,  would  be  superfluous  if  not  put  first.  Aurelius 
is  commended  for  attempting  a  figure  in  a  speech  on  the  Par- 
thians,  who,  it  seems,  wore  loose  sleeves  "  in  order  that  there 
might  be  room  to  keep  the  heat  in  suspense."     Unfortunately, 

1  "  Ad  Marc.  Caes."  iv.  3. 


FRONTO, 


245 


it  was  quite  impossible  to  hang  up  heat  in  a  loose  sleeve,  and 
the  object  was  not  to  keep  the  heat  in,  but  to  let  it  out;  and 
then  Fronto  gives  a  long  list  of  words  that  would  have  done 
better,  though  a  modern  reader  will  think  that  none  of  them 
are  very  good. 

Another  merit  of  Aurelius  is  that  he  is  ambitious,  though 
prematurely,  to  compose  a  speech  of  the  most  difficult  kind,  the 
speech  of  simple  display,  though  he  had  read  nothing  more 
inspiring  than  Cato  and  Gracchus.*  Later  on,  he  is  praised  for 
his  success  in  turning  a  Greek  gnomic  saying  into  something 
quite  worthy  of  Sallust,'  and  exhorted  to  persevere  in  the 
same  exercise,  never  being  satisfied  till  he  has  turned  the  same 
sentiment  two  or  three  times.  Later  still,  we  find  Fronto  in 
a  more  indulgent  mood  :  he  is  seriously  anxious  that  he  cannot 
get  his  pupil  to  take  a  holiday,  just  as  before  he  complained 
that  he  could  not  get  him  to  apply  himself.  Fronto's  idea  of  a 
holiday'  was  to  polish  one's  self  with  Plautus,  swell  one's  self 
with  Accius,  sooth  one's  self  with  Lucretius,  fire  one's  self  with 
Ennius— or,if  appetite  for  such  delights  failed,  at  any  rate  to 

sleep  one's  fill. 

To  fire  one's  self  with  Ennius  rather  than  with  the  "  ^Eneid" 
or  the  "Pharsalia,"  to  sooth  one's  self  with  Lucretius  rather 
than  with  Horace  or  the  "Georgics,"  seems  at  first  sight  a  singu- 
lar aspiration,  till  we  remember  the  French  Romanticists  of  the 
second  generation,  few  of  whom  cared  to  read  any  work  of  the 
Grand  Sieclc.  The  latest  writer  he  approves  is  Sallust,  Cice- 
ro the  latest  whom  he  admires— very  much  upon  the  usual 
grounds,  only  he  decidedly  prefers  *  his  letters  to  his  orations, 
in  which  he  anticipates  the  judgment  of  most  modern  readers. 
He  complains  that  Cicero  never  treats  his  readers  to  a  new 
and  unexpected  word,  giving  several  reasons  for  the  omission  : 
that  he  did  not  choose  to  take  the  trouble  to  hunt  up  such  words  ; 
that  he  had  a  spirit  above  such  niceties;  that  he  was  satisfied 
with  a  simple  and  dignified  vocabulary.  No  doubt  this  is  bet- 
ter than  to  use  far-fetched  words  inappropriately;  but  what 
Fronto  really  likes  is  a  constant  stream  of  far-fetched  words 

»  Front.  "  Ad  Maic.  Goes."  iii.  16.  ^  "  De  Feriis  Alsiensibus,"  3. 

=»  lb.  II.  •  *  "  Ad  M.  Ant.  Imp."  ii.  5. 


246 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


coming  in  appropriately,  which  was  also  what  Theophile  Gau- 
tier  liked— and  Fronto'knew,  like  Theophile  Gautier,that  this 
could  only  be  got  by  reading  up  old  literature ;  no  doubt,  if 
a  Latin  ^ilictionary  had  existed,  it  would  have  been  his  favorite 

reading. 

The  only  one  of  Fronto's  numerous  works  which  has  reached 
us  in  anything  like  a  complete  form  is  his  "  Correspondence," 
from  which  we  learn  the  names  of  his  principal  speeches — on 
behalf  of  the  Bithynians,  and  of  the  people  of  Ptolemais;  a 
speech  against  Herodes  Atticus'  (M.  Aurelius's  Greek  rhetoric 
master),  and  against  a  certain  Pelops,  which  Sidonius  Apol- 
linaris  tells  us  Fronto  counted  his  masterpiece;  and  a  thanks- 
giving speech  in  the  senate  for  some  favor  to  Carthage.     We 
have  fragments  of  his  historical  works,  of  which  the  most  im- 
portant was  a  panegyrical  account  of  the  Parthian  campaigns 
of  Verus,  which  is  meant  to  be  stately.'     A  modern  reader 
would  find  the  remains  rather  solemn  than  impressive.     There 
is  nothing  characterstic  in  the  author's  private  correspondence 
in  Greek  or  Latin  except.the  fact  that  it  is  bilingual.     One  of 
the  correspondents  to  whom  he  writes  at  most  length  is  Appi- 
an,  a  laborious  compiler  of  Roman  history  in  Greek.      His  let- 
ters to  Verus,  of  which  w^e  have  two  books,  are  chiefly  remark- 
able for  their  ecstatic  loyalty,  and  those  to  the  elder  Antoninus 
are  not  remarkable  at  all.    To  M.  Aurelius  there  were  ten  books, 
five  when  he  was  Caesar,  five  when  he  was  Augustus;  but  of  the 
last  series  only  two  books  have  reached  us.     They  are  certain- 
ly attractive,  the  affection  on  both  sides  is  so  strong;'  though 
Aurelius  never  thought  it  worth  while  to  be  an  orator  after 
Fronto's  heart,  he  was  heartily  attached  to  him.     His  letters 
show  a  pathetic  endeavor  to  write  in  a  strain  w^hich  his  master 
would  think  pretty;  and  he  is  as  unfeignedly  interested  in  his 


1  "Ad  Marc.  Goes."  iii. 

2  It  is  characteiistic  of  Fronto  that  poinpaticus  is  a  word  of  praise  ; 
with  him  the  distinction  between  "stately'-  and  "pompous"  has  not  yet 
emerged. 

3  Fronto  remarks,  "Ad  Ver.  Imp."  ii.  7,  that  Latin  has  no  word  for  affec- 
tionate ((pi\6aTopyo{;\  because  the  thing  was  so  rare  at  Rome.  Marcus 
quotes  the  pet  word  of  his  master,  i.  11. 


FRONTO. 


247 


master's  delicate  health  as  his  master  is  interested  in  his. 
Both  seem  to  pay  the  penalty  for  their  uninspired  endeavors 
after  perfection,  in  chronic  valetudinarianism,  and  it  is  difficult 
not  to  smile  at  the  punctilious  professor  who  quotes  his  old 
Greek  master  for  a  metaphor  about  the  relief  of  shifting  a 
load,  to  explain  how  much  easier  it  is  for  him  to  know  Faus- 
tina is  ill  than  to  know  that  M.  Aurelius  is  ill.     Fronto  is  fond 
of  "  images"— so  fond  that  he  talks  of  them  in  a  mongrel  dia- 
lect of  Greek  stems  and  Latin  terminations;  but  there  is  no 
trace  in  his  writings  that  his  fondness  was  prosperous.     Per- 
haps the  least  unlucky  is  to  be  found  in  the  eighth  letter  of 
the  third  book  to  M.'  Aurelius,  where  we  have  an  elaborate 
description   of  two   islands,  of  which  the    larger   shields  the 
smaller  from  the  sea.     Fronto  thinks  W.  Aurelius  will  often 
be  able  to  apply  the  figure  to  the  relations  between  the  elder 
Antoninus  and  himself  when  he  has  to  return  thanks  in  the 
Senate. 


248 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


CHAPTER  II. 

A  PULE  I CS. 

The  style  of  picturesque  and  sentimental  description  which 
attracted  the  clumsy  ambition  of  the  austere  Fronto  is  not 
without  a  real  charm  in  the  hands  of  L.  Apuleius,  a  writer  of 
a  younger  generation,  who  is  generally  thought  to  have  been 
born  in  or  about  a.d.  125,  as  he  was  only  about  twenty-five 
when  he  was  tried  for  magic  by  a  philosopher,  Claudius  Maxi- 
mus,  then  proconsul  of  Africa,  whose  lectures  M.  Aurelius  had 
attended.  The  conclusion  is  a  little  uncertain  :  Apuleius  was 
a  great  deal  younger  than  his  wife,  and  he  said  that  his  wife 
was  forty  when  he  married  her;  everybody  else  thought  her 
an  old  woman  of  sixty. 

He  was  a  native  of  Madaura,  on  the  border  between  Gaetu- 
lia  and  Numidia,  as  Fronto  was  a  native  of  Cirta,  the  centre 
of  the  most  civilized  part  of  Numidia,  as  Constantine  is  the 
centre  of  the  most  civilized  part  of  Algiers.  He  was  a  franker 
sophist  than  Fronto.  There  were  years  in  his  life  when,  after 
a  sojourn  at  Athens  for  the  sake  of  education,  he  had  essayed 
to  establish  himself  as  a  pleader  in  Rome,  but  he  soon  found 
it  convenient  to  make  a  rich  marriage,  and  come  home  and 
speak  for  glory,  not  for  lucre.  All  the  MSS.  of  his  w^orks 
describe  him  as  a  Platonic  philosopher;  he  boasted  himself 
that  he  could,  by  the  admission  of  his  enemies,  speak  equally 
well  in  Greek  and  Latin.  He  was  popular  at  Carthage,  where 
a  statue  was  voted  in  his  honor,  though  he  had  to  make  a 
speech  in  defence  of  the  right  to  erect  the  statue,  as  well  as 
a  speech  to  return  thanks  for  the  honor.  We  do  not  know 
whether  this  statue  and  others  were  erected  at  the  expense  of 
Apuleius  himself,  according  to  a  not  uncommon  practice. 

He  seems,  in  fact,  to  have  lived  upon  his  wife's  fortune,  de- 


APULEIUS. 


249 


voting  himself  to  the  business  of  a  popular  lecturer,  enter- 
taining and  instructing  the  public,  and  receiving  more  or  less 
valuable  presents  from  the  liberality  of  his  more  distinguished 
liearers.  The  malice  of  his  wife's  family  exposed  him  to  a 
kind  of  prosecution :  he  was  supposed  to  have  bewitched  his 
wife  into  marrying  him,  because  there  were  some  suspicions 
that  he  was  addicted  to  magic.  He  took  advantage  of  this 
to  deliver  a  long  harangue  upon  his  own  life  and  virtues, 
which  is  all  the  more  comical  because  throughout  the  work 
(much  enlarged,  like  all  ancient  speeches,  iu  tlie  interval  be- 
tween delive-ry  and  publication)  the  author  is  careful  never 
to  drop  the  mask  of  modesty:  he  would  never  think  of  men- 
tioning his  own  virtues,  if  it  were  not  necessary  to  show  how 
incapable  he  is  of  crime.  There  is  the  same  transparent  ar- 
tifice in  the  flattery  of  the  proconsul  Claudius  Maximus,  which 
is  conveyed  by  a  series  of  asides.  He  is  asked  confidentially 
to  pity  the  prosecution  for  their  gross  ignorance  of  what  every 
cultivated  gentleman  knows  as  a  matter  of  course.  The 
whole  procedure  seems  to  have  been  a  comedy  on  both  sides. 
The  speech  falls  naturally  into  two  parts,  and  it  is  only  the 
second  which  has  anvthin^^:  to  do  with  the  chars^e  of  maofic. 
The  prosecution  seems  to  have  used  this  as  a  peg  on  which 
to  hang  all  the  disparaging  remarks  they  could  think  of,  about 
a  man  whose  vanity  was  obviously  vulnerable. 

Apuleius  quotes  them  as  saying,  with  a  palpable  imitation 
of  Calvus,  "  We  have  to  accuse  a  handsome  philosopher  equal- 
ly eloquent  in  Greek  and  Latin."  And  then  Apuleius  grave- 
ly proceeds  to  allege  that  it  is  no  shame  to  a  philosopher  to 
be  handsome,  and  that  we  have  Plato's  authority  for  the 
beauty  of  Zeno  of  Elea;  so  that  if  he  were  the  least  bit  of  a 
dandy  there  would  be  no  disgrace  in  it.  Not  that  he  himself 
was  ever  more  than  tolerable-looking,  even  before  the  continu- 
ity of  his  literary  labors  "rubbed  off  all  grace  from  his  body, 
fined  away  his  comeliness,  dried  up  his  moisture,  turned  his 
color  dim,  and  weakened  his  vigor."  As  to  his  hair,  which, 
if  the  prosecution  were  to  be  believed,  he  had  been  vain  of, 
*it  was  all  standing  up  in  a  twist  and  a  tangle,  just  like  tow 
out  of  a  cushion,  not  trimmed  to  match,  but  shaggy,  here  in  a 


II. 


TI 


250 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


APULEIUS. 


251 


ball,  here  in  a  fuzz,  quite  past  disentangling,  having  been  left  so 
long  without  smoothing  over,  and  without  brushing  out  or  part- 
ing. " '   This  is  probably  only  half-sincere.    The  traditional  por- 
trait of  Apuleius  exhibits  him  with  long  hair  carefully  trimmed ; 
and  immediately  afterwards  he  replies  to  the  charge  of  send- 
in"-  a  friend  some  tooth-powder^  with  a  copy  of  verses.     The 
use  of  tooth-powder  certainly  in  ancient  times  implied  some 
special  care  of  the  person,  and  the  audience  probably  did  not 
think  the  laugh  wholly  on  Apuleius's  side  when  he  asked  if 
the  teeth  did  not  deserve  washing  as  well  as  the  feet,  and  ex- 
plained the  pains  that  the  crocodile  takes  to  have  his  teeth 
cleaned  by  a  river-bird."     Equally  insincere  is  the  plea  for 
his  poetry,  which  went  to  the  furthest  limit  of  Platonic  naughti- 
ness; and  Apuleius  had  to  own  that  he  actually  possessed  a 
looking-glass,  and  did  not  venture  to  deny  that  he  used  it  to 
know  what  he  looked  like ;  for  who  could  be  bound  to  take 
more  pains  than  a  philosopher  to  maintain  a  decent  appear- 
ance at  all  times. 

In  the  same  way  he  was  accused  of  having  too  few  servants, 
and  answered  that  this  was  a  glory  to  a  philosopher  or  to  a 
Roman  citizen.  Here  is  a  specimen  of  his  praise  of  poverty: 
"Poverty  was  home-bred  with  philosophy  long  ago;  thrif- 
ty, sober,  mighty  without  much,  jealous  of  praise,  a  weapon 
against  wealth,  a  safe  possession,  simple  in  array,  wholesome 
in  counsel;  she  has  puffed  up  none  with  haughtiness,  corrupted 
none  with  insolence,  brutalized  none  by  tyranny;  she  cannot 
have,  and  will  not  have,  the  delights  of  the  belly:  for  these 
crimes,  and  many  more,  are  familiar  to  the  nurslings  of  riches."* 
Great  crimes  are  never  found  among  the  poor,  nor  great  vir- 
tues in  wealth.  "  Poverty,  I  say,  in  the  ancient  ages  was 
foundress  of  all  cities,  inventress  of  all  arts,  empty  of  all  sins, 
bountiful  of  all  glory,  fulfilled  with  perfect  praise  among  all 
nations" — and  so  on  and  so  on,  till  one  is  surprised  to  be 
reminded  that  Claudius  Maximus  was  rich. 

When,  at  last,  he  comes  to  the  charge  of  magic,  he  begins 
by  explaining  that  magic  is  only  the  Persian  name  for  worship, 
and  that  Plato  thought  highly  of  Zoroaster,  and  Zamolxis  and 

2  lb.  vi.  '  lb.  viii.  *  lb.  xviii. 


P 


Orpheus  and  Epimenides  were  justly  celebrated,  so  that  Apule- 
ius might  have  come  at  once  to  his  peroration  without  risk; 
but,  as  he  had  the  right  to  be  as  long  as  his  accusers,  he  goes 
into  the  charges  in  detail.  The  first  was,  that  he  bought  up 
curious  kinds  offish,  having  some  curiosity  in  natural  history 
and  comparative  anatomy;  besides  which,  there  is  plenty  of 
literary  evidence  that  herbs  of  all  kinds  were  much  more  like 
magical  properties  than  fish,  not  that  he  had  ever  bought  or 
been  able  to  buy  the  particular  kinds  named.  Even  if  the  ob- 
ject had  been  to  extract  a  medicine,  the  charge  of  magic 
would  have  broken  down. 

There  seems  to  have  been  more  foundation  for  another 
charge.  Apuleius  was  half  inclined  to  think  that  boys  might 
be  made  clairvoyant  by  chanting  or  perfumes,  and  he  actually 
tried  to  cure  an  epileptic  boy  by  chanting  over  him.  A  fit  came 
on,  and  he  was  rather,  if  anything,  the  worse  for  the  attempted 
cure,  and  the  prosecution  attempted  to  prove  that  Apuleius 
had  wanted  to  train  the  poor  boy  for  a  clairvoyant.  It  is  a 
sufficient  reply  that  he  was  not  a  proper  subject  for  such  train- 
ing, which  required  perfect  health  of  body  and  mind.  There 
was  another  charge  about  an  epileptic  woman,  whom  he  had 
not  attempted  to  treat  at  all,  but  had  simply  inquired  whether 
she  suffered  from  noises  in  her  ears.  Both  charges  are  made 
almost  unintelligible  bv  a  flow  of  voluble  declamation  on  the 
absurdity  of  supposing  that  so  many  as  fourteen  slaves  of 
Apuleius  knew  of  his  alleged  magic  practices,  and  of  refusing 
to  examine  them  when  produced. 

At  the  same  time,  Apuleius  boasts  of  his  mysticism  :  he  had 
been  initiated  in  as  many  mysteries  as  possible,^  and  had  all 
kinds  of  mementos  of  his  initiation,  which  he  kept  carefully 
covered  up ;  he  w^as  in  the  habit  of  worshipping  a  "  King," 
whom  he  could  not  name  on  any  account  :  he  boasts  of  a  pub- 
lic sermon  he  had  delivered  in  praise  of /Esculapius,  and  ex- 
plains that  his  wooden  image  of  Mercury"  was  constructed  in 
strict  accordance  with  the  prescriptions  of  Plato  in  his  latest 
work,  the  "  Laws."  As  Mercury  was  carved  out  of  the  sides 
of  a  box  well  fastened  together,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 


»  "  De  Mag."  iv. 


»  "  De  Mag,"  \\\ 


^  lb.  Ixiii. 


Vilt 


252 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


APULEWS. 


253 


prosecution  fancied  he  was  a  skeleton  especially  if  the  work- 
man had  not  fastened  the  different  slabs  of  wood  together 
finally  until  he  had  nearly  finished  his  carving. 

The  1  ttter  part  of  the  speech  is  occupied  with  a  detailed  and 
convincing  proof  that  Apuleius  behaved  as  well  as  a  man  who 
marries  a  rich  woman  older  than  himself  could  possibly  do. 
He  would  not  allow  her  to  settle  more  than  a  fraction  of  her 
property  on  him,  and  threatened  her  with  divorce  if  she  would 
not  ''ive  up  her  intention  of  making  a  will  ni  his  favor  at  the 
expe'nse  of  her  sons,  who  had  circulated  a  garbled  extract  from 
one  of  her  letters  to  support  the  charge  that  she  had  been  be- 
witched by  .Apuleius.  ,  .  ,    ,       , 

Another  public  speech  of  Apuleius  which  has  been  pre- 
served in  its  integrity  is  an  extempore  harangue  on  the     God 
of  Socrates,"  which  is  a  very  instructive  document  for  the 
history  of  religion.     He  lays  down  a  curious  compromise  be- 
tween Epicureanism  and  Platonism.     The  Highest  Gods  have 
no  share  whatever  in  regulating  the   pitiful  lot   of  men,  on 
which  Apuleius  dilates  in  his  most  florid  style:  speaking  of 
our  quick  death  and  doleful  lives,  our  scrupulous  worship  and 
insolent  contempt  of  the  highest,  which  the    most  venerate 
but  not  aright,  all  fear  but  fail  to  trust,  a  few  at  the  expense 
of  piety  deny.     The  special  doctrine  which  he  sets  himse  f  to 
preach  is  that  pious  people  have  a  close  intercourse  with  their 
aenius      And  here  he  appeals  to  the  notion  embedded  in  pop- 
ular speech,  that  every  man  has  his  own  genius,  every  woman 
her  own  Juno,  the  consort  of  Jove.     These  genu  are  of  two 
kinds,  the  bodiless  and  the  embodied,  and  the  former  confine 
their  attention  to  pure  souls  like  that  of  Socrates      1  he  inter- 
est of  the  work  lies  in  the  author's  theory  of  revelation,  which 
turns  round  to  a  glorification  of  prudence  and  self  control, 
and  finds  its  highest  type  in  Ulysses,  its  poetical  personifica- 
tion in  Minerva.     "  With  her  unchangeable  company,  he  drew 
nioh  to  all  horrors,  overcame  all  adversities.     Forsooth,  with 
he'r  aid  he  entered  the  caves  of  the  Cyclops,  and  came  out ; 
beheld  the  oxen  of  the  Sun,  and  abstained  ;  went  down  to 
hell  and  came  up  thence  with  the  same  wisdom  for  guide ; 
sailed  past  Scylla,  and  was  not  snatched  up ;  was  swallowed 


H 


i 


in  Charybdis,  and  not  held  fast ;  drank  the  cup  of  Circe,  and 
was  not  changed  ;  visited  the  Lotus-eaters,  and  did  not  abide  ; 
heard  the  Sirens,  and  did  not  draw  nigh."' 

Apuleius  followed  this  up  with  at  least  two  books  on  the 
doctrines  of  Plato,  which  are  mainly  occupied  with  the  expo- 
sition of  theism.  There  is  no  discussion,  but  the  author^  at- 
tempts to  parry  all  difficulties  by  insisting  on  the  intermediate 
nature  of  man,  and  the  responsibility  entailed  upon  him  by 
his  free-will ;  while  ignorance  is  the  excuse  for  a  great  deal  of 
his  imperfections.  "Virtue  is  free  and  lies  in  us,  and  is  the 
proper  object  of  our  will ;  our  sins  are  free  no  less  and  lie  in 
us,  and  yet  are  not  the  fruit  of  that  will.  For  he  whom  we 
spake  of  who  has  virtue  in  his  eye,  when  he  has  thoroughly 
understood  his  goodness  and  the  excellency  of  her  kindness, 
will  certainly  strain  forth  unto  her,  and  deem  that  for  her  own 
sake  she  is  good  to  follow.  But  as  for  him  who  has  perceived 
that  vices  not  only  bring  disgrace  on  our  repute,  but  are  hurt- 
ful otherwise  and  bring  a  snare,  how  can  he  join  himself  by 
choice  unto  their  fellowship?"  "" 

There  are  four  kinds  of  men  to  be  blamed,  who  turn  out  to 
be  the  same  as  the  timocratical,  the  oligarchical,  the  demo- 
cratical,  and  the  tyrannical  men  of  the  republic  ;  and  Apuleius 
comes  back  to  this  point  in  w^inding  up  his  work.  "  Moreover, 
the  tyrant,  a  single  individual,  arises  then  when  he  who  hath 
broken  the  laws  by  his  own  contumacy  gets  the  laws  to  be 
partners  of  like  conspiracy,  and  so  invadeth  empery,  and 
thenceforth  ordaineth  that  the  whole  multitude  of  citizens 
should  be  obedient  to  his  desires  and  covetousness,  and  order 
their  obeisance  unto  such  an  end."  * 

Apuleius  himself  concluded  the  matter  by  a  dull  dialogue 
between  Asclepius  and  Hermes  Trismegistus,  in  which  there 
is  a  great  deal  about  the  mystical  sanctity  of  Egypt  and  the 
efficacy  of  enchanted  images  :  while  physical  philosophy  is 
done  justice  to  by  a  paraphrase  of  a  w^ork  upon  the  "World  " 
which  went  under  the  name  of  Aristotle.  Some  other  writer, 
whose  work  has  found  its  way  into  most  of  the  MSS.  of  Apu- 
leius, completes  the  subject  with  a  treatise  upon  logic  of  little 

»  "  De  Deo.  Soc."  fin.     "^  "  De  Dog.  Piatt."  ii.  15  init.      '  lb.  28  ;  cf.  xl.  15. 


>    rl 

w 


254 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


independent   interest,  still   printed  as  the  third  book,  ^'De 
Dogmate  Platonis." 

The  great  work  of  Apuleius  is  his  "  Metamorphoses,"  which 
professes  to  be  the  autobiograiDhy  of  a  certain  Lucius,  who 
went  on  his  travels  to  sow  his  wild  oats,  and  in  the  course  of 
a  love  affair  was  turned  into  an  ass  by  a  waiting-woman,  who 
intended  to  help  him  by  turning  him  into  an  owl,  only  unfort- 
unately she  used  the  wrong  salve.  In  his  capacity  as  an  ass 
he  was  the  witness  to  a  good  many  more  or  less  unseemly  love 
adventures,  and  overheard  the  tale  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  and 
travelled  with  the  priests  of  Cybele  ;  and  finally  ran  away 
from  the  games  at  Corinth,  and  received  a  revelation  of  Isis 
that,  if  he  ate  the  rose-wreath  out  of  the  hand  of  her  chief 
priest  at  the  next  procession,  he  would  be  restored  to  human 
form.  The  chief  priest  had  a  revelation  too,  and  gave  the 
poor  ass  every  facility  for  disenchantment.  Of  course  it  fol- 
lowed that  Lucius  was  to  be  initiated  in  the  mysteries :  but 
he  was  made  to  wait,  eager  as  he  was,  for  some  little  time, 
until  Isis  vouchsafed  another  simultaneous  revelation  to  him 
and  to  her  chief  priest;  for  the  initiation  v/as  a  death  to  the 
old  life  and  a  birth  to  the  new,  and  it  would  have  been  per- 
ilous sacrilege  to  venture  upon  it  without  a  call.  By-and-by 
a  few  other  revelations  came  to  the  chief  priest  and  to  Lucius 
that  he  ought  to  be  initiated  in  the  mysteries  of  Osiris;  he 
had  his  head  shaved,  and  appeared  in  a  pure  linen  dress,  and 
went  to  a  good  deal  of  expense,  for  all  of  which  he  was  well 
repaid  by  the  patronage  of  the  husband  and  the  wife,  who 
favored  him  abundantly  in  his  practice  at  the  bar. 

All  this  mysticism  is  at  least  half  sincere  ;  it  is  quite  clear 
that  the  author  sees  and  means  to  show  the  comic  side  of  it ; 
but  there  is  a  very  plain  contrast  between  the  treatment  of  the 
worship  of  Isis  and  the  worship  of  Cybele.  The  priests  of 
Cybele  are  mere  vulgar  impostors,  whose  austerities  are  only 
intended  to  delude  the  people ;  who  have  nothing  to  teach 
and  nothing  that  is  not  shameful  to  hide ;  who  make  a  parade 
of  self-torture  to  provide  means  for  coarse  debauchery  ;  while 
the  priests  of  Isis  have  the  key  to  the  secret  of  the  world.  It 
is  quite  clear  that  the  same  kind  of  feeling  which  gathers  now 


APULEIUS. 


255 


round  the  devotion  to  the  Madonna  had  gathered  then  round 
the  devotion  to  Isis.     The  priest,  when  Lucius  recovers  his 
shape,  improves  the  occasion  in  the  most  edifying  way.  "  After 
sharing  many  and  manifold  labors,  driven  by  great  tempests 
and  exceeding  storms  of  fortune,  you  are  come  at  last,  Lucius, 
to  the  haven  of  quiet  and  the  altar  of  mercy.     Neither  your 
birth,  no,  nor  your  rank,  and  the  very  learning  wherein  you 
abound,  could  profit  you,  but  in  your  green  and  slippery  non- 
age you  declined  to  slavish  delights,  to  receive  a  luckless  re- 
ward for  unblessed  curiosity.     Howbeit  the  blindness  of  For- 
tune, while  tormenting  you  with  most  woful  perils,  has  but  led 
you  to  this  religious  blessedness  by  malice  without  foresight. 
Let  her  go  and  rage  with  all  her  fury,  and  seek  a  victim  for 
her  crueTty  elsewhere.     For  on  such  as  the  majesty  of  our 
goddess  has  laid  hold  to  live  her  servants,  deadly  chance  can- 
not prevail.    What  could  robbers,  or  wild  beasts,  or  slavery,  or 
the  changes  and  chances  of  most  grievous  journeyings,  or  the 
fear  of  daily  death,  profit  Fortune  in  her  cruelty?     You  are 
taken  under  the  ward  of  Fortune— who  is  not  blind,  for  the 
radiance  of  the  light  within  her  doth  illuminate  all  other  gods. 
Now  put   on  a  gladder  countenance,  which  becometh  your 
white  habit;  accompany  the  procession  of  the  goddess  of  de- 
liverance with  joyful  tread.     Let  the  irreligious  see,  let  them 
see  and  behold   their  error.     For  behold,  Lucius,  delivered 
from  his  past  calamities,  and  rejoicing  in  the  mighty  provi- 
dence of  Isis,  triumphs  over  his  fortune  !     But  that  you  may  be 
the  safer  and  better  assured  for  yourself,  give  in  your  name  to 
this  holy  warfare,  for  you  were  summoned  but  of  late  to  enlist 
therein  ;  dedicate  yourself  henceforward  to  the  obedience  of 
our  religion,  and  put  on  the  voluntary  yoke  of  ministry.     For 
when  you  shall  begin  to  serve  the  goddess,  then  you  shall 
gain  more  enjoyment  of  your  liberty."  ^ 

Isis  herself  has  proclaimed  her  titles  when  she  revealed 
his  deliverance  to  Lucius.  "  Behold,  I  am  here,  Lucius,  for 
your  supplications  have  moved  me,  who  am  Nature,  the  mother 
of  the  world,  the  lady  of  all  elements,  the  offspring  of  the  be- 
ginning of  ages,  the  highest  of  deities,  the  queen  of  spirits, 

J  ''  Met."  :^i.  15. 


256 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


the  first  in  heaven,  the  unchangeable  manifestation  of  god 
and  goddess,  wherefore  the  brightness  of  the  lights  of  heaven, 
the  wholesome  flowings  of  the  sea,  the  lamentable  silence  be- 
low, are  all  ordered  at  my  bidding.  And  my  deity,  which  is 
one  only,  under  manifold  forms,  various  rites,  and  multiplied 
names,  is  venerated  throughout  the  world.  Among  the  first- 
born Phrygians  my  name  is  the  Lady  of  Pessinus ;  among  the 
children  of  the  soil  of  Attica  it  is  Cecropean  Minerva;  among 
the  wave-beaten  Cypriotes  it  is  Venus  of  Paphos ;  among  the 
archers  of  Crete,  Diana  Dictynna ;  in  the  threefold  tongues 
of  Sicily,  Proserpine  of  Styx;  at  Eleusis,  the  ancient  Ceres; 
here  it  is  Juno,  there  Bellona;  Hecate  with  these,  Rhamnusia 
with  those;  and  all  they  who  are  enlightened  with  the  begin- 
nings of  the  rays  of  the  Sun-god,  the  Ethiopians  and  Arians 
and  ^Egyptians,  in  the  strength  of  ancient  learning,  who  wor- 
ship me  aright,  with  ceremonies  of  mine  own,  call  me  by  my 
true  name,  Isis  the  Queen."  ^ 

The  same  mysticism  pervades  the  tale  of  Cupid  and  Psyche, 
though  the  allegory  which  occupies  commentators  about  the 
soul  and  eternal  beauty  is  a  very  secondary  object  with 
the  writer.  He  is  much  more  concerned  with  ordinary  pie- 
tistic  sentimentality  about  a  maiden,  of  more  than  human 
beauty,  brought  especially  near  to  the  jealous  gods,  tried  and 
.  failing,  and  delivered  at  last  with  the  ease  with  which  gods 
can  do  all  things.  The  provocation  which  made  Venus  hate 
her  at  first  is  that  Psyche  was  worshipped  in  her  stead.  Venus 
exhales  her  rage  in  a  purely  mythological  speech,  and  asks,  as 
she  might  have  done  in  Statius,  what  she  had  gained  by  the 
judgment  of  Paris.  But  in  fact  what  Apuleius  cares  for  most 
is  caressing  pictures  :  after  Venus  has  finished  a  particularly 
heartless  petition  that  her  son  will  entangle  Psyche  in  the 
most  disgraceful  possible  love;  after  kissing  her  son  long  and 
close  with  greedy  kisses,  she  sought  the  nearest  margin  of  the 
wavering  shore,  and,  setting  her  rosy  feet  to  trample  the  top- 
most foam  of  the  quivering  billows,  alighted  at  last  on  the 
liquid  crown  of  the  deep  sea,  and  at  the  first  dawn  of  her  de- 
sire, as  if  her  precept  had  gone  forth  of  old,  all  the  service  of 

1  "  Met."  xi.  5. 


APULEIUS. 


257 


the  sea  is  at  hand.     Then  we  have  all  the  pomp  of  Naiads 
and  Tritons  simply  to  escort  Venus  to  Ocean,  where  she  has 
nothing  remarkable  to  do.     When  Psyche  is  carried  to  her 
doom,  Apuleius  spends  all  his  pathos  on  the  nuptial  proces- 
sion, which  is  also  a  funeral,  and  does  not  attempt  any  struggle 
of  p'aternal  affection  or  youthful  clinging  to  life  with  the  harsh 
decree  of  destiny.     Again,  no  pains  are  taken  to  account  for 
Psyche's  yielding  to  the  temptation  of  her  envious  sisters,  ex- 
cept making  her  so  simple  that  when  she  has  a  secret  to  keep 
she  tells  two  incompatible  stories  to  hide  it.     At  last  they 
know  enough,  knowing  that  she  has  never  seen  her  husband, 
to  frighten  her  with  the  assertion  that  her  husband  is  a  mon- 
strous serpent;  then  they  "bare  the  sword  of  treachery,  and 
smite  the  timid  meditations  of  the  simple  lassie."     When  she 
is  wound  up  at  last  to  disobey,  "  she  hurries,  she  delays,  dares, 
trembles,  doubts,  is  angry;  and,  when  all  is  done,  the  same 
body  is  hateful  as   a  serpent,  lovely  as   a  husband."     The 
climax  is  that  she  pricks  herself  before  she  wakes  him  with 
one  of  his  own  arrows,  after  which  the  fatal  drop  of  oil  falls 
from  the  lamp  and  awakens  the  god;  otherwise  no  mischief 
would  have  been  done. 

There  is  the  same  fundamental  heartlessness  in  the  treat- 
ment of  Psyche's  subsequent  adventures.  The  cruelty  of 
Venus  makes  no  impression  of  religious  awe,  it  arouses  no 
thrill  of  human  indignation;  one  hardly  knows  whether  we 
are  meant  to  pity  Psyche,  or  to  gloat  over  her  sufferings  as 
Apuleius's  first  readers  gloated  over  the  female  victims  of  the 
arena.  At  best  our  minds  are  divided  between  the  caressing 
tenderness  of  the  style  and  curiosity  about  the  matter.  It  is 
noticeable  that  though  the  author  puts  the  story  into  the 
mouth  of  the  housekeeper  of  a  robber's  cave,  who  tells  it  for 
the  consolation  of  a  captive  heiress,  he  spends  the  whole 
treasures  of  his  flowery  rhetoric  on  ornamenting  it.  He  is 
equally  generous  to  the  robbers :  they  describe  the  heroism 
of  their  fallen  comrades  in  the  same  lyrical  style  as  that  in 
which  Q.  Curtius  describes  the  ifeats  of  Alexander  the  Great. 
There  is  no  connection  between  the  different  adventures  of 
Lucius  :  when  the  author  is  tired  of  one  scene  of  low  life,  his 


2:;8 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


unfortunate  hero  has  only  to  escape  into  another;  he  does 
not  even  give  himself  much  trouble,  after  the  first,  to  explain 
why  the  ass  is  never  able  to  munch  the  roses  without  the 
special  grace  of  Isis.  Many  of  the  stories  which  he  relates 
must  have  been  old  when  he  told  them  :  in  this  he  seems  in- 
ferior to  Petronius;  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  to  be  said  that, 
his  adventures  are  commonly  voluptuous  or  comic,  rather  than 
indecent,  in  which  we  may  recognize  the  effects  of  the  im- 
proved morality  of  the  age  of  the  Antonines. 

There  is  another  curious  question  about  the  "  Metamor- 
phoses." The  main  story  is  very  like  a  Greek  work,  "  Luci- 
us," which  has  come  to  us  among  the  works  of  Lucian  :  there 
is  the  same  transformation,  not  a  few  of  the  same  adventures, 
including  the  hero's  drunken  onslaught  on  the  wine-skins,' 
which  he  mistakes  for  robbers;  but  there  is  nothing  of  the 
mysticism  which  abounds  in  Apuleius,  in  spite  6f  his  irony. 
There  is  nothing  weirder  to  be  found  in  the  ghostly  side  of 
literature  than  the  story  of  Aristomenes*  and  his  companion 
who  had  his  throat  cut  in  the  night  by  witches,  and  died  next 
day  when  the  sponge  with  which  the  wound  was  plugged  falls 
out  when  he  stoops  to  drink.  On  the  other  hand,  a  Chaldaean 
is  ridiculed  who  arrives  after  a  very  bad  voyage  and  makes  a 
great  deal  of  money  by  promising  good  success  to  whoever 
would  pay  for  his  calculations.  And  the  adventure  of  the 
wine-skins  is  treated  ironically  :  it  is  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  en- 
chantments of  the  lady,  who  turns  herself  into  an  owl ;  but  it 
is  also  a  choice  device  for  the  service  of  the  god  Laughter, 
or,  as  we  should  say,  for  "  All  Fools'  Day." 

The  narrative  gives  a  lively  picture  of  the  state  of  the  coun- 
try parts  of  the  Roman  empire.  The  people  outside  the 
towns  saw  very  little  of  the  authorities.  It  was  necessary  to 
travel  armed  and  in  large  bands,  and  any  such  band  was  liable 
to  be  mistaken  for  brigands,  and  there  were  savage  affrays, 
which  led  to  nothing.  At  the  same  time  it  was  a  great  risk  to 
be  seen  near  a  dead  body,  and  the  most  innocent  person  in 
such  a  case  had  no  idea  of  trusting  his  innocence.  The  au- 
thorities had  the  most  arbitrary  power  :  for  instance,  an  aedile 
»  "Met."iii.  i-ii.  '^  lb.  i.  9-19. 


APULEIUS. 


259 


could  upset  a  dish  of  fish  in  the  street  and  trample  it  under 
foot,  to  punish  the  fishmonger  for  overcharging;  though  it  is 
probably  a  comic  exaggeration  to  select  a  dish  which  a  friend 
had  bought  and  paid  for,  to  teach  the  lesson. 

The  "  Metamorphoses  "  are  probably  the  first  serious  work 
of  the  author ;  they  are  overloaded  with  the  most  curious  re- 
search, both  of  epithets  and  cadences.  There  is  much  more 
liveliness  and  variety  in  the  speech  on  ALagic,  and  even  in  the 
collection  of  elegant  extracts  from  less  carefully  prepared 
speeches  which  has  reached  us  under  the  name  of ''  Florida." 
The  title  is  elliptical,  and  would  be  "Flowery  Meadows"  at 
full  (for  "meadow"  was  a  common  name  for  miscellanies); 
and  the  nearest  equivalent  for  it  would  be  "  anthology." 

The  principle  of  selection  is  not  obvious  ;  one  is  tempted 
to  think  that  the  author  seldom  wrote  a  speech  at  full-length  ; 
there  was  a  skeleton  and  an  ornamental  passage  here  and 
there,  especially  an  exordium  ;  and  probably  Apuleius,  or 
some  literary  executor,  simply  cut  these  loose  from  ihs  skel- 
eton and  put  them  together. 

His  idea  of  ornament  is  to  accumulate  a  number  of  short 
and  symmetrical  clauses  as  long  as  possible.  The  first  spec- 
imen of  all  is  very  typical : 

"Ut  ferme  religiosis  viantium  moris  est,  cum  aliqui  lucus, 
aut  aliqui  locus  sanctus  in  via  oblatus  est,  veniam  postulare, 
votum  adponere,  paulisper  adsidere  :  ita  mihi,  ingresso  sane- 
tissimam  istam  civitatem,  quamquam  oppido  festinem,  prae- 
fanda  venia,  et  habenda  oratio,  et  inhibenda  properatio  est. 
Neque  enim  justius  religiosam  moram  viatori  objecerit  aut  ara 
floribus  redimita,  aut  spelunca  frondibus  inumbrata,  aut  quer- 
cus  cornibus  onerata,  aut  fagus  pellibus  coronata,  vel  etiam 
colliculus  sepimine  consecratus,  vel  truncus  dolamine  efligia- 
tus,  vel  caespes  libamine  fumigatus,  vel  lapis  unguine  delibu- 
tus.  Parva  haec  quippe  et  quamquam  paucis  percontantibus 
adorata  tamen  ignorantibus  transcursa." 

The  author  obviously  trusted  himself  to  improvise  the  proof 
that  the  city  in  which  he  was  speaking  had  more  obvious 
claims  upon  a  passenger  than  the  different  wayside  sanc- 
tuaries, the  flower-crowned  altar;  the  cavern  with  its  fringe  of 


26o 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUKE. 


leaves,  the  mound  with  the  hedge  round  it  to  hallow  it,  the 
trunk  hewn  out  into  the  shape  of  a  god,  the  turf  with  the  liba- 
tion smoking  on  it,  the  stone  with  the  anointing  still  fresh  on 
it     All  such  signs,  we  hear,  are  little  in  themselves,  and,  though 
the  few  who  iiTquire  into  them  will  worship,  those  who  know 
nothing  may  hurry  by.     Another  characteristic  trait  is  "  I  must 
hold  a°speech,  and  hold  in  my  haste  :"  the  author  is  fond  of 
sucro-estin--  the  necessity  of  verbal  distinctions,  by  putting  two 
clos°ely  connected  words  together  so  as  to  give  an  ignorant  or 
careless  hearer  the  impression  of  tautology.     He  is  fond,  too, 
of  introducing  strings  of  unmistakable  distinctions,  enumerat- 
ino-  for  instance,  the  technical  names  of  the  notes  of  different 
birds      This  is  not  the  only  point  in  Apuleius  which  reminds 
us  of  the  literature  of  the  later  middle  ages.     His  ideal  of 
precise    propriety  of  language  reminds  us  of  Dame  Juliana 
B-rners  ;  his  ideal  of  descriptive  eloquence  is  very  like  what 
we  find  in  the  latest    romances  of  the  "Round  Table."     In 
both  alike  we  may  trace  the  ambition  of  a  society  which  had 
not  attained   a  full  and  rational    development,  and  yet  had 
passed  into  the  stage  of  over-refinement. 

Besides  the  works  enumerated,  Apuleius  wrote  voluminous 
compilations,  which  have  not   reached  us,  upon  grammar  and 
agriculture,  and  paraphrased  the  "  Phx^do  "  and  the  "  Repub- 
lic," in  which  last  some  suspect  that  he  may  have  imitated 
Cicero  and  Aristotle  as  well  as  Plato.     In  addition  to  these 
he  wrote  a  collection  of  jests  and  questions  about  banquets, 
containing  such  answers  as  his  reading  suggested  to  any  ques- 
tion which  might  turn  up  at  a  party.     This  kind  of  compila- 
tion was  always  popular,  because  it  enabled  a  reader  to  make 
a  display  of  information  where  there  was  an  audience  to  ap- 
preciate his  knowledge.    It  is  probable,  however,  that  Apuleius 
came  far  short  of  the  inexhaustible  learning  of  an  Athenoeus. 
In  his  speeches  he  shows  himself  shallow.     Of  all  the  ancient 
authors  who  have  mentioned  Alexander's  rule  of  only  allow- 
ing the  first  artists  to  take  his  portrait,  Apuleius  is  the  only 
one  who   substitutes  Polycletus  for  Lysippus.     This   proves 
that  he  did  not  know  that  Polycletus  and  Lysippus  belonged 
to  separate  generations.     He  had  learned  a  list  of  eminent 


APULEIUS. 


261 


Statuaries,  and  remembered  that  the  name  of  Polycletus  was 
on  it.  It  is  of  a  piece  with  this  that  his  philosophical  anec- 
dotes, of  which  there  are  several  in  the  "Florida,"  are  taken 
from  the  same  authority  as  Diogenes  Laertius.'  Nor  is  he  at 
all  strict  in  construction.  One  of  the  longest  and  most  elab- 
orate chapters  in  the  "  Florida  "  begins  with  a  description  of 
Samos,  in  which  the  fact  that  nothing  will  grow  there  but 
olives  is  twisted  into  several  paradoxes;  then  we  are  told  that 
the  town  is  decayed,  but  that  the  temple  of  Juno  is  celebrated, 
and  rich  in  offerings  of  all  kinds.  There  is  nothing  anywhere 
that  Apuleius  admires  more  than  the  statue  of  Bathyllus,  the 
favorite  of  Polycrates,  which  was  wrongly  ascribed  to  Pythag- 
oras. Then  we  have  an  elaborate  description  of  the  statue, 
and  an  assurance  that  no  philosopher  could  be  the  favorite 
of  a  tyrant  (and  apparently  the  dedication  of  Polycrates  was 
the  one  fixed  point  about  the  statue),  especially  a  philosopher 
like  Pythagoras,  who  left  Samos  when  the  tyranny  was  estab- 
lished. Then  we  have  the  list  of  Pythagoras's  travels,  and  his 
instructors,  and  his  system  of  instruction,  in  which  Apuleius, 
whose  trade  wms  to  talk,  naturally  lays  most  stress  on  the 
inculcation  of  silence,  and  explains  that  he,  for  his  own  part, 
has  learned  to  speak  and  be  silent  in  due  season. 

The  next  chapter'^  is  perhaps  a  little  more  methodical,  but 
equally  forced  in  its  arrangement.  Apuleius  has  to  return 
thanks  for  a  statue,  and  to  explain  why  his  absence  has  de- 
ferred his  thanks.  Further,  he  has  to  explain  why  he  is  bound 
in  courtesy  to  explain  his  absence  ;  then  he  tells  a  story  how 
a  similar  honor  was  paid  to  Philemon  on  the  occasion  of  his 
reading  a  new  play,  and  this  involves  a  perfunctory  analysis 
of  what  that  author's  legitimate,  if  exaggerated,  reputation  has 
to  rest  upon.  After  the  third  act  Philemon  adjourned  the 
reading,  and  when  his  friends  met  to  hear  the  remainder  he 
did  not  come  ;  and  they  found,  when  they  went,  that  he  was  just 
dead.  So,  when  Apuleius  was  interrupted  in  a  recitation  by  a 
shower,  he  was  hindered  from  resumins:  it  at  the  time  ap- 
pointed  because  he  had  sprained  his  ankle  and  shaken  him- 
self very  badly,  and  expected,  like  Philemon,  to  take  to  his 


»  "Flor."ii.  15. 


2  lb.  iii.  16. 


262 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


grave  rather  than  his  bed.  As  soon  as  the  hot  springs  had 
restored  him  sufficiently  to  enable  him  to  hurry  to  Carthage, 
he  came,  though  still  lame,  because  the  honor,  being  unasked, 
was  so  great  as  to  deserve  his  utmost  gratitude,  both  to  the 
chief  men  of  Africa  who  had  voted  his  statue,  and  the  illus- 
trious consular  who  had  stipulated  for  a  good  site,  on  the 
<rround  that  he  intended  to  put  up  the  statue  at  his  own  ex- 

pense. 

It  would  be  unkind  to  the  busy,  amiable,  estimable  man  of 
letters  to  leave  him  here.  His  vanity,  if  we  are  to  call  it  so, 
shows  to  less  disadvantage  in  this  extract : 

"Philosophy  did  not  endow  me  with  speech  of  such  a  sort 
as  the  song  which  nature  grants  to  certain  birds  for  a  short 
season,  as  swallows  have  a  matin  song,  cicalas  a  noonday  song, 
night-owls  a  late  song,  barn-owls  an  evensong,  screech-owls  a 
nio-ht  sonir,  cocks  a  dawning  song.  For  all  these  creatures 
among  themselves  strike  up  and  tune  up  their  song  by  turn  ; 
for  cocks  have  a  rousing  song,  screech-owls  a  doleful  song, 
barn-owls  a  plaintive  song,  night-owls  a  manifold  song,  cicalas 
a  buzzing  song,  swallows  a  very  shrill  song.  But  a  philoso- 
pher's discourse,  both  inwardly  and  outwardly,  is  for  its  season 
perpetual,  for  its  learning  venerable,  and  for  understanding 
profitable,  and  for  tune  it  sings  in  every  key." ' 

"  PERVIGILIUM    VENERIS." 

The  most  charming  work  of  the  African  school  is  a  little 
poem  on  the  "  Vigil  of  Venus,"  which  is  full  of  an  exquisite 
feeling  for  the  new  birth  of  the  year  in  spring.  The  delicacy 
of  the\'hole  and  the  exquisite  grace  of  single  lines  more  than 
atone  for  the  want  of  order  and  structure,  and'  for  the  numer- 
ous traces  of  the  degradation  of  the  language.  There  are 
repetitions,  such  as  the  appearance  of  Love  disarmed,  and 
making  holiday  among  the  nymphs  of  mountain,  wood,  and 
fountain  ;  and  again,  the  appearance  of  Dione  on  her  throne 
of  judgment,  with  the  Graces  as  her  assessors,  which  almost 
make  one  ask  whether  all  the  poem  is  by  one  hand,  or  whether 
it  is  not  the  result  of  some  friendly  rivalry  in  improvisation, 

1  •*  Flor."  ii.  13. 


"  PER  VIG ILIUM    veneris:' 


263 


which  is  all  the  more  credible  as  the  trochaic  metre  chosen  is 

very  easy.    The  meaning  of  single  lines  is  often  as  vague  as  the 

structure  of  the  whole  is  loose.    What  does  it  mean  exactly  ? — 

Emicant  lacrimae  tumentes  de  caduco  pondere 
Gutta  praeceps  arvo  parvo  sustiuet  casus  suos. 

The  poet,  or  the  poets,  clearly  mean  that  the  dewdrop  is  just 
ready  to  fall,  and  still  lingers  on  the  bud  ;  but  does  the  second 
line  mean  anything  that  is  not  said  in  the  first  ?     And  what  is 
meant  by  a  rose  putting  on  the  bridal  veil  ?  especially  as  we 
learn  directly  afterwards  that  "  Cypris,  fashioned  of  blood  and 
of  love's  kisses  and  jewels  and  flames  and  the  purple  of  the 
sun,  will  deign  as  a  wife  may  to-morrow  to  unloose  from  its 
one  knot  the  rosy  blush  which  lay  hid  behind  the  veil  of  flame- 
color  ;"  or  what  does  it  mean  when  the  poet  bids  *' Hybla 
burst   the    vesture  of  the  flowers   through  all  the  plains  of 
Henna  ?"     After  this  it  is  comparatively  a  trifle  that  the  prep- 
osition de  is  far  on  the  way  to  acquire  the  sense  that  it  has 
in   French,  and  that  we  come  on  a  phrase  like  Dc  tenente, 
which  has  no  analogy  in  the  language  of  the  best  authors  ;  for 
a  language  has  a  right  to  change,  but  no  writer  ought  to  be 
vague.     It  is  also  an  abuse  of  poetical  license  to  represent  a 
wood  coming  into  leaf  after  the  spring  rains,  as  "  loosening 
its.  locks  in  the  bridal  of  the  showers."     The  full-grown  foliage 
may  possibly  be  accepted  as  waving  locks  which  rustle  in  the 
wind  ;  but  locks  must  be  there  before  they  can  be  loosed  ;  and 
the  leaves  are  not  there  even  when  they  are  in  the  bud.    The 
short  imitation  of  the  lecture  on  the  Soul  of  the  World  in  the 
Sixth  ^neid  is  stately  and  glowing ;  but  the  real  charm  of 
the  poem  is  a  soft  glow  of  feeling,  which  atones  for  defective 
meaning  as  exquisite  coloring  in  a  picture  atones  for  defective 
drawing. 


264 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TUBE. 


CHAPTER  III. 

AULUS    GELLIUS. 

AuLUS  Gellius,  a  contemporary  of  Apuleius,  who  probably 
belonged  to  a  slightly  later  generation,  only  comes  in  contact 
with  the  African  school  as  one  of  the  numerous  hearers  of 
Fronto  \  and  Fronto  nowhere  names  him,  so  that  he  cannot 
have  been    one  of  the    most  distinguished.     He  shares  the 
literary  tastes,  but  not  the  literary  aims,  of  his  predecessor  and 
contemporary  ;  he  is  not  a  stylist,  but  an  antiquary.     He  was 
a  small  official  with  a  turn  for  reading,  who,  before  he  had 
grown  absolutely  old,  resolved  to  publish  his  commonplace 
book  ;  and,  if  his  business  and  his  duty  to  his  children  gave 
him  leave,  to  continue  it  as  long  as  he  lived.     Apparently  he 
did  not  live  long,  for  the  commonplace  book  was  not  con- 
tinued ;  we  have  only  nineteen  books  of  it,  with  the  author's 
table  of  contents  to  twenty.     It  is  the  eighth  book  that  is 
missing.     The  author,  in  his  elaborate  preface,  rather  plumes 
himself  upon  his  modesty.     He  will  not  follow  the  example 
of  those  who  have  published  their  note-books  under  the  title 
of  "  Forests,"  or  "  Muses,"  or  "  Broidered  Robes,"  or  *'  Cor- 
nucopi^E,"  or  ''  Tablets,"  or  "  Meadows,"  or  "  My  Reading,"  or 
"Ancient  Readings,"  or  "Anthology,"  or  "Treasure  Trove," 
or  "  Light  on  the  Subject,"  or  "  Patchwork,"  or  "  Hotchpotch," 
or    "Helicon    or  Problems,"    or  "Manuals,"  or  "Stilettos." 
Some  chose  the  title  of  "  Memorials,"  or  "  Pragmatics,"  or 
"Incidental    Notes,"    or    "Teachers'    Manual."      Then   we 
have  "  Natural  History,"  "  Miscellaneous  History,"  and  the 
"Meadow"  or  the  "  Fruitery."     "The  Dust-heap"  is    com- 
mon enough,  and  a  good  many  have  thought  "Moral  Letters," 
or  "  Questions  of  Correspondence,"  or  "  A  Medley  of  Ques- 
tions," a  good  occasion  for  displaying  a  surprisingly  pretty 


AULUS  GELLIUS. 


265 


wit.     As   for  himself,  Aulus  Gellius  decides   upon  what  he 
thinks  a  very  modest,  homely  title,  "  Attic  Nights,"  because  he 
began  them  in  the  long  nights  of  a  winter  of  Attica.     He  im- 
plies that  he  took  less  pains  than  most  of  his  rivals  to  write 
prettily,  and  asserts  plainly  enough  that  he  took  more  pains  to 
write  usefully.     His  boast  is  not  confined  to  his  preface.    The 
sixth  chapter  of  the  fourteenth  book  is  devoted  to  ridicule  of 
the  follies  of  contemporary  compilers.     "A  man  of  our  ac- 
quaintance, not  undistinguished  in  the  pursuit  of  letters,  who 
had  spent  great  part  of  his  life  over  books,  said,  *  I  wish  to 
come  to  the  help  and  improvement  of  those  "  Nights  "  of  yours,' 
and  therewith  he  gave  me  a  book,  and  a  big  book,  abounding, 
as  he  told  me  himself,  with  learning  of  all  kinds,  which  he  said 
he  had  worked  out  for  himself  out  of  a  great  deal  of  varied 
and  out-of-the-way  reading,  so  that  I  might  extract  from  it  as 
much  as  I  pleased  of  things  worth  remembering."     Of  course 
Gellius  accepted  the  book  eagerly,  but  when  he  came  to  read 
it  he  was  astonished  and  disappointed  to  find  nothing  but  a 
blank  appeal  to  curiosity.     "  What  was  the  name  of  the  first 
person  called  a  grammarian  ?     How  many  celebrated  persons 
there  had  been  of  the  name  of  Pythagoras?     How  many  of 
the  name  of  Hippocrates?     What  sort  of  gallery-door  there 
was  in  the  house  of  Ulysses,  as  described  by  Homer  ?     Why, 
when  Telemachus  was  lying  close  to  Pisistratus,  he   roused 
him  with  his  foot,  and  not  with  his  hand  ?     How  did  Euryclea 
shut  up  Telemachus  ?  and  how  is  it  that  the  same  poet  men- 
tions oil  of  roses  and  never  mentions  roses  ?     Then,  too,  all 
the  names  of  the  companions  of  Ulysses  whom  Scylla  pulled 
out  of  the  ship  and  tore  to  pieces,  were  duly  written  down. 
There  w^is  a  discussion  whether  the  wanderings  of  Ulysses 
were  in  the  inner  sea  according  to  Aristarchus,  or  the  outer 
sea  according  to  Crates.     There,  too,  was  written  how  many 
verses  there  are  in  Homer  where  the  numerical  value  of  the 
letters  is  the  same  in  two  lines  running,  and  how  many  lines 
there  are  which  fall  into  acrostics,  and  the  lines  where  each 
word    is  a  syllable  longer   than  the  line  before  ;   and  what 
Homer  can  have  been  thinking  of  when  he  wrote  that  all  the 
sheep  yeaned  three  times  a  year ;  and  whether  the  golden 

II.— 12 


266 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


AULUS  GELLIUS. 


267 


plate  in  the  shield  of  Achilles  was  the  outside  or  the  middle 
of  the  five   plates  of  which  the  shield  was  made.     Besides, 
there  were  all  the  cities  and  countries  whose  names  have  been 
altered  hitherto ;  one  learned  that  Bceotia  used  to  be  ca  led 
Aonia,  and  Egypt  Aeria,  and  Crete  was  called  Aena  just  like 
Ecxvpt  and  Attica  was  called  Acte  and  Acta  by  a  poet  and 
Corinth  Ephyra,  and  Macedonia  Emathia,  and  Thessaly  Hae- 
monia,  and  Tyre  Sarra,  and  Thrace  used  to  be  called  Sithon 
and  Sestos  Posidonium.     There  was  all  this,  and  a  great  deal 
more  of  the  kind,  in  that  book.     So,  returning  the  book  with 
all  possible  haste,  I  said,  'I  wish  you  joy,  most  learned  of 
men  of  all  your  miscellaneous  learning.    Here  is  your  learning 
back  :  unluckily  it  don't  suit  my  poverty-stricken  writings  at 
all      For  my  "  Nights  "  that  you  went  in  for  helping  and  adorn- 
inc^  are  all  concerned  with  a  single  verse  of  Homer,  which  Soc- 
rates always  said  was  what  pleased  him  beyond  everything- 
The  good  and  evil  that  you  meet  at  home.' " 

In  this  temper  it  is  natural  that  Gellius  should  have  con- 
fined himself  a  good  deal  to  compiling;  and  it  is  probable 
that  his  entire  absence  of  pretension  and  his  rejection  of  what 
was  useless  gave  him  the  same  kind  of  popularity  in  antiquity 
which  he  certainly  enjoyed  at  the  revival  of  letters.  There 
are  a  great  many  MSS.  of  his  works,  and  no  old  ones  :  the 
inference  is  that  he  was  copied  by  everybody  who  could,  from 
the  fourteenth  century  onward,  and  he  was  reprinted  a  dozen 
times  between  1469  and  1500. 

In  -eneral  it  may  be  said  that  Gellius  takes  pains  to  be 
less  petty  than  his  contemporaries ;  that  he  is  endeavoring  to 
stretch  grammar  into  a  liberal  education.  He  is  always  severe 
upon  the  tendency  to  specialize,  and  imagines  that  a  really 
well-informed  man  ought  to  understand  the  whole  of  life  ; 
and,  practically,  he  knows  nothing  but  books,  though  resolute 
to  make  a  sensible  use  of  them.  He  marks  a  stage  which 
always  seems  to  be  reached  sooner  or  later,  when  books  tend 
in  ever-increasing  measure  to  become  the  absorbing  subject 
of  pure  literature.  When  his  mind  is  quite  at  ease  and  at 
leisure  (when  he  is  in  his  litter,  for  instance,  riding  off  to  his 


summer  holiday),  he  naturally  turns  to  a  purely  grammatical 
question,  the  different  uses  oi  pro,  and  decides,  to  his  great 
comfort,  that  they  can  be  explained  upon  a  common  principle, 
and  yet  are  not  absolutely  identical.    One  notices  the  change 
in  some  fifty  or  sixty  years  from  Pliny  the  Younger,  who,  when 
he  was  at  leisure,  had  nothing  to  think  of  but  the  trivial  epi- 
<Tams  which  any  accomplished  nobleman  might  write  when 
he  was  idle.     He  tells  a  pretty  story  of  Domitius,'  a  learned 
grammarian  who  had  a  reputation  at  Rome,  who  was  nick- 
named the  madman:    he  was  by  nature   rather  wilful  and 
quarrelsome,  and  Gellius's  friend  Favorinus  met  him  at  the 
temple  of  Carmenta,  and  inquired  whether  contiojies  was  the 
right  Latin  word  for  the  Greek  Arjfirjyofnai.    Domitius  thought 
that  the  world  was  undone  if  philosophers  condescended  to 
grammatical  drudgery,  and  promised  Favorinus  a  book  which 
would  answer  his  question,  declining  to  do  so  himself  because 
he  had  higher  aspirations.     Favorinus  remarked  that  only  a 
man  of  genius  could  have  been  melancholy  mad  in  such  a 
way,  and  that  the  rude  speech  of  the  grammarian  would  have 
been  quoted  to  his  glory  if  he  had  been  a  professed  philoso- 
pher; after  which  Gellius  proceeds  to  copy  some  very  dull 
notes  from  Verrius  Flaccus,  bearing  vaguely  upon  the  ques- 
tion of  Favorinus.     We  have  more  reason  to  thank  him  for  a 
little  disquisition  on  the  fashion  set  by  the  poets  of  lengthen- 
ing olf  and  sul?  when  compounded  \withjacere  and  its  deriva- 
tives, whence  we  learn  that  in  spontaneous  pronunciation  the 
modified  /  or  »  was  not  sounded  at  all,  and  that  it  was  a  posi- 
tive solecism  to  sound  the  /  in  the  first  syllable  oi  injicit  long, 
even  when  the  metre  required  it.     Gellius  hardly  raised  this 
point  for  himself.'     He  was   indebted  to   Favorinus  for  the 
conjecture  that  the  distinction  between  prceda  and  manubicz 
lay  in  this,  that  prceda  was  the  booty  itself,  and  maniihice  the 
money  derived  from  it.     Indeed,  Favorinus  seems  almost  to 
have  deserved  the  rebuke  of  Domitius :  he  was  a  Gaul  of 

»  Cell.  "Noct.  Att."xviii.7. 

'  He  quotes  Sulpicius  Apolhnaris,  iv.  17,  as  having  saved  the  metre  by 
pronouncing  the  "  i  "  in  Obicibus  ruptis  (Georg.  ii.  480)  pauUo  largius  ubc* 
rittsque  i.  q.  obyicibus. 


> 


268 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Aries,  and  by  profession  a  philosopher  ;  he  was  also  a  student 
of  Greek  literature,  but  he  was  never  tired  of  airing  his  "  super- 
ficial "  acquaintance  with  Latin.  For  instance,  when  some 
superficial  pretender  to  antiquarian  knowledge  was  boasting 
that  he  was  the  one  man  who  could  explain  Sallust,  he  proved, 
with  a  great  deal  of  Socratic  display,  that  the  boaster  did  not 
understand  the  hazy  antithesis,  that  it  was  doubtful  whether 
one  of  the  Catilinarian  conspirators  was  "duller"  or  "emp- 
tier," ^^  stolidior  afi  vaniorj' 

He  had  rather  more  success  in  a  Socratic  dialogue  on  the 
meaning  oipenus,  "  household  stuff,"  and  showed  that  several 
hish  authorities  had  jriven  confused  definitions,  while  the  un- 
lucky  disputant  had  given  no  definition  at  all.  The  scene  is 
laid  in  the  "  area  of  the  palace,"  among  a  crowd  that  was  wait- 
ing to  salute  Caesar;  and  for  the  most  part  Gellius  entertains 
us,  when  he  is  dramatic,  with  the  talk  of  loungers  in  public 
places,  instead  of  the  prolonged  discourse  of  a  select  coterie 
in  some  nobleman's  villa  or  bedroom,  which  is  the  scenery  of 
the  dialogues  of  Tacitus  and  Cicero. 

Occasionally  Favorinus  does  get  into  good  society  in  pri- 
vate: he  pays  a  visit  to  a  distinguished  family  which  a  baby 
has  just  entered,  and   preaches'   a  sermon   on  the  duty  of 
mothers  to  nurse  their  own  children,  of  which  the  grandmother 
strongly  disapproves.     He  philosophizes,  too,  in  an  elaborate 
harangue^  against  the  pretensions  of  the  Chaldaeans.     The 
temper  of  the  speech  is  curious,  at  once  rationalistic  and  pie- 
tistic.     Favorinus  takes  most  of  the  objections  which  a  man 
of  science  would  take  (if  one  could  be  compelled  to  discuss 
the  question).     He  asks  how  the  planets  can  decide  anything 
at  the  moment  of  birth  ?     Is  not  the  moment  of  conception 
more  important?     How  is  it  that  many  who  are  born  at  the 
same  moment  under  the  same  planet  are  so  unlike  ?     How  is 
it  that  if  an  astrologer  can  predict  the  issue  of  a  birth,  he 
cannot  predict  the  issue  of  a  game  at  dice?     If  large  events 
are  more  easily  discerned,  which  of  the  events  of  human  life 
can  be  considered  large  ?  and  so  forth.     Lastly,  if  the  planets 
determine  fate,  can  it  be  said  that  every  one  of  the  crowd  who 
»  Gell.  "  Noct.  Att."  xii.  i.  ^  lb.  xiv.  i. 


AULUS  GELLIUS. 


269 


perish  in  a  general  catastrophe,  like  a  conflagration  or  an 
earthquake,  was  born  under  the  same  planet  or  the  same  con- 
stellations ?   But,  with  all  this,  Favorinus  does  not  presume  to 
emancipate  himself  from  the  assumptions  of  the  astrologers : 
he  takes  it  for  granted  that  the  heavenly  bodies  must,  in  some 
way'or  other,  dominate  the  affairs  of  our  earth.     He  does  not 
suppose  that  it  is  a  mere  accident  when  astrologers  are  right: 
there  is  a  real  connection  which  the  astrologers  dimly  appre- 
hend ;  if  they  could  see  it  clearly  they  would  be  as  the  gods 
—an  hypothesis  too  shocking  to  be  credible.     But  Favorinus 
cannot  stick  firmly  either  to  science  or  piety ;  he  goes  on  to 
explain  that  men  would  be  mere  puppets,  which  is  contrary 
to  common-sense.     After  all,  the  objection  to  astrology  was 
practical ;  the  young  men  who  haunted  the  Chaldaeans  com- 
promised'themselves  in  many  ways.     Elsewhere   Gellius  is 
content  to  transcribe  the  Stoic  distinctions  about  fate  with 
very   little    criticism,  almost    as   if  he    thought   them    satis- 
factory. 

Favorinus  is  the  one  original  feature  in  Gellius's  compila- 
tion, and  generally  appears  at  the  beginning  of  a  book  to  give 
a  certain  show  of  dramatic  liveliness,  though  Gellius's  modesty 
prevents  him  from  giving  this  prominent  position  to  a  dis- 
course on  the  duties  of  a  judge.     It  was  a  sort  of  axiom  of 
Roman  law  to  decide  cases  which  turned  on  a  conflict  of  testi- 
mony between  the  parties,  in  favor  of  the  defendant ;  it  was 
an  axiom  of  philosophers  in  such  a  case  to  prefer  taking  the 
word  of  the  more  respectable  of  the  two.     Gellius  once  had  a 
case  of  this  kind  to  decide,  and  adjourned  it  on  purpose  to 
consult  Favorinus.     The  sage  told  him  a  good  deal  about  his 
duty  in  general,  especially  as  to  the  question  whether  the 
judge  was  to  interrupt  the  pleaders  and  show  his  feeling  as 
the  case  went  on.     As  to  the  particular  case,  he  enjoined  on 
him  by  all  means  to  decide  for  the  plaintiff,  who  had  a  good 
character,  against  the  defendant,  who   was  a  rogue.     This 
struck  Gellius  as  too  great  a  responsibility,  so  he  refused  to 
decide  at  all. 

In  general  Gellius  appears  as  a  hearer,  not  as  an  actor:  on 
one  occasion  he  found  himself  in  the  distinguished  society  of 


270 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Herodes  Atticus,  who  edified  him  by  quoting  Epictetus  against 
an  insincere  young  Stoic  babbler. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  Gellius  is  a  little  censorious:  he 
likes  to  correct  his  predecessors  and  contemporaries ;  he 
sneers  at  the  elder  Pliny  for  some  of  his  stories  about  the 
chameleon  ;  he  is  very  angry  with  the  people  who  express 
themselves  unintelligibly  in  order  to  show  their  knowledge 
of  ancient  words  ;  he  abuses  Seneca  for  his  criticism  on  Vergil 
and  Ennius ;  he  corrects  Verrius  Flaccus,  whom  he  often 
quotes,  and  oftener  follows,  for  his  explanation  of  Cato.  The 
passage  comes  in  a  speech  against  the  monstrous  "  regiment " 
of  women.  A  woman  brings  a  big  dowry;  she  keeps  back  a 
big  sum  that  she  lends  to  her  husband,  and  then,  when  she  is 
angry  with  him,  she  sends  a  " receptitious  slave"  to  dun  him. 
Verrius  Flaccus  held  a  "  receptitious  slave  "  was  a  good-for- 
nothing  slave — a  slave  whom  the  owner  had  to  take  back  be- 
cause the  buyer  found  he  did  not  answer  the  warranty  given 
with  him  when  sold.  Gellius,  for  his  part,  thought  that  when 
the  lady  kept  back  her  money  she  kept  back  the  slave  too, 
and  that  otherwise  no  slave  who  did  not  belong  to  his  mis- 
tress's settled  estate  could  be  sent  on  such  an  errand.  It  is  a 
very  pretty  quarrel. 

So  far  as  Gellius  had  a  taste  of  his  own,  it  was  for  the  sim- 
plicity of  ancient  literature  :  he  is  fond  of  giving  little  excerpts 
from  Claudius  Quadrigarius  and  Piso,  as  if  there  were  some 
charm  in  the  bald,  transparent  sentences.  On  one  occasion 
he  compares  the  way  Claudius  aud  Livy  described  the  conflict 
between  Corvinus  and  the  gigantic  Gaul,  very  much  to  the 
advantage  of  Claudius.  In  the  same  spirit  he  exults  at  Cato's 
speech  where  he  boasted  that  he  had  not  gone  to  the  expense 
of  having  one  of  his  villas  plastered  and  whitewashed,  and 
thinks  that  such  an  example  would  be  the  most  effective 
medicine  for  the  excesses  of  his  own  day,  when  philosophers 
on  fire  with  covetousness  used  to  talk  of  having  nothing  and 
wanting  nothing  when  they  were  as  rich  as  they  were  greedy. 

Gellius  himself  is  not  exactly  free  from  hypocrisy :  he  tells 
us  a  very  pretty  story  of  what  he  found  in  a  book  that  he 
picked  up  at  a  second-hand  shop  while  waiting  at  Brundisium 


AULUS  GELLIUS. 


271 


^and  one  may  charitably  hope  he  did  pick  up  the  book ;  but 
the  excerpts  had  been  made  to  his  hand  by  the  elder  Pliny,  a 
much  more  laborious  and  instructive  writer. 

As  to  style,  Gellius  has  no  pretensions ;  he  is  fond  of  assur- 
in<^  us  that  he  spoils  whatever  he  repeats,  especially  the  Greek 
haran"-ues  of  Favorinus,  and  devotes  a  whole  article  to  the 
impossibility  of  finding  a  Latin  translation,  or  even  a  Latin 
periphrase,  for  the   Greek  TroXvTrpayfioaujr}.      He   had  been 
reading,  he  says,  Plutarch's  treatise   against  that   vice,  and 
when  he  came  to  explain  the  subject  gave  the  impression  that 
it  must  be  a  virtue.     His  chief  fault  is  that  he  is  long  and 
heavy,  or  else  bald  and  abrupt;  his  happiest  attempts — they 
are  never  very  happy — are  in  the  way  of  light,  rapid  narrative. 
He  translates  Herodotus's  story  of  Arion,  which  he  thinks  a 
model  in  that  line,  and  the  introduction  is  meant  to  vie  with 
the  translation.     Still,  it  may  be  said  that  few  modern  com- 
pilers are  so  uniformly  free   from  cumbrousness,  ambiguity, 
and  solecism.     The  chief  signs  of  the  decay  of  the  language 
are  the  complete  disappearance  of  harmony  and  rhythm,  and 
the   multiplication    of  abstract    compounds  and   lengthened 
forms  of  words  {cogu omentum),  with  the  occasional  intrusion 
of  words  like  iiisiibidus,  which  properly  belong  to  slang,  in  an 
author  who  keeps  up  a  painful  struggle  for  correctness,  and 
anxiously  insists  that  diinidius  iiher  is  wrong  for  half  a  book, 
and  that  it  ought  to  be  dimidiatus. 


PART  VIII. 


THE  BARREN  PERIOD. 


CHAPTER  I. 

MINUCIUS  FELIX, 

It  is  difficult  to  fix  the  precise  date  of  the  earliest  work  of 
Christian  Latin  literature,  the  "Octavius"  of  M.  Minucius 
Felix.  The  only  two  data  which  can  be  trusted  are,  that  the 
author  seems  to  write  in  a  time  when  the  Christians,  though 
slandered,  were  not  persecuted,  and  that  the  latest  scholars 
asfree  in  thinkins:  that  TertuUian  imitated  and  misunder- 
stood  him,  though  the  opinion  of  scholars  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  that  he  imitated  TertuUian.  Whether  the  earlier 
date  or  the  later  be  correct,  the  author  seems  to  belong  to  the 
African  school ;  his  principal  speaker  seems  to  be  a  provin- 
cial governor,  who  quotes  Fronto,  certainly  as  a  countryman, 
perhaps  as  a  contemporary.  He  describes  the  idolatry  of  the 
day  in  terms  which  are  a  distinct  echo  of  Apuleius.  But  the 
scene  of  the  dialogue  is  laid  at  Ostia,  the  speakers  are  sup- 
posed to  be  domiciled  at  Rome.  Minucius  is  supposed  to  be 
paying  a  visit  to  Octavius,  an  older  Christian  and  the  chief 
speaker  in  the  dialogue ;  and,  as  they  are  walking  by  the  sea 
one  morning,  Caecilius,  a  pagan  friend,  salutes  an  anointed  im- 
age of  Serapis.  Octavius  reproaches  Minucius  for  leaving 
Caecilius  in  his  natural  blindness.  There  is  no  hint  that  it 
would  cost  Caecilius  dear  to  have  his  eyes  opened ;  the  author 
speaks  with  less  fervor  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Christians  than 
the  Stoics  speak  of  the  sufferings  of  their  representative 
sages  ;  earnestness  is  not  his  strong  point.     Lactantius  praises 


MINUCIUS  FELIX. 


273 


him  for  his  work,  which  shows  how  much  he  might  have  ac- 
complished if  he  had  devoted  himself  entirely  to  such  sub- 
jects.    He  does  not  even  show  any  acquaintance  with  the 
Scriptures,  or  imply  anything  of  their  authority,  or  dwell  in 
any  way  on  such  doctrines  as  the  Trinity  or  the  Incarnation. 
Christianity,  in  his  eyes,  is  a  doctrine  of  exclusive  monothe- 
ism, without  visible  symbols,  with  the  promise  of  the  resurrec- 
tion and  the  judgment  of  quick  and  dead.     Probably  this 
very  neutrality  of  tone  made  his  work  more  effectual  in  a  time 
of  general  tolerance,  when  Christianity  might  be  represented 
as  a  sort  of  continuation  of  the  fashionable  liberal  Stoicism, 
only  carried  out  more  consistently.     Ebert  has  pointed  out 
that  the  argument  of  Octavius  is  the  argument  of  the  Stoic  in 
Cicero's    "De    Natura    Deorum;"    while    the   argument   of 
Ccecilius   is  the    argument    of  the  Academic.     As  soon  as 
Caicilius  is  attacked  by  Octavius,  he  begins  a  curiously  mod- 
ern criticism  of  Christianity;  he  objects  alike  to  the  creed 
and  to  its  followers:  the  creed  is  objectionable  because  it  pro- 
fesses to  be  the  absolute  religion,  and  every  absolute  religion 
is  impossible,  considering  both  the  frailty  of  the  human  intel- 
lect and  the  ordinary  sceptical  objections  drawn  from  the  dis- 
proportion between   men's  lots  and  their  worth.     The  first 
proves  that  no  creed  ought  to  be  exclusive ;  the  second,  that 
no  creed  ought  to  be  transcendental :  we  ought,  in  fact,  to  fall 
back  upon  "  regulative  "  truth,  and  be  content  to  know,  on 
historical  evidence,  that  the  religious  temper,  the  observance 
of  historical  ceremonies,  brings  good  luck,  the  irreligious  tem- 
per brings  ill  luck.     As  for  the  Christians,  they  are  ill-bred, 
paradoxical  persons,  who  are  silent  in  public,  and  can  talk 
fast  enough  in  corners ;  who  have  no  fear  of  death,  and  a 
great  fear  of  nothing  after  they  are  dead ;  who  deserve  the 
worst  that  is  said  about  their  cannibalism  and  incest. 

Minucius  and  Octavius  do  not  take  all  these  dreadful 
charges  very  seriously.  Minucius,  who  is  invited  to  judge, 
remarks  that  Caecilius  is  in  a  better  humor  when  he  has  said 
his  worst,  and  Octavius  talks  of  washing  away  all  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  revilings  with  a  river  of  wholesome  words.  Octa- 
vius, who  is  the  most  dignified  of  the  three  speakers,  holding 

II.— 12* 


274 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


TERTULLIAN. 


275 


some  provincial  government,  is  not  the  least  shocked  at 
Caecilius's  language ;  he  rebukes  him  gravely  and  lengthily 
for  his  rhetorical  conceit,  and  then  proceeds  to  reply  at  about 
twice  the  length  of  his  opponent.  The  scepticism  and  pessi- 
mism of  Caecilius  are  met,  as  has  been  said,  on  Stoical 
grounds;  his  historical  piety  is  derided  upon  Epicurean  and 
Euhemerist  grounds:  his  criticism  of  the  Christians  is  met, 
partly  by  the  ordinary  apologetical  considerations,  and  partly 
by  a  counter -criticism  of  philosophers,  who  are  eloquent 
against  their  own  vices,  and  borrow  without  acknowledgment 
the  sublime  wisdom  of  the  prophets. 

The  style  of  the  book  is  good  and  natural,  though  perhaps 
a  little  stiff;  the  description  of  the  holiday  at  Ostia,  during 
which  the  conversation  is  supposed  to  take  place,  is  more  in 
the  manner  of  the  younger  Pliny  than  of  Apuleius,  whose  in- 
fluence cannot  be  traced  with  certainty,  for  such  phrases  as 
impiatus  and  pluritnum  quantum  prove  nothing.  Many  au- 
thors of  our  own  day,  who  do  not  read  each  other's  works, 
come  to  coincide  in  such  doubtful  phrases  as  "  cultured  "  and 
the  "converse  "  of  a  proposition,  where  in  an  earlier,  perhaps 
purer,  state  of  the  language  it  was  usual  to  say  "cultivated  " 
and  "the  contrary." 


■1 


CHAPTER  II. 

TERTULLIAX. 

An  African  writer,  later  by  more  than  one  generation  than 
Apuleius,  carried  spiritual  interests  further  with  a  more  con- 
sistent devotion.     Q.  Septimius   Florens  Tertullianus  wrote 
almost  exclusively  on   religious    subjects;  his   most   nearly 
secular  work  was  a  pamphlet  written  to  defend  himself  for  go- 
ing against  the  fashion  which  was  coming  up  in  Carthage  of 
wearing  the  toga  instead  of  the  pallium.     Almost  throughout 
the  author  addresses   the  whole  population  upon   common 
grounds,  and  only  just  at  the  close  reminds  us  that  the  pal- 
lium is  promoted  to  higher  dignity,  since  it  has  become  the 
garment  not  only  of  philosophers  but  of  Christians.     In  the 
rest  of  his  works  he  is  as  thoroughly  a  Christian  as  Seneca  a 
philosopher:  sometimes  he  is  arguing  with  pagans,  sometimes 
with  lax  Christians  or  heretics;  but  he  always  argues,  except 
in  the  treatise  on  the  Pallium,  on  distinctly  Christian  grounds, 
just  as  Seneca  always  argues  upon  Stoical  grounds,  whether 
he  is  dealing  with  Stoics  or  worldlings  or  Epicureans ;  and, 
like    Seneca,  Tertullian   is  always  anxious  to  find  as  much 
common  ground  as  possible.     In  another  respect  he  reminds 
us  of  Seneca:  he  shows  little  trace  of  either  of  the  reactions 
which  passed  over  Latin  literature  after  the  death  of  Nero. 
He  writes  in  short,  epigrammatic,  elliptical  sentences,  as  if  the 
younger  Pliny  and  his  contemporaries  had  never  gone  back 
to  Cicero,  as  if  Fronto  and  Apuleius  had  never  gone  back  to 
a  language  which  sought  its  effects  in   choice  and  copious 
diction  rather  than  in  the  frarnework  of  sentences  with  all  the 
variations  of  amplification,  antithesis,  and  emphasis.     The  ob- 
scurity of  Tertullian — for  he  is  often  obscure — is  the  obscurity 
of  a  barbarizing  Tacitus ;  he  'has  Africanisms  like  Apuleius, 


276 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


TERTULLIAN. 


277 


but  he  belongs  to  a  different  school  of  literature.  He  is  de- 
cidedly the  most  of  a  man  of  letters  among  the  Christian 
writers ;  though  his  taste  is  not  so  pure  as  that  of  Minucius 
Felix,  his  intellectual  activity  and  his  interest  in  his  own  in- 
genuity are  much  keener. 

The  date  of  his  birth  and  his  death  are  alike  unknown,  but 
most  of  his  writings  belong  to  the  decade  of  the  third  cent- 
ury. He  was  an  advocate  practising  in  the  courts  of  Car- 
thage, and  comparatively  late  in  middle-life  he  was  converted 
to  Christianity,  when  the  churches  of  the  West  began  to  be 
agitated  by  the  question  whether  the  ecstasies  of  Phrygian 
enthusiasts  were  to  be  trusted  when  the  ecstatics  came  into 
collision  with  their  bishops  and  the  sober  majority  of  the  con- 
gregations. This  led  ultimately  to  complete  isolation ;  after 
a  time  it  became  impossible  for  those  who  accepted  the  reve- 
lations to  remain  in  communion  with  the  congregations  who 
rejected  them,  and  the  separatist  communities  thus  formed 
had  not  power  for  coherence.  *'  Every  one  had  a  revela- 
tion," and  the  Camisards  and  the  Convulsionnaires  show  that 
in  the  latter  stages  of  such  movements  a  competition  of  in- 
compatible absurdities  sets  in.  Tertullian,  like  many  other 
less  distinguished  Montanists,  found  himself  the  centre  of  a 
small  society  which  had  no  fellowship  with  the  rest  of  Chris- 
tendom, and  did  not  survive  him  long.  It  was  a  natural  end, 
perhaps,  for  a  writer  who  seriously  believed  in  revelations, 
"extorted  by  dry  diet" — in  other  words,  the  fruit  of  artificial 
indigestion,  produced  by  eating  food  without  wine  or  oil,  es- 
pecially after  a  fast.  The  revelations  themselves  were  of  the 
quaintest,  as  he  was  aware :  for  instance,  a  woman  dreamed 
an  angel  slapped  her  bare  shoulders,  saying  they  were  too 
pretty  to  be  covered,  which  proved  that  it  was  a  religious  duty 
for  women  to  wear  veils  down  to  their  waists,  a  proposition 
more  probable  than  the  evidence  in  support  of  it. 

With  all  his  fanaticism,  Tertullian  is  rational  at  bottom. 
Even  in  such  an  extreme  case  as  the  treatise  on  the  "  Sol- 
dier's Crown,"  he  only  exaggerates  a  rational  principle.  It 
was  written  in  defence  of  the  conduct  of  a  soldier  who  de- 
clined, as  a  Christian,  to  wear  his  decoration  at  a  parade  where 


decorated  soldiers  were  to  attend  for  reward.     He  was  pu 
under  arrest,  and  the  general  feeling  of  Chr.sfans  was  that  U 
"vas  a  mistake  to  compromise  the  securuy  which  had  long 
been  enjoyed  in  Africa  by  insisting  upon  taking  a  strict  v.ew 
of  such  a   trifle.     TertuUian's   argument  is,  that  Christian 
nraclice  was  against  the  wearing  of  such  frivolous  and  idola- 
trous ornaments,  each  epithet  being  justified  separately  and  at 
len<rth  •  and  that,  as  Christian  practice  was  not  only  authori- 
tative (this  is  made  out  by  a  list  of  obligatory  observances  of 
the  second  century,  which  had  no  other  autliority)  but  rea- 
sonable, it  was  unworthy  of  a  Christian  to  conform, even  tem- 
porarily and  under  pressure,  to  a  lower  standard.     It  is  the 
same  thesis  as  that  which  a  modern  writer  has  ideahzed,  in  a 
spirited  ballad  on  the  private  of  the  Buffs  who,  being  taken 
prisoner  in  China,  chose  to  die  rather  than  do  obeisance  in 
Chinese  fashfon.     Of  course  in  Tertullian  the  thesis  is  over- 
laid  with   fantasy.     One  of  the   most   important   arguments 
Why  a  Christian  should  not  wear  a  crown  is,  that  idols  and 
corpses  are  crowned,  and  a  Christian  is  alive  from  the  dead 
and  has  renounced  idols.     But  the  feeling  that  a  man  who  re- 
i  spects  himself  would  not  wear  a  wreath  of  laurel  is  modern  if 
•  not  rational,  and  his  whole  Montanist  writings  are  a  very  in- 
teresting anticipation  of  the  ascetical  and  dogmatic  theories  of 
modern  Ultramontanism.     He  wished  the  "  spiritual    and  the 
"  psvchical "  to  stand  side  by  side  in  the  same  church,  as     re- 
ligious" and  "secular"  stand  now.    The  "religious"  standard 
is" always  a  rebuke  to  the  "secular:"  until  provoked  by  con- 
tradiction, Tertullian  hardly  accentuates  the  rebuke.     Again, 
Tertullian  is  the  only  early  Christian  writer  who  anticipates  the 
modern  feeling  that,  in  a  living  healthy  community,  the  stand- 
ard of  conduct  ought  to  be  constantly  rising,  the  insight  which 
recognizes  it  constantly  growing.     And  this  does  not  interfere 
with  his  theory  of  tradition  ;  to  the  last  he  quotes  precedent 
in  favor  of  his  rigorism.     The  continuity  of  development  is  as 
important  as  the  development  itself:  the  principle  of  monog- 
amy and  his  theory  of  the  Trinity  both  appear  in  his  writings 
before  he  was  involved  in  the  Montanist  controversy ;  but  he 
professes  to  have  received  fresh  light  upon   both  from  the 


278 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


revelations  of  the  Paraclete.     His  attitude  to  contemporary 
ecclesiastical  authority  is  very  like  that  of  the  Jansenists  : 
he  is  loath  to  submit  and  loath  to  separate,  and  anxious  to  sup- 
port the  authorities  so  far  as  he  approves  of  them.     Like  the 
Jansenists,  he  lives  in  an  atmosphere  of  controversy.     There 
are  two  or  three  treatises  on   Prayer,  on  Baptism,  on  Peni- 
tence, a  letter  to  the   Martyrs,  which  may  be  regarded  as 
works  of  simple  edification;  but  he  likes  best  to  refute  and 
rebuke.     The  first  part  of  the  work  addressed  to  his  wife  is  a 
warning  against  marrying  again;  the  second  is  a  warning 
against  marrying  a  heathen.     Perhaps  the  treatise  to  a  friend 
who  had  lost  his  wife  is  less  controversial  in  tone  than  its 
successor.     In  the  first  he  only  recommends  celibacy  to  wid- 
owers ;  in  the  second  he  puts  the  psychical  on  the  same  low 
level  as  the  heretics  — the  one   forbids  marriage,  and  the 
others   accumulate   marriages.     The   earlier   work   is   more 
original.      "In    a   second    marriage   the    same   husband    is 
haunted  by  two  wives,  one  in  the  spirit,  one  in  the  flesh,  for 
you  will  find  it  beyond  your  power  to  hate  the  first;  nay, 
rather  you  nurse  the  pious  side  of  love  for  her,  for  she  is 
taken  home  to  God  already  ;  for  her  spirit  you  entreat,  for  her 
year  by  year  you  pay  your  offerings.     So  you  will  stand  be- 
fore God  with  as  many  wives  as  you  mention  in  your  prayers, 
and  make  your  offering  for  two  by  the  hands  of  a  priesthood 
ordained  in  monogamy,  or  even  consecrated  from  virginity, 
with  a  train  of  maidens  and' wives  of  one  husband;  and  your 
sacrifice  will  go  up  without  a  blush  ?  and  among  your  other 
pious  intentions  you  will  entreat  for  your  wife  and  you  the 
gift  of  chastity?"  '     Then  come  the  pleas  in  favor  of  second 
marriage:  a  man  wants  help;  there  is  the  house  to  manage, 
the  household  to  keep  in  order,  keys  and  coffers  to  be  looked 
after,  spinning  to  be  given  out,  meals  to  be  got  ready,  and 
the  like.     Tertullian  asks,  "  How  do  eunuchs  and  travellers 
and  soldiers  manage  t     A  Christian  is  a  soldier  and  a  stran- 
ger upon  earth.     Besides,  if  he  must  have  a  housekeeper,  let 
him  take  an  elderly  widow  or  two  for  charity.     But  Christians 
hanker  after  posterity,  though  a  Christian  has  no  morrow.     Is 

1  Tert.  "De  Exhort.  Castit."  ii. 


TERTULLIAN. 


279 


a  servant  of  God  to  crave  for  heirs  who  has  chosen  to  have 
ino  heritage  in  this  world  ?     Is  that  a  reason  to  go  back  to 
wedlock  if  he  lack  children  from  the  first  ?     Is  his  first  re- 
ward to  be  a  wish  to  live  longer  in  a  world  whence  apostles 
make  haste  to  the  Lord  ?     Doubtless  he  will  be  readiest  in 
persecution,  most  steadfast  in  martyrdom,  blithest  in  alms- 
giving, most  sober  in  getting,  who  can  die  easy  because  he 
leaves  children  to  offer  heathen  rites  at  his  grave.     Or  must 
we  think  men  do  the  like  out  of  foresight  for  the  common 
good,  lest  cities  be  desolate  if  their  offspring  fail ;  lest  law 
and  right  and  commerce  fall  to  pieces ;  lest  the  temples  be 
left  empty  ;  lest  there  should  be  a  lack  of  voices  to  shout 
'The  Christians  to  the  lions!'     Those  who  seek  sons  must 
love  the  sound."  '     Then  he  explains  how  troublesome  chil- 
dren are,  especially  to  Christian  parents,  and  how  necessary 
laws  were  to  make  wise  men  burden  themselves  with  a  family. 
In  fact,  Tertullian  is  a  thorough  pessimist,  impatient  for  the 
end  of  the  world  ;  he  cannot,  writing  as  a  Christian  to  Chris- 
tians on  Prayer,  understand  how  any  one  can  pray  that  the 
world  may  last,  though  when  he  writes  to  heathens  he  is  care- 
ful to  explain  that  Christians  pray,  in  a  sense,  for  the  preser- 
vation of  the  emperors  and  the  empire  because  this  delays 
the  death-agony  of  the  world.     He  does  not  realize  how  much 
ill-will  the  Christians  inevitably  incurred  by  their  eschatology. 
A  community  which  looked  to  triumph  in  the  destruction  of 
all  mankind  beside  could  not  but  be  unpopular,  and  Tertul- 
lian has   no  expectation  of  the  conversion  of  the  empire. 
Otherwise,  his  criticism  of  persecution  is  much  more  telling 
than  his  criticism  of  paganism.     Like  almost  all  apologists, 
he  goes  over  the  weary  round  of  the  immoralities  of  Olympus 
and  the  absurdity  of  worshipping  the  dead,  for  of  course  he 
finds  Euhemerus  absolutely  convincing,  and  is   at  pains  to 
collect  the  testimony  of  historians  who  had  adopted  his  doc- 
trine, so  far  as  the  birth  of  the  gods  was  concerned.     He  an- 
ticipates St.  Augustine  in  a  special  attack  on  the  religion  of 
the  nursery,^  which  they  knew  from  Varro,  where  everything 
that  went  on  was  under  the  patronage  of  a  special  deity. 
1  Tert.  "  De  Exhort.  Castit."  12.  •  ""  "  Ad  Nat."  ii.  14- 


28o 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


AVhen  a  child  began  to  crawl,  there  was  a  goddess  to  protect 
it ;  there  was  another  to  protect  it  when  it  went  up  to  any  one, 
and  yet  another  to  guard  it  when  it  went  away  ;  another  to 
bring  it  home — to  say  nothing  of  all  the  long  list  of  the  gods 
and  goddesses  of  the  bridal  night. 

But  he  hits  harder  when  he  explains  how  unreasonable  it 
was  to  extort  confessions  of  all  other  crimes  by  torture,  while 
torture  was  applied  to  induce  those  acxrused  of  the  imaginary 
crime  of  Christianity  to  retract  their  confessions.'  Again,  he 
is  very  effective  in  pressing  that  the  charges  of  cannibalism 
and  incest  should  either  be  proved  or  withdrawn  :  they  were 
not  true  of  the  Christians  ;  they  were  probably  true  of  some 
of  the  Gnostics,  who,  when  taxed  with  being  Christians,  were 
ready  to  disavow  the  charge  ;  and  this  accounts  for  the  persist- 
ence of  a  charge  that  could  not  be  made  good.  A  completer 
victory  is  the  appeal  to  the  moral  change  which  followed  con- 
version. "  You  are  wont  to  say  to  us, '  Lucius  Titius  is  a  good 
man,  only  he's  a  Christian ;'  and  another,  *  For  my  part,  I 
wonder  at  a  respectable  man  like  Gains  Seius  turning  Chris- 
tian.' Fools  and  blind,  they  praise  that  they  know,  they  mock 
at  that  they  know  not,  and  that  they  know  not  pollutes  that 
they  know.  None  has  wit  to  guess:  'Haply  one  may  be  good 
and  prudent  just  by  being  a  Christian,  or  a  Christian  just  by 
being  prudent  and  good,'  though  it  is  more  equitable  to  let 
what  is  clear  decide  what  is  hidden,  than  to  let  what  is  hidden 
decide  what  is  clear.  They  know  some  who  before  they  bore 
this  name  were  rogues  and  vagabonds  of  no  account;  sud- 
denly they  wonder  at  their  reformation,  yet  they  wonder  rather 
than  profit.  Others  are  so  stiff  against  us  as  to  fight  against 
their  own  advantage,  which  they  might  take  by  intercourse 
with  people  of  that  name.  I  know  more  than  one  husband 
anxious  heretofore  about  his  wife's  character,  and  groaning 
jealously  at  the  sound  of  a  mouse  creeping  into  her  bower, 
who,  when  he  knew  the  cause  of  her  new  diligence,  of  her  un- 
wonted tameness,  presently  became  most  accommodating  to 
his  wife,  and  forswore  his  jealousy  :  forsooth,  he  had  rather  be 
the  husband  of  a  drab  than  of  a  Christian ;  he  had  a  right  to 

>  "Ap."2;  "Ad  Nat.'Mi.  14. 


TERTULLIAN. 


281 


chanc^e  his  nature  for  the  worse,  his  wife  had  none  to  mend 
fo't^Te  better.    A  father  has  disinherited  his  son  when  he  had 
Z  more  reason  to  complain  of  him  ,  a  master  has  sent  a  slave 
orr^se  indispensable  to  the   dungeon.     Whoever  finds  a 
C  dstian  would  rather  find  a  criminal.     For  the  training  is 
sue  to  betray  itself;  our  good  comes  to  light  against  us.     If 
here  is  a  halo  of  evil  round  the  evil,  why,  against  the  common 
eachin^^  of  nature,  should  goodness  brand  us,  and  us  on  y, 
V  orst  of  all?   For  what  marks  do  we  bear  upon  us  but,  firstly, 
wLom  whereby  we  give  no  worship  to  men's  trumpery  handi- 
rkT  l^^^^  abstinenc^e,  whereby  we  keep  our  hands  from  other 
men's  goods ;  modesty,  which  we  will  not  po  lute  by  a  look ; 
pi  ;,  wlich  inclines  us  to  the  needy;  ay,  and  truth,  whereby 
we  give  offence  ;  ay,  and  freedom,  for  which  we  have  learned 

^''The  most  philosophical  of  the  apologetical  writings  is  the 
I*  Testimony  of  the  Soul,"  which  treats  Christianity  practically 
as  a  republication  of  the  two  cardinal  articles  of  the  -  Natural 
Reli-ion  "  of  the  eighteenth  century,  monotheism,  and  a  future 
state" of  rewards  and  punishments  ;  and  when  we  once  admit 
this  point  of  view,  the  argument  from  the  tacit  consent  of  the 
old  world  is  very  well  put.    It  is  characteristic  that  Tertullian 
repudiates  the  parade  of  poets  and  philosophers  in  which  so 
many  fathers  indulge.     He  says  he  wants  the  soul,  not  as  she 
is  found  in  schools,  drilled  in  libraries  to  pour  out  wisdom 
won  in  the  Academy  and  the  Porch  at  Athens.     He  appeals 
to  her,' simple  and  rude  and  unpolished  and  unprofessional, 
such  as  they  have  who  have  her  and  no  more— j^st  the  soul, 
with  nothing  in  her  beyond  the  cross-ways  and  the  finger-posts 
and  the  loom.     He  wants  her  ignorance,  since  the  little  she 
knows  can  find  no  credit.     He  wants  her  testimony  to  what 
she  brings  with  her  into  man,  what  she  has  learned  inwardly 
either  from  herself  or  from  her  maker,  be  he  who  he  may. 
The  main  argument  of  the  treatise  is  to  be  found  in  Minucius 
Felix,  who  is  generally  accepted  as  a  predecessor  of  Tertullian. 
Tertullian  has  added  immensely  to  its  force  by  isolating  it : 
the  vulgar,  popular  opinion  embodied  in  current  language  i« 

1  "  Ad  "Nat."  i.  4. 


is 


282 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


certainly  a  vague  approximation  to  Christian  doctrine.  The 
weakest  point  is  the  attempt  to  deduce  the  natural  pity  for  the 
dead  from  fear  of  an  anticipated  judgment,  though,  as  Tertul- 
lian  and  his  readers  both  agree  in  thinking  that  the  evils  of 
life  outweigh  the  good,  the  obvious  meaning  of  this  pity  is 
obscured. 

The  treatise  on  the  Soul  itself  belongs  to  one  of  the  most 
tantalizing  classes  of  literature  :  the  author  argues,  with  the 
utmost  force,  vigor,  and  acuteness,  in  support  of  a  thesis  which 
has  no  permanent  interest  and  value.  He  wishes  to  prove 
that  the  soul  is  material  and  separable  from  the  body,  in  large 
measure  because  he  wishes  that  even  before  the  resurrection 
it  should  be  capable  of  physical  pain.  His  analysis  of  the 
theory  that  a  purely  immaterial  soul,  the  soul  of  the  "  Phaedo  " 
and  other  Platonic  dialogues,  which  has  everything  to  gain  and 
nothing  to  lose  by  its  severance  from  the  body,  can  have  any 
real  perception  of  material  things,  is  very  masterly.^  Equal- 
ly good  is  the  discussion  of  Marcion's  theory  of  a  supreme 
goodness  which  delivers  the  creatures  of  an  inferior  creator 
from  his  harsh  bondage.  He  shows  clearly  that  the  creator 
must  always  have  rights  over  his  creatures,  especially  as 
Marcion,  as  a  rule,  considers  the  creator  to  be  just.  He  shows 
what  an  unsatisfactory  object  of  worship  Marcion  has  to  offer 
in  the  irresponsible,  unqualified  benevolence  which  does  noth- 
ing for  men  in  this  life,  and  only  admits  them  capriciously  to 
eternal  life  on  condition  of  a  mystical  intuition  not  within 
reach  of  all.''  The  discussion  on  the  Old  and  New  Testament, 
which  takes  up  the  greater  part  of  the  treatise,  is  effective,  but 
very  tedious  for  readers  who  assume  the  continuity  of  Script- 
ure. The  same  may  be  said  of  the  elaborate  treatise  aganist 
the  Valentinians,  though  there  is  grim  humor  in  the  compari- 
son of  the  upper  world  of  Valentinus  to  a  Roman  lodging- 
house,  with  the  difference  that  the  most  dignified  lodgers 
were  highest  up.^  And  the  personalities  are  the  best  part  of 
the  pamphlet  against  Hermogenes,  a  painter,  who  gained 
some  temporary  notoriety  by  deducing  the  eternity  of  the 
world,  or  at  any  rate  of  matter,  from  the  scriptural  epithets 
*  "  De  Anima,"  i8.     ^  ''  Adv.  Marc."  i.  9  ^qq.      '  "  Adv.  Valentinianos,"  7. 


TERTULLIAN. 


283 


which  represent  God  as  the  Lord.  The  wittiest  of  TertuUian's 
works  against  the  Gnostics  is  that  in  which  he  treats  them  as 
scorpion^  to  be  crushed  for  their  poisonous  insinuations  that 
it  was  lawful  to  avoid  persecution  by  denying  the  faith.  The 
close  deals  with  the  ingenious  hypothesis  that  the  "  men  "  be- 
fore whom  Christ  is  to  be  confessed  are  the  true  men  of 
Gnostic  mythology,  since  the  earthly  men  before  whom  he 
may  be  denied  are  '*  worms,  and  no  men."  If  so,  asks  Tertul- 
iian,  will  the  consequences  of  confession  be  the  same  ?  Will 
the  Christians  who  confess  be  racked  upon  the  axis  of  the 
heavens,  and  be  thrown  to  the  beasts  of  the  zodiac  ?  If  so,  is 
it  not  better  to  confess  on  earth,  if  only  for  practice?' 

The  weightiest  of  his  works  against  the  Gnostics  is  the 
well-known  "  De  Praescriptione  Hereticorum,"  which  involves 
a  technicality  borrowed  from  his  old  profession  as  an  advo- 
cate.    The  argument  is  that  the  orthodox  have  a  prescriptive 
right  to  debar  heretics  from  establishing  their  novel  doctrines 
iby  mystical  interpretations  of  Scripture.     Except  in  form  the 
argument  is  taken  from  St.  Irenaius,who  proves  quite  as  forci- 
bly that  theories  which  formed  no  part  of  the  common  tradi- 
tion of  apostolical  churches  could  not  belong  to  apostolical 
Christianity.     But  his  argument,  like  that  of  Minucius  Felix, 
becomes  more  brilliant  and  pointed  in  the  hands  of  Tertullian, 
who  was  not  ashamed  to  show  the  fear  he  felt  of  indiscrimi- 
nate appeals  to  Scripture.    The  orthodox  believed,  very  largely, 
because  they  had  been  taught  to  find  the  whole  of  their  belief 
in  every  part  of  the  Old  Testament  by  a  process  which  did 
not  differ  materially  from  that  by  which  the  Gnostics  found 
the  whole  of  their  belief  in  every  part  of  the  New  Testament 
where  they  chose  to  look  for  it.     Accordingly  Tertullian  sug- 
gests that  those  who  must  study,  and  cannot  rest  content  with 
bare  tradition,  should  go  from  one   apostolic  church  to  an- 
other in  order  to  confirm  their  faith,  instead  of  imperilling  it 
by  solitary  study  of  the  Scriptures.    He  ceased  to  fear  this  as 
a  Montanist,  for  the  "  Revelations  of  the  Paraclete  "  at  once 
supplied  a  rule  of  interpretation  and  a  supplement. 

Though  austere  and  passionate,  Tertullian  is  not  rigid.     It 

»  *•  Cont.  Gnost.  Scoip."  10. 


i 


284 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK, 


is  a  very  instructive  measure  of  his  versatility  to  turn  from 
the  fiery  tract  upon  the  Spectacles,  where,  with  his  usual  orig- 
inality (no  Christian  writer  before  or  after  said  the  like),  he 
gloats  over  the  prospect  of  the  torments  of  the  heathen — a 
much  finer  spectacle  than  any  which  the  torments  of  Christians 
have  furnished  on  earth — or  from  the  shrewd,  strict  logic  of 
the  tract  against  flight  in  persecution,  where  believers  are 
warned  very  sensibly  of  the  folly  of  paying  hush-money,  to  the 
daring,  adroit  good-nature  of  the  memorial  to  Scapula,  a  new 
governor  of  Africa,  who  had,  on  entering  the  province,  to  de- 
termine, among  other  things,  how  he  would  treat  the  Chris- 
tians. The  laws  under  which  Christians  could  be  persecuted 
left  the  judge  a  large  discretion,  as  he  had  to  decide  whether 
the  prosecution  in  each  case  was  bo?m  Jide,  just  as  in  the 
parallel  case  of  the  laws  of  high-treason.  Accordingly,  with- 
out attempting  to  convert  Scapula,  Tertullian  argues  the  mat- 
ter on  general  grounds  of  toleration.  The  Christians  were  too 
numerous  to  be  extirpated ;  no  man  ought  to  be  molested  for 
conscientious  convictions ;  the  gods  ought  to  be  left  by  their 
worshippers  to  punish  blasphemy  for  themselves.  The  Chris- 
tians were  loyal  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  had  not  been  impli- 
cated, either  as  a  class  or  as  individuals,  in  the  wars  of  suc- 
cession which  followed  the  death  of  Commodus.  As  to  the 
charge  that  they  brought  bad  luck  upon  the  empire  (which 
probably  had  more  to  do  with  persecution  than  anything  else), 
Tertullian  replies  that  their  supplications  had  often  been 
effectual  in  time  of  drought  and  pestilence,  and  he  does  not 
omit  to  remind  Scapula  of  all  the  instances  which  the  Chris- 
tians had  collected  already  of  persecution  bringing  ill-luck  to 
the  persecutors,  some  of  whom  were  brought  by  suffering  to 
the  verge  of  belief.  It  is  noticeable  how  boldly  in  his  writings 
to  the  heathen  Tertullian  appeals  to  the  most  questionable 
facts,  such  as  the  imaginary  edict  of  toleration  of  the  elder 
Antoninus,  the  worship  of  Simon  Magus  at  Rome,  and  the 
proposal  of  Tiberius  to  establish  the  worship  of  Christ  as  a 
deified  hero.  Apparently  he  believed  them  and  expected  to 
be  believed,  and  it  cannot  be  said  that  his  writings  were  only 
nominally  intended  for  the  heathen,  since  he  certainly  writes, 


M 


TERTULLIAN. 


285 


upon  the  whole,  more  clearly  and  carefully  in  the  books  meant 
for  a  wider  audience  than  the  Christian  community  supplied. 
He  even  attempted  the  flowery  style  of  Apuleius  in  more 
than  one  prelude  :  for  instance,  in  the  preface  to  the  "  Pal- 
lium," where  the  system  of  couplets  is  pursued  for  five  or  six 
lines.  It  is  true  that  there  is  as  much  display  in  the  treatise 
on  Chastity.  But  this  w^as  a  manifesto  in  reply  to  a  very  im- 
|)ortant  decision  of  the  Roman  see,  which  involved  a  real 
change  in  ecclesiastical  discipline.  Tertullian  goes  carefully 
through  the  arguments  of  the  party  of  lenity,  but  he  nowhere 
^lentions  that  they  claimed  to  be  continuing  the  ancient  dis- 
dpline.  The  ancient  discipline  restored  penitents  to  com- 
munion after  venial  sins,  such  as  drunkenness,  fits  of  passion, 
lying  out  of  civility  or  cowardice,  unintentional  blasphemy,  or 
teven  denial  of  the  faith  when  pressed  by  a  zealous  and  trou- 
blesome pagan.  St.  Callistus  had  made  a  great  step  ;  he  had 
decided  to  admit  Christians  to  communion  even  after  fornica- 
tion and  adultery,  and  Tertullian's  strongest  argument  is  that 
he  might  as  well  go  further  and  proclaim  that  Christians 
might  be  absolved  though  they  fell  into  murder  or  idolatry, 
especially  as  a  Christian  who  fell  into  idolatry  never  fell  will- 
ingly— he  was  a  confessor  who  had  broken  down. 

The  reply  was,  after  all,  ineffective :  even  the  Montanist 
prophets  and  prophetesses  felt  that  the  Church  had  power  to 
absolve.  The  question  really  was  one  of  expediency,  whether 
lenity  was  more  likely  than  severity  to  reform  offenders  ;  for 
it  was  admitted  on  both  hands  that  no  penitent  offender  was 
cut  off  from  hope  of  salvation,  and  therefore  it  could  not  be 
denied  that  it  lay  in  the  discretion  of  the  Church  to  give  or 
withhold  Church  privileges ;  and  Tertullian  is  reduced  to 
argue  that  the  stricter  discipline  is  really  the  kinder;  that  it 
is  better  for  such  sinners  to  blush  before  the  Church  than  to 
communicate  with  her  ;  that  her  intercession  helps  them  more 
than  her  absolution  ;  and  here,  as  often,  Tertullian  becomes 
more  tender  as  he  becomes  more  austere.  Perhaps  the  two 
qualities  are  most  closely  united  in  the  two  treatises  on 
Women's  Dress.  He  alternately  taunts  them  with  the  trans- 
gression of  Eve  and  with  thc'want  of  rational  occasions  to  dis- 


286 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


TERTULLIAN, 


287 


play  the  finery  that  they  continued  to  cherish,  and  caresses 
them  as  his  dear  sisters  and  fellow-servants,  apologizing  for 
his  presumption  in  advising  them  ;  and  there  are  all  sorts  of 
pathetic  hints  about  the  possibilities  of  persecution.  How 
will  the  feet  that  are  used  to  bangles  bear  the  stocks,  or  wrists 
that  are  used  to  the  play  of  bracelets  bear  the  numbing  press- 
ure of  manacles? 

Here,  too,  one  doubts  whether  the  different  transcendental 
grounds  of  penitence,  humility,  and  austerity,  which  Tertullian 
argues  upon,  express  his  fundamental  feeling.  His  chief  care 
seems  to  be  for  entire  modesty,  the  absence  of  display  as  a 
matter  of  human  dignity  j  his  dislike  to  ornament  of  all  kinds 
as  a  means  of  attracting  attention  is  at  most  an  exaggerated 
anticipation  of  the  modern  demand  for  simplicity,  as  indis- 
pensable to  a  gentleman  and  very  desirable  for  a  lady.  In 
the  same  way  he  insists  in  one  of  his  most  mystical  works,  on 
the  Veiling  of  Virgins,  that  every  virgin— at  least  every  con- 
secrated virgin— ought  to  wear  a  veil,  like  a  matron,  for  many 
reasons  of  sentiment  and  Scripture  ;  but,  after  all,  we  do  not 
get  far  beyond  the  starting-point,  that  it  is  unseemly  for  elder- 
jy  women  to  make  it  a  religious  privilege  to  dress  like  young 
girls,  and  that,  if  it  was  part  of  the  tradition  of  the  Church  for 
the  younger  virgins  to  go  unveiled,  it  was  clear  the  tradition 
was  not  binding  beyond  repeal,  since  it  was  now  proposed  to 
make  a  universal  rule  of  the  practice  of  the  young.  Prin- 
ciple, according  to  Tertullian,  is  a  better  rule  than  custom,  and 
the  authority  of  the  Paraclete  ought  to  enforce  or  to  override 
the  general  judgment  of  the  present  Church.  His  devotion  to 
progress  and  principle  is  remarkable  in  a  writer  whose  sym- 
pathies are  so  narrow  ;  and  here,  too,  we  are  reminded  of  Sen- 
eca, only  Seneca  looks  to  progress  throughout  the  world, 
whereas  Tertullian  looks  to  progress  within  the  limits  of  the 
Church.  Even  this  distinction  is  more  apparent  than  real,  for 
both  the  philosopher  and  the  theologian  practically  divide  the 
world  and  the  Church  between  the  spiritual  and  the  natural, 
and  are  not  concerned  with  the  transition  from  one  to  the 

other. 

There  is  one  other  characteristic  of  Tertullian  which  calls 


for  notice.  He  is  not  only  a  very  bitter  but  a  very  fair  con- 
troversialist; he  always  states  the  case  of  opponents  as  forci- 
bly as  he  can,  and  he  feels  it  strongly  enough  to  state  it  forci- 
bly ;  and  his  perception  gives  a  constant  air  of  paradox  to  his 
style.  He  states  his  view  that  martyrdom  is  victory  all  the 
more  strongly  because  he  has  to  admit  that  Christians,  like 
other  men,  naturally  prefer  to  be  left  in  peace.  He  is  not  in- 
sensible to  the  taunts  which  branded  Christian  endurance  as 
barren  obstinacy,  so  he  rolls  up  a  long  list  of  triumphs  of 
pagan  endurance  to  prove  that  pagans  are  as  obstinate  as 
Christians.  But  it  was  the  conflict  with  Gnosticism  which 
brought  out  Tertullian's  turn  for  paradox  most  strongly:  the 
pagans  criticised  Christianity  on  points  where  Tertullian  felt 
that  Christian  life  was  strong,  the  Gnostics  criticised  ortho- 
doxy on  points  where  he  felt  that  human  reason  was  weak; 
he  could  defend  the  general  Resurrection  more  easily  against 
unbelievers  than  he  could  defend  the  Incarnation  and  the  Pas- 
sion against  heretics.  It  is  this  subject  which  extorts  the  orig- 
inal of  the  often-quoted  phrase  Credo  quia  impossihik  est,  which 
Tertullian  never  wrote.  The  original  is  startling  enough:^ 
"  Whatever  is  unworthy  of  God  is  profitable  to  me.  I  am  safe 
if  I  am  not  abashed  for  my  Lord.  He  saith.  Who  shall  be 
abashed  for  me  I  also  will  be  abashed  for  him.  Nowhere  else 
do  I  find  whereat  to  be  abashed:  somewhat  to  approve  me 
one  above  blushing  with  goodly  shamelessness  and  happy 
folly.  The  Son  of  God  was  born  of  woman  ;  it  shames  me  not 
because  it  is  shameful.  The  Son  of  God  died  ;  it  is  right  cred- 
ible because  it  is  silly— and  being  buried  rose  again — certain 
because  impossible."  But  the  triumph  over  reason  is  still 
incomplete.  In  his  controversy  with  Praxeas  he  turns  to  the 
I)oint  that  orthodoxy  strains  belief  less  than  heresy."  "  What 
shall  we  say  of  the  doctrine  that  God  Almighty,  the  great,  the 
invisible,  whom  no  man  hath  seen  or  can  see,  he  who  dwelleth 
in  light  unapproachable,  he  who  dwelleth  not  in  temples  made 
with  hands  ;  before  whose  countenance  the  earth  trembles  and 
is  moved,  and  the  mountains  melt  like  wax ;  who  taketh  up  the 
whole  world  in  his  hand  like  a  nest;  whose  throne  is  heaven 
'  "  De  Caine  Christi,"  5-  .  "  "  Adv.  Prax."  16. 


288 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


and  earth  his  footstool ;  in  whom  is  all  place  and  he  be- 
yond ;  who  is  the  uttermost  bound  of  the  universe— that  he, 
the  Most  High,  walked  in  Paradise  at  eventide,  seeking  for 
Adam ;  and  shut  the  ark  when  Noah  was  gone  in,  and  rested 
under  the  oak  with  Abraham,  and  called  out  of  the  bush  to 
Moses,  and  was  seen  the  fourth  in  the  furnace  of  the  King  of 
Babylon,  though  he  is  called  the  Son  of  Man  —  except  this 
was' all  in  an  image  and  a  mirror  and  a  mystery?  Surely 
that  even  of  the  Son  of  God  these  things  should  not  be  be- 
lieved except  they  were  written,  and  perchance  not  believed 
though  written  of  the  Father,  whom  they  [the  school  of 
Praxeas]  bring  down  into  the  womb  of  Mary,  and  shut  up 
again  in  the  monument  of  Joseph." 


ST.  CYPRIAN, 


289 


CHAPTER  HI. 
ST,  CYPRIAN. 

St.  Cyprian's  literary  activity  was  limited  to  about  a  dozen 
years.  He  suffered  martyrdom  in  258,  and  his  earliest  w^ork 
is  dated  a.d.  246.  He  is  a  clear  and  forcible  writer,  but  not 
as  original  as  Tertullian,  to  whom  he  is  much  indebted.  It 
is  an  old  legend  that  his  habitual  way  of  asking  for  his  copy 
of  Tertullian  was,  Cedo  magistnim — "  The  master,  please."  He 
follows  all  TertuUian's  ideas — his  pessimism,  his  austerity,  his 
horror  of  heresy,  his  enthusiasm  for  death;  he  adds  nothing 
of  his  own  except  sanity  and  moderation  and  consistency. 
Even  in  consistency  the  author  is  scarcely  perfect.  We  are 
told  when  the  writer  is  advocating  the  works  of  mercy,  that  the 
alms-deeds  of  Dorcas  earned  her  recall  to  life ;  when  he  is 
consoling  the  Christians  who  were  not  exempt  from  the 
chronic  pestilence  which  raged  for  many  years  in  Africa,'  he 
itisists  that  death  is  a  good  to  the  true  believer,  and  waxes 
sarcastic  at  the  fact  that  believers  shrank  from  death.  It 
seems  there  was  a  bishop  dying  of  the  plague,  and  he  prayed 
for  time  to  prepare  himself,  and  in  his  sleep  had  a  vision  of  a 
glorious  and  terrible  young  man,  who  stood  over  him  and  said, 
"If  you  fear  to  suffer  and  are  not  willing  to  depart,  what  is  it 
I  shall  do  for  you  ?"  As  the  bishop  died  soon  after,  St. 
Cyprian  feels  that  the  rebuke  was  intended  for  survivors.  It 
is  characteristic  of  the  difference  between  him  and  Tertullian, 
that  while  Tertullian  thinks  it  a  disgrace,  or  something  like  it, 
for  a  Christian  to  die  by  a  slow,  easy  fever,  St.  Cyprian  re- 
bukes the  impatience  of  those  who  would  rebel  against  a  foul 
and  horrible  pestilence,  because  it  interfered  with  the  chance 

*  Because  sewers  had  not  kept  pace  with  amphitheatres  or  even  aque- 
ducts ? 

11.-13 


290 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


ST.  CYPRIAN, 


291 


of  martyrdom.  In  the  writer's  view  there  was  no  reason  to 
be  shocked  at  these  horrors,  since  the  world  was  irretrievably 
bad.  There  is  much  less  parade  of  loyalty  than  in  Tertul- 
lian,  who  lived  nearer  the  days  when  the  empire  had  unmis- 
takably deserved  it,  and  might  still  expect  that  the  empire 
would  come  to  deserve  it  again. 

The  contrast  goes  deeper.  St.  Cyprian,  on  his  conversion, 
attained  perfect  inward  peace  and  self-complacency.  He  tells 
us  himself  that  he  had  a  great  many  excesses  to  repent,  and 
this  is  supported  to  some  slight  extent  by  the  tradition  which 
makes  him  a  magician  anxious  to  bewitch  a  consecrated  virgin 
upon  any  terms.^ 

However  this  may  be,  he  had  resolution  enough  to  turn 
over  a  new  leaf  completely  and  at  once.  His  deacon  and 
biographer,  Pontius,  assures  us  that  he  embraced  continence 
even  before  he  was  baptized,  and  on  his  baptism,  in  which  he 
enjoyed  a  sensible  illumination,  edified  and  astonished  the 
faithful  by  a  complete  renunciation  of  his  property,  which  he 
sold  for  the  benefit  of  the  community  he  joined.  It  seems 
that  the  sacrifice  was  less  complete  than  he  intended,  as  the 
purchasers  restored  him  the  usufruct. 

His  conversion  was  the  expression  of  the  pessimism  of  a 
man  who  wishes  for  a  more  regular  life,  and  has  to  change  his 
theory  of  the  universe  to  attain  it.  His  first  work  was  a  letter 
to  one  Donatus,  a  fellow-convert,  to  whom  he  confides  his 
indictment  against  the  world.  He  begins  with  a  philippic 
against  the  growth  of  vulgar  crimes  and  vices ;  then  he  di- 
lates on  the  miseries  and  turpitudes  of  what  passes  for  being 
respectable  and  glorious.  The  advocate  will  sell  his  client, 
and  the  judge  will  sell  his  sentence.  The  official  ruins  him- 
self by  splendid  shows,  and  the  rich  always  know  that  they 
may  be  ruined  by  calumny.  No  one  is  secure  in  any  station, 
and  the  emperor  who  is  most  feared  has  most  to  fear.  Noth- 
ing but  a  belief  in  the  inalienable  favor  of  the  Highest  can 
give  real  peace.  Throughout  the  author  hardly  argues ;  he 
makes  assertions  which  he  leaves  to  be  tested  by  an  appeal 

1  There  is  no  evidence  that  the  legend  of  Cyprian  of  Antioch  either  dis- 
tinguished or  confounded  him  with  Cyprian  of  Carthage. 


n 


to  experience.  He  has  not  the  keen  sense  of  the  objections 
to  his  system  which  we  find  in  Minucius  Felix  and  even  in 
Tertullian.  In  his  reply  to  Demetrius  or  Demetrianus  (we  do 
not  know  whether  he  was  a  proconsul  or  a  pamphleteer)  he 
takes  for  granted  that  the  world  is  going  from  bad  to  worse, 
as  Demetrius  alleges ;  but  he  denies  that  it  is  the  Christians' 
fault.* 

"  You  are  puffed  with  pride,  or  greedy  with  avarice,  or  cruel 
iwith  wrath,  or  wasteful  with  gaming,  or  staggering  with  wine, 
or  envious  with  blue  malice,  or  polluted  by  lust,  or  violent 
with  cruelty,  and  you  marvel  that  God's  anger  grows  into 
punishments  upon  the  race  of  man  when  what  is  matter  for 
punishment  is  growing  day  by  day.  You  complain  that  foes 
arise,  as  though,  if  there  were  no  enemy,  there  were  room  for 
Speace  among  togas  of  our  own  ;  as  though,  even  if  warfare 
and  perils  from  barbarians  without  be  put  down,  there  were 
no  weapons  of  home-bred  assault  raging  more  fiercely  and 
grievously  from  within  by  reason  of  calumnies  and  injuries  of 
powerful  citizens.  You  complain  of  barrenness  and  famine, 
as  if  drought  caused  more  famine  than  greed  ;  as  though  fore- 
stalling the  rise  in  corn  and  the  growth  of  prices  did  not  make 
the  furnace  of  distress  grow  hotter.  You  complain  that  rain 
is  shut  up  in  heaven  when  granaries  are  thus  shut  up  on  earth. 
You  complain  that  earth  bears  less,  as  though  what  she  bears 
were  not  denied  to  those  who  lack.  You  make  a  crime  of 
pestilence  and  plague,  whereas  plague  and  pestilence  serve  to 
reveal  or  increase  the  crimes  of  individuals,  who  neither  show 
mercy  to  the  sick,  nor  refVain  from  letting  rapine  and  avarice 
loose  upon  the  dead,  whose  succession  is  at  the  mercy  of  syco- 
phants. All  such  are  cowards  in  the  obedience  of  piety,  rash 
in  covetousness  of  impiety,  fleeing  from  the  burials  of  men 
^y'"&>  turning  upon  the  spoils  of  men  dead,  to  make  it  plain 
that  haply  the  poor  souls  were  forsaken  in  their  sickness  to 
this  end  that  they  should  not  be  able  to  escape  by  fitting  care, 
for  he  was  minded  that  the  sick  should  perish  who  enters  upon 
the  heritage  of  the  perishing."" 

The  conclusion  of  the  matter  is,  that  St.  Cyprian  warns  his 

«  "  Ad.  Dem."  10. 


292 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


readers:'  "Take  heed,  therefore,  while  time  serves,  to  true 
and  everlasting  salvation  ;  forasmuch  as  the  end  of  the  world 
is  now  at  hand,  turn  your  mind  to  God  in  the  fear  of  God,  and 
take  no  pleasure  in  this  life,  in  that  wanton  and  vain  lordship 
over  the  righteous  and  meek,  since  we  see  in  the  field  that 
tares  and  wild  oats  lord  it  over  well-tilled  and  fertile  wheat. 
Do  not  say  that  evils  befall  because  your  gods  have  no  wor- 
ship from  us  ;  but  know  that  this  is  the  judgment  of  God  upon 
you,  that  since  you  discern  him  not  by  his  benefits,  you  may 
discern  him  by  his  wrath.  Seek  God,  however  late,  since  he 
exhorts  you  long  ago  by  his  prophets,  saying.  Seek  God  and 
your  soul  shall  live.  .  .  . 

*'  What  shall  be  the  glory  of  faith  and  the  doom  of  faithless- 
ness when  the  day  of  judgment  shall  come  ?  What  gladness 
of  believers,  what  sorrow  of  the  faithless,  who  have  refused  to 
believe  this  in  time,  and  are  unable  to  come  back  to  belief! 
For  the  ever-burning  Gehenna  will  consume  its  prey,  and  the 
ravenous  torment  will  feed  upon  the  guilty  with  undying 
flames:  and  there  will  be  no  place  where  the  torments  shall 
have  rest  or  end." 

He  insists  throughout  his  treatise  on  the  Plague  that  the 
visitation  is  not  a  sign  of  wrath  upon  the  Christians,  though 
they  are  not  exempt,  and  that  it  is  a  sign  of  wrath  upon  the 
heathen  ;  and  naturally  the  argument  is  not  free  from  confu- 
sion.    It  may  be  said  that  he  has  not  Tertullian's  energetic 
sense  of  the  worth  of  temporal  order :  he  does  not  think  that 
the  great  obstacle  to  the  conversion  of  the  emperors  is  that 
the  world  could  not  exist  without  the  empire.     His  temper  is 
much  more  cheerful  and  equable  than  his  master's,  and  his 
pessimism  was   much  more    thoroughgoing,  inasmuch  as  he 
lived  in  the  unhappy  age  of  Decius  and  Valerian  instead  of 
the  prosperous  though  stormy  age  of  Severus.     He  even  ex- 
ceeds the  severity  of  his  master  in  dealing  with  the  dress  of 
consecrated  virgins.     Tertullian  insists  on  a  veil  as  a  badge 
of  modesty  appropriate   to   all   grown-up  women,  while   St. 
Cyprian  is  engaged  in  a  crusade  against  all  forms  of  personal 
vanity,  which  not  unfrequently  developed   themselves  more 

»  "Ad.  Dem."2'?. 


ST.  CYPRIAN. 


293 


r 


I 


freely  in  those  who  naturally  were  somewhat  self-absorbed  (it 
is  worth  notice  that  St.  Theresa,  B.  Margaret  Mary  Alacoque, 
and  Catharine  Emmerich  were  all  naturally  dressy),  and  the 
author  is  not  afraid  of  pressing  his  point  by  the  severest 
imputations. 

He  follows  Tertullian  without  exaggeration  in  the  two 
treatises  on  Patience,  and  Zeal  and  Envy,  both  of  which  are 
devoted  to  enforcing  peace  upon  the  members  of  a  commu- 
nity apt  to  be  jealous  and  censorious  in  proportion  to  their 
earnestness  and  to  the  dangers  to  which  they  were  exposed. 
This  tendency  was  not  lessened  by  the  recurring  outbreaks  of 
persecution,  which  were  inspired  now  by  the  fitful  energy  of 
the  government,  now  by  the  irritability  of  the  public,  who, 
when  things  went  wrong,  were  always  in  search  of  victims. 
Of  course,  as  the  old  institutions  continued  to  go  to  pieces, 
an  increasing  number  of  persons,  of  weak  and  uncertain  char- 
acter, sought  the  shelter  of  the  new  faith  ;  and  in  time  of 
trouble  many  of  these  gave  way. 

St.  Cyprian,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  owes  his  place  in 
ecclesiastical  history,  which  is  much  higher  than  his  pltce  in 
ecclesiastical  literature,  to  his  dealing  with  the  Lapsed  and  the 
Baptism  of  Heretics,  which  between  them  fill  the  greater  part 
of  his  occasional  writings.  We  have  an  eloquent  cento  of 
passages  from  the  Bible,  divided  into  three  books,  under  the 
title  of  "  Exhortation  to  Martyrdom,"  written  to  sustain  his 
flock,  from  his  retreat  during  the  Decian  persecution.  But  it 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  very  effective ;  the  weak  made  all 
sorts  of  compromises  ;  some  apostatized  at  the  first  proclama- 
tion, probably  not  thinking  the  comfort  of  their  new  creed 
worth  keeping  at  the  risk  of  torture,  ruin,  and  death  ;  some 
went  to  the  authorities  and  pleaded  their  conscientious  objec- 
tions to  comply  with  the  edict,  after  which  some  money  passed, 
with  the  result  that  they  had  the  credit  in  public  of  having 
denied  the  Lord,  whom  they  had  confessed  in  private.  Some- 
times they  approached  the  altar  and  were  allowed  to  retire 
without  sacrificing;  sometimes  they  took  a  certificate  that 
they  had  sacrificed,  or,  if  more  scrupulous,  a  certificate  of  in- 
demnity— from  one  or  other  the  class  were  named  Libella- 


294 


LA  TIN  LITERATURE, 


ST.  CYPRIAN. 


295 


tics;  others,  again,  complied  with  the  edict,  in  order  to  save 
their  families  and  dependants  from  molestation  ;  some,  whose 
case  St.  Cyprian  thought  best  of  all,  actually  confessed  and 
broke  down  under  torture.  Almost  all  intended  to  reconcile 
themselves  with  the  Church  when  the  persecution  should  be 
over,  and  almost  all  prepared  the  way  for  a  reconciliation  by 
effusive  attentions  to  those  who  had  stood  where  they  had 
fallen.  Then  the  confessors  (who  were  for  the  time  being 
nearly  the  only  official  representatives  of  the  Church  who 
could  be  consulted  without  danger  to  themselves)  gave  the 
penitents  letters  of  peace  ;  then,  when  the  Church  was  free  to 
meet  again,  its  doors  were  besieged  by  a  crowd  of  suppliants 
for  indiscriminate  pardon.  Their  prayers  encountered  no  ob- 
stacle except  from  rigorists  who  wished  to  exclude  them  for 
life  from  Christian  fellowship,  until  St.  Cyprian  gained  a  com- 
plete victory  over  both  rigorism  and  laxity,  and  established 
the  principle  that  each  case  should  be  judged  on  its  merits 
by  the  bishop  and  presbyters,  subject  to  the  assent  of  the  con- 
gregation. The  task  was  difficult,  because  personal  ambi- 
tions, especially  among  the  richer  members  of  the  community, 
availed  themselves  of  the  question  of  principle  on  either  side, 
and  the  confessors  were  by  no  means  always  willing  to  sur- 
render the  prerogative  they  had  been  used  to  exercise.  It  is 
clear  that  a  good  deal  of  diplomacy  was  necessary,  and  some- 
times, perhaps,  penitents  owed  their  restoration  to  their  sub- 
missiveness  at  least  as  much  as  to  their  sorrow.  One  corre- 
spondence is  very  curious.  Celerinus  writes  to  intercede  for  a 
sister,  who  had  compromised  herself  almost  involuntarily,  and 
had  been  already  admitted  to  "peace"  by  an  enterprising 
confessor.  The  upshot  of  it  was  that  the  confessor  finally 
found  himself  a  schismatic,  while  Celerinus  not  only  saw  his 
sister  restored  to  communion,  but  was  himself  promoted  to  the 
rank  of  deacon,  with  the  promise  of  rising  to  be  presbyter. 

On  the  question  of  the  rebaptism  of  heretics,  St.  Cyprian's 
correspondence  is  less  interesting.  He  seems  to  have  carried 
Africa  with  him  without  an  effort,  only  to  come  into  collision 
with  Rome.  Throughout  his  career  he  had  been  in  close 
connection  with  Rome  ;  he  had  supported  Cornelius  against 


t 


M 


Novatian,  who,  according  to  his  own  account,  was  consecrated 
against  his  will  by  the  rigorist  party ;  he  had  needed  and 
found  the  support  of  his  own  clergy  when  the  clergy  of  Rome 
were  inclined  to  censure  him  for  his  retreat  from  persecution  ; 
he  had  written  a  famous  work  on  the  Unity  of  the  Church, 
which  lent  itself  very  naturally  to  interpolation  in  the  inter- 
ests of  the  Papacy.  But  when  St.  Stephen  attempted  to  over- 
rule the  Bishop  of  Carthage,  supported  by  the  Synod  of 
Africa,  he  refused  to  yield  a  hair's-breadth  ;  and  in  that  gen- 
eration it  certainly  seemed  as  if  the  choice  lay  between  prin- 
ciple and  expediency:  nothing  was  said  on  the  Roman  side 
to  balance  the  aphorism,  varied  in  so  many  forms,  that  only 
the  one  Church  which  can  give  salvation  can  give  the  new 

birth. 

The  only  work  of  St.  Cyprian  which  has  been  left  unnoticed 
[is  an  elaborate  argument  from  Scripture  against  the  Jews, 
jwhose  claims  had  something  of  the  effect  in  keeping  waverers 
back  from  Christianity  which  the  claims  of  Constantinople 
have  upon  those  modern  Christians  who  are  or  might  be  in- 
clined to  acknowledge  the  claims  of  Rome. 


296 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


MINOR  WRITERS. 


297 


CHAPTER  IV. 

MINOR    WRITERS. 
JULIUS  SOLINUS. 

The  period  in  which  St.  Cyprian  wrote  was  otherwise  very 
barren  from  ahiiost  every  point  of  view ;  it  was  a  time  of  gen- 
eral public  calamity,  and  in  no  department  of  literature  was 
there  a  single  memorable  work.  The  age  of  the  great  jurists 
was  over.  Ulpianus,  the  last  and  by. no  means  the  greatest, 
was  prcetorian  prefect  to  Alexander  Severus,  as  Papinianus,  a 
greater  than  he,  had  been  prcetorian  prefect  under  Severus  and 
Caracalla,  while  Gains,  whose  Institutes  were  the  foundation 
of  all  that  came  after,  had  not  the  right  of  giving  opinions. 
Of  course,  when  the  first  lawyer  of  the  day  was  praetorian  pre- 
fect, which  practically  meant  being  prime-minister,  there  was 
nothing  for  other  jurists  to  do;  and  in  a  revolutionary  state 
of  things,  when  most  prime-ministers,  like  both  Papinian  and 
Ulpian,  were  liable  to  be  dismissed  from  office  by  a  violent 
death,  obviously  knowledge  of  law  was  not  likely  to  continue 
to  bring  a  man  to  be  prime-minister.  The  elaboration  of 
Roman  law  as  a  science  and  a  fine  art  practically  came  to  a 
standstill  with  the  death  of  Alexander  Severus.  What  re- 
mained to  be  undertaken  when  better  times  made  it  possible 
was  to  reduce  the  whole  to  one  body,  which  could  be  consec- 
utively taught,  and  to  fuse  the  results  of  imperial  legislation 
with  those  of  republican  judges  and  imperialist  text-writers 
into  one  coherent  whole. 

Absolutely  the  only  important  prose  work  of  the  period  of 
Valerian  and  Gallienus  which  has  reached  us,  the  only  work 
which  seems  to  have  attained  any  celebrity,  is  the  work  of 
Julius  Solinus  on  Memorable  Things.  In  the  middle  ages 
this  work  was  very  popular,  and  as  early  as  the  sixth  century 


I 


it  had  received  a  second  title,  "  Polyhistor,"  which,  as  time 
went  on,  came  to  pass  for  the  name  of  the  author.  He  had 
done  nothing  but  excerpt  an  abridgment  of  Pliny's  "Natural 
History,"  which  was  also  used  and  abused  by  Apuleius  and 
Ammianus  Marcellinus.  His  style,  without  being  ridiculous 
or  unintelligible,  is  rather  empty  and  pretentious  ;  but  the  ex- 
cerptor  had  the  advantage  of  being  short  and  readable. 

•  Three  quarters  of  his  work,  which  in  Mommsen's  edition 
contains  231  octavo  pages,  and  consists  of  fifty-six  chapters, 
are  taken  from  Pliny,  whom  he  did  not  always  understand. 
|n  addition  to  Pliny,  he  used  some  good  chronography  of  an 
author  who  was  familiar  with  Verrius  Placcus  and  Varro,  and 
is  plausibly  identified  with  Cornelius  Bocchus,  whom  Pliny 
seems  to  have  used  for  other  purposes  ;  also  a  "  Chorographia 
Pliniana,"  in  which  the  geographical  information  was  method- 
ically digested,  and  the  geography  of  Pomponius  Mela.  The 
excerptor  made  no  use  of  the  chronography  after  the  tenth 
bhapter,  but  he  continued  to  use  Mela  as  far  as  the  206th 
page,  and  the  Chorographia  up  to  the  208th  ;  his  use  of  it  can 
be^raced  by  quotations  from  authors  whom  Pliny  does  not 
name.  The  excerptor  intended  to  arrange  the  whole  of  the 
essential  facts  of  Pliny's  vast  compilation  in  a  topographical 
fi-amework ;  but  here,  too,  he  fails  to  carry  his  programme 
khrou^^h— nothing  is  reproduced  that  lies  between  the  eleventh 
book,\'hich  treats  of  foreign  trees,  and  the  last,  which  treats 


of  gems. 


COM  MODI  AX. 


In  the  poetry  of  the  period  we  find  the  first  sign  of  the  com- 
plete breakdown  of  the  language  ;  Commodianus,  a  Christian 
poet  of  Gaza,  wrote  copiously  in  hexameters  which  are  neither 
grammatically  nor  metrically  correct.  He  is  full  of  expres- 
sions like  nuntia,  neuter  plural  for  "news  ;"  milia,  femmine 
singular  for  "a  thousand."  His  metre  is  more  eccentric 
stilt;  it  would  be  paying  him  a  very  exaggerated  compliment 
to  say  that  he  writes  in  accentual  hexameters.  Often  enough 
he  gives  a  line  where  a  modern  ear  misses  little  or  nothmg, 
like— 

H.  — I.-.* 


298 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Ob  ea  perdoctus  ignaros  instruo  multos. 
Kex  Apolion  erit  cum  ipsis  nomine  dirus. 

But  what  are  we  to  make  of 

Curiositas  docti  invenit  nomen  in  isto; 

or  even 

Inscia  quod  perit  pergens  deos  quaerere  vanos? 

There  are  two  poems  which  have  reached  us  under  his 
name— one  a  series  of  acrostics,  called  "  Instructiones  ;"  the 
second  a  "  Carmen  Apologeticum,"  which  clearly  dates  from 
the  time  when  the  Gothic  invasion  in  which  Decius  perished 
was  impending.  The  author  expects  that  Antichrist  will  pres- 
ently appear,  and  identifies  him  both  with  Nero  and  the  Man 
from  the  East;  and  exhorts  all  mankind  to  repent,  since  the 
end  of  the  world  and  judgment  are  at  hand.  Both  the  metre 
and  the  spirit  rise  higher  in  the  ''Carmen  Apologeticum  " 
than  in  the  ''  Instructiones,"  w^here  the  writer  is  depressed  both 
by  the  cumbrousness  of  his  acrostics  and  also  by  his  position 
as  a  penitent,  which  made  it  his  duty  volutari  sacco,  which  is 
the  beginning  of  an  hexameter.  This  we  learn  from  an  ad- 
dress to  the  penitents,  as  one  of  many  classes  in  the  com- 
munity, to  each  of  whom  one  of  the  acrostics  in  the  second 
part  of  the  "Instructiones"  is  addressed:  the  first  is  ad- 
dressed to  pagans  and  Jews,  and  is  full  of  the  hackneyed  rid- 
icule of  the  mythological  deities. 

It  is  curious  that  he  should  have  lived  before  Terentianus 
Maurus,  a  writer  of  the  age  of  Diocletian,  who  played  in  his 
old  age  with  a  metrical  exposition  of  the  doctrine  of  syllables 
and  metres,  and,  having  read  few  but  recent  poets,  quoted 
them  with  the  greater  satisfaction  because  of  their  metrical 
correctness. 

His  two  heroes  are  Alfius  Avitus,  who  wrote  three  books 
upon  Excellent  Things  and  Persons  in  pure  dimeter  iambics, 
and  Septimius  Serenus,  who  wrote  pretty  little  books  about 
country  life  in  pretty  little  metres. 


NEMESIANUS. 


Time  has  relieved  us  of  the  "Antoninias"  of  the  elder  Gor- 
dian,  which  was  doubtless  yet  more  ponderous  than  the  "  Pu- 


NEMESIANUS. 


299 


nica"  of  Silius.  It  has  spared  another  Vergilian  echo  in  a 
large  fragment  of  M.  Aurelius  Olympius  Nemesianus,  who 
nourished  under  Carinus  and  Numerianus,  the  immediate 
predecessors  of  Diocletian,  and  who  writes  very  much  as  a 
contemporary  of  Statins  or  the  panegyrist  of  Piso  might  have 
written,  except  that  one  can  trace  the  degradation  of  the  lan- 
guage a  little  further.  He  wrote  on  hunting,  fishing,  and  nav- 
igation ;  won  all  the  prizes  for  poetry,  and  had  no  superior 
except  Numerian  himself,  who  wrote  upon  all  his  subjects. 
For  his  own  period  Nemesianus  is  a  good  writer,  flowing  and 
copious,  and  not  lacking  elevation  and  ease.  He  is  less  in- 
genious than  earlier  writers,  and  also  less  intricate.  Nothing 
has  reached  us  but  325  lines  of  the  treatise  on  hunting,  and 
about  a  hundred  of  these  are  introduction.  Fourteen  go  to 
explain  that  he  must  write  poetry,  and  that  upon  an  original 
subject;  for  Gratius  was  probably  forgotten,  and  therefore,  if 
he  wrote  on  hunting,  his  steps  would  be  upon  untrodden 
moss:  the  Aonian  sting  has  set  his  bosom  boiling;  the  lord 
of  Castaly  plies  his  pupil  with  new  cups  from  the  fountain, 
yokes  the  bard,  and  holds  him  in  with  trappings  of  ivy-berries. 
Then  come  thirty  lines  of  mythological  themes,  which  Neme- 
sianus will  not  treat  because  they  have  been  treated  already ; 
they  have  been  treated  by  really  great  poets— a  sign  that  we 
are  in  the  third  century  instead  of  the  first,  for  then  even  a 
Manilius  could  afford  to  be  impatient  of  his  predecessors.  It 
takes  fifteen  lines  to  explain  that  Nemesianus  takes  up  hunt- 
ing as  the  easiest  subject  to  essay  his  powers  :  as  he  puts  it 
himself:'  "It  seems  well  to  let  such  a  care  fan  the  canvas, 
while  the  little  bark,  wont  to  move  close  to  the  shore  and 
skim  safe  bays  with  its  oars,  now  spreads  its  sails  for  the  first 
time  to  the  south  wind,  and  leaves  the  trusty  port,  and  vent- 
ures to  brave  the  storms  of  Hadria."  We  learn,  by  the  way, 
that  hedgehogs  and  ichneumons  and  wild-cats  are  game,  as 
well  as  hares  and  deer,  and  wolves  and  foxes.  And  then, 
when  his  powers  are  mature,  Nemesianus,  like  Statins,  will 
rise  to  the  highest  of  all  themes— the  glory  of  his  patrons,  the 
imperial  brethren  who,  in  peace  and  war,  surpass  the  majesty 

»  Nem.  ♦'  Cyneg."  58  sqq. 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 
300 

of  their  divine  father.     After  twenty  lines  of  invocation  to 
Apollo  and  the  wood-ny.phs  and  Di-a  at  last  ..are  per 

mltted  to  come  to  business,  and  are  '"^rf'? ,  "  «  GeorSs  " 
of  do-s       Henceforward  we  are  remnided  of  the     Geor^.cs 
e  oectaily  perhaps,  in  the  direction  how  to  choose  wh.ch  pup- 
p  es  out  o^^^^  to  be  reared,  by  a  doub  e  test,  that  the 

r;:aviest  .iH  be  the  n.ost  valuable,  and  t'-t 'he  -  >er  >v^ 
<:nve  the  best  if  the  grass  is  fired  round  them.  Alter  a  iittie 
dt  cusfon  o  d  fferen't  breeds,  and  a  good  many  rules  for  keep- 
ht  the  kennels  healthy  and  breaking  the  young  dogs,  we  have 
a  ;oettcal  list  of  the  best  kinds  of  horses,  and  a  very  perfunc- 
tory list  of  the  mechanical  paraphernalia  of  sport. 

H  re  the  fragment  stops.     The  rules  for  the  sportsman  s 
own  behavior  in  the  field,  and  for  his  management  of  h.sdogs 
Tth  the  poet's  observation  on  the  different  hab.ts  of  d.fferen 
Te  ds,  were  to  follow,  with,  no  doubt,  some  1"  ormat.on  abou 
the  haunts  and  ways  of  game  of  various  kinds.     It  s  notice 
able   hTt  mythology  is  banished  after  the  introduction,  while 
G^tius  clings  to  e^'very  fragment  of  tradition.     Nemes.anus  is 
not  to  blame  for  using  dn^otio  in  the  modern  sense  of    devo 
tion  "  instead  of  the  "  classical"  sense  of  "  imprecaMon.       It 
a  g  aver  fault  that  a  reminiscence  of  Vergil  s /.."/«Y^/|^ 
IL:-  orhe  Britannos  makes  him  write  divisa  Bntanma,  which 
has  hardly  a  sense  of  its  own ;  and  emcrit.  /-"^-J-'  ^^ 
amare,  as  an  object  of  aspiration  to  pupp.es,  .s  a  solecism, 
though  it  sounds  like  an  echo  of  Vergil. 

SAMMONICUS. 

\n  earlier  work,  which  has  less  pretensions,  is  perhaps 
more  satisfactory.  Serenus  Sammonicus,  ;^.ho^«/=^"l"J^^ 
put  to  death,  A.D.  212,  by  Caracalla,  was  himself  a  favorite 
^^thor  of  Alexander  Severus.  He  wrote  a  collection  of  med- 
ical receipts  in  hexameters,  which  are  quite  clear   and  free 

om  all  fiults  of  taste,  prosody,  or  syntax.     The  -'tat.on  °f 
the  "Georgics"  is  obvious  here  also,  but  it  does  not  extend 
to  the  poetry.     The  author's  chief  sources  are  Pl.ny  and  Dios- 
coJides.     iis  object  is  to  provide  the  public  .ith  cheap  re^ 
ceipts  which  they  can  apply  for  themselves  without  the  help 


SAMMONICUS. 


301 


of  a  doctor.     Apparently  it  was  intended  to  treat  diseases  in 
order,  with  reference  to  the  part  affected,  beginning  with  the 
head  •  but  this  is  not  carried  through :  we  have  a  prescription 
for  worms  before  prescriptions  for  failures  of  sight  and  hear- 
ino-.     The   writer  is   sceptical  of  the  virtue   of  many  of  his 
receipts.     For  instance,  he  protests  against  many  of  the  por- 
tentous words  which  are  usual  in  fever ;  no  doubt  because  he 
was  of  opinion  that  noisy  incantations  were  likely  to  do  harm, 
for  he  gives  directions  for  making  the  well-known  amulet  of 
Abracadabra,  to  be  worn  as  a  protection  against  the  pecul- 
iarly dangerous  semi-tertian  fever,  for  wearing  gibberish  can 
do  no  harm.     In  the  same  way  he  recommends  emeralds  to 
be  worn  with  coral,  if  any  one  thinks  it  worth  while  to  wear 
coral  as  a  charm.     If  too  feverish  to  sleep,  it  is  not  uncom- 
mon to  paint  a  charm  on  paper,  burn  it,  and  drink  the  ashes 
in  warm   water.     Sammonicus  himself  recommends   a   high 
pillow,  a  decoction  of  cypress,  and,  lastly,  rose-water  with 
poppies  steeped  in  it,  to  be  taken  in  olive-oil.     No  wounded 
sinew  ever  heals  properly,  but  it  is  a  good  thing  to  apply 
pounded  earth-worms.     Pains  in  the  sinews  which  make  them 
smart  till  they  stiffen  are  to  be  treated  with  embrocations — 
almost  any  will  do:  vulture-fat  and  rue,  wax,  hot  sea-water, 
Carian  figs  with  beet  and  honey,  flour  steeped  in  wine  with 
cypress-leaves.     Sudden  stiffening  of  the  limbs,  so  that  they 
cannot  be  straightened,  may  be  cured  by  eating  pigeon's  flesh. 
He  concludes  his  treatise  with  a  description  of  the  famous 
antidote  of  Mithridates,  which  was  found,  according  to  him, 
among  the  papers  of  the  vanquished  monarch  by  Pompeius, 
who  thought  the  antidote  too  cheap  to  be  valuable.     It  con- 
sisted of  twenty  leaves  of  rue,  a  little  salt,  a  couple  of  walnuts, 
a  couple  of  figs— all  steeped  in  a  little  wine,  and  was  probably 
intended  to  stren2:then  the  stomach,  so  that  it  would  throw 
off  poison  without  taking  it  into  the  system.     Of  the  many 
descriptions  of  this   fabulous  remedy,   Sammonicus's  comes 
nearest  to  Pliny's;  but  as  Pliny  mentions  dry  nuts,  and  Sam- 
monicus walnuts,  perhaps  they  copied  from  the  same  source. 
Milk  and  betony,  in  wine,  seem  to  be  the  chief  specifics  to  be 
taken  after  poison :  goat's  milk  is  good  to  be  taken  after  hen- 


302 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


DIONYSIUS  CATO. 


303 


bane.  If  ivy  juice  be  strained  into  a  cup,  any  poison  that 
may  be  poured  into  it  will  be  harmless.  A  decoction  of  ivy 
juice  and  anise-seed  in  wine  is  also  recommended  as  one  of 
several  preparations  which  are  likely  to  heal  wounds  which 
have  turned  to  sloughing  sores.  If  a  wart  bursts  and  bleeds, 
the  bleeding  may  be  stopped  by  the  ashes  of  wool  that  has 
been  dyed  with  shell-purple:  of  course  the  shell-purple  is  the 
real  styptic,  but  Sammonicus  writes  for  those  who  cannot  get 
the  dye  except  by  burning  wool  dyed  with  it. 

DIONYSIUS  CATO. 

Another  work  of  the  same  period,  which  had  an  enormous 
success  in  the  middle  ages,  was  the  four  books  of  moral  aph- 
orisms of  Dionysius  Cato,  who  has  been,  apparently,  exten- 
sively edited  by  Christian  copyists,  who  have  left  out  and 
inserted  as  suited  them.  Still  the  old  foundation  is  visible. 
The  writer  deals  chiefly  in  negative  prudence :  he  wishes  to 
train  his  pupil  to  safe,  cautious  self-possession,  rather  than  to 
any  transcendental  achievement,  intellectual  or  moral.  The 
writer  gives  us  his  measure  in  the  fifty-six  aphorisms  addressed 
to  his  son,  by  way  of  preface  to  the  first  book.  His  son  is  to 
pray  to  God,  pay  his  way,  keep  his  property,  lend  money, 
mind  whom  he  lends  it  to,  sit  at  few  feasts  and  be  silent  there, 
give  courtesans  a  wide  berth,  and  bear  love  cheerfully. 

There  is  little  method  in  the  succession  of  the  distichs. 
Their  structure  is  a  little  curious.  The  two  hexameters  per- 
haps represent  the  elegiacs  of  Greek  gnomic  poets :  the  struct- 
ure of  the  lines  themselves  is  rather  like  that  of  leonine  hex- 
ameters, as  one  or  both  lines  can  be  divided  into  two  clauses, 
which  balance  each  other  more  or  less  exactly.     Here  is  a 

specimen : 

Contra  verbosos  noli  contendere  verbis ; 
Sermo  datur  cunctis,  animi  sapientia  paucis. 

Here  is  another : 

Qui  simulat  verbis,  nee  corde  est  fidus  amicus : 
Tu  quoque  fac  simules,  sic  ars  deluditur  arte — 

which  is  tolerably  unscrupulous  for  a  moral  writer.  The  con- 
ception of  "virtue"  has  almost  entirely  disappeared;  the  only 


\» 


i 


trace  of  the  Stoic  teaching  which  is  still  recognizable  is  that, 
if  the  spirit  of  man  be  a  god  within,  we  ought  to  venerate  it 
accordingly;  the  only  trace  of  the  old  physical  culture  is  the 
recomme^ndation  to  play  with  the  hoop  and  not  with  dice. 
Instead  of  the  old  practice  of  "  lucubration,"  we  have  a  rec- 
ommendation always  to  be  awake  most  of  our  time,  since  long 
repose  supplies  nourishment  to  vices.    Taciturnity  is  the  qual- 
ity upon  which  the  author  insists  oftenest,  except,  perhaps, 
self-knowledge  and  equity,  never  condemning  others  at  the 
risk  of  being  condemned  one's  self.     There  are  few  rules  for 
rretting  money,  many  for  saving  it,  and  still  more  for  reconcil- 
ing ourselves  to  the  loss  of  it.     The  device  for  getting  which 
he"*  seems  to  trust  the  most  is  throwing  a  sprat  to  catch  a 
whale.     On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  bad  thing  to  marry  a  wife 
for  her  dower,  because  she  cannot  be  got  rid  of  if  she  is 
troublesome.    The  old  Roman  misogyny  appears  for  the  most 
part  in  a  mitigated  form.     A  wife  is  not  to  be  trusted  when 
she  complains  of  servants ;  she  only  does  it  because  you  are 
fond  of  them.     But  if  she  is  a  good  manager  she  may  expect 
you  to  put  up  with  her  tongue.     Temperance  is  recommended 
more  than  once  on  the  ground  of  health,  and  once  at  least  in- 
dustry is  recommended  on  the  same  ground  that  indolence 
•wears  away  the  body  when  the  mind  is  unstrung.     The  author 
is  frugal  in  religion :  he  would  have  the  calf  grow  up  to  plough, 
and  propitiate  the  deity  (to  whom  blood  is  an  offence)  with 
frankincense.     Perhaps  the  dislike  to  blood  savors  of  an  ap- 
proximation to  Christianity,  and  this  is  quite  of  a  piece  with 
the  writer's  evident  horror  of  divination  in  all  forms:  he  ob- 
jects to  it  not  merely  because  it  multiplies  anxiety  to  no  good 
purpose,  but  because  of  the  presumption  of  prying  into  the 
ways  of  Heaven.     It  is  part  of  prudence  with  him  to  antici- 
pate the  worst,  as  well  as  to  calculate  the  consequences  of 
actions. 


304 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  V. 

AUGUSTAN  HISTORIES. 

If  we  wish  to  measure  the  whole  extent  of  the  intellectual 
decadence  accomplished  in  the  course  of  the  third  century, 
we  need  only  compare  the  Augustan  history  with  Suetonius, 
and  the  comparison  is  the  more  instructive  because  the  Au- 
gustan history  was  to  a  considerable  extent  an  official  work. 
Napoleon  wished  to  provide  for  an  official  history  of  France 
by  subsidizing  an  official  continuation  of  Velly,  in  order  to 
discourage  writers  who  might  have  taken  a  revolutionary  or 
reactionary  view  of  the  past.  In  the  same  way  Diocletian 
and  Constantine  seem  to  have  thought  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  to  have  an  authorized  continuation  of  Suetonius.  From 
Nerva  to  Heliogabalus  the  work  was  actually  done,  but  from 
the  point  of  view  of  an  emperor  who  respected  himself  and 
his  office  it  was  done  badly.  Marius  Maximus,  a  man  who 
had  been  in  high  office  all  his  life  (his  career  culminated 
under  Alexander  Severus),  had  written  the  lives  of  the  em- 
perors ;  but  he  had  been  immensely  long,  he  had  been  very 
discursive,  he  had  gone  so  far  into  all  legendary  questions, 
whether  genealogical  or  topographical,  that  he  was  classed 
not  with  the  pure  "  historians,"  but  with  "  the  mythical  histo- 
rians." His  abbreviators  are  fond  of  observing  upon  his  ver- 
bosity; and  yet  it  appears  that  he  did  not  aim  at  fine  writing, 
for  he  is  classed  with  Suetonius  among  writers  who  tried  to 
give  facts  simply,  and  contrasted  with  eloquent  writers  like 
Livy,  Quintus  Curtius,  and  Pompeius  Trogus.  What  he  seems 
to  have  aimed  at  was  a  complete  collection  of  all  kinds  of 
details,  credible  or  incredible,  embracing  everything  from- the 
earliest  origin  of  an  emperor's  fomily  to  all  the  measures  of 
his  reign,  all  the  omens  that  foretold  his  empire  and  the  loss 


AUGUSTAN  HISTORIES. 


305 


of  it;  all  his  personal  habits,  all  his  vices,  all  his  friends:  the 
whole  being  copiously  illustrated  by  extracts  from  official  doc- 
uments and  private  correspondence,  and  ornamented  here 
and  there  with  more  or  less  imaginary  speeches,  for  speeches 
addressed  to  the  army  were  not  put  on  record  like  those  of 
the  senate,  where  the  reporters  went  into  so  much  detail  that 
it  was  known  exactly  how  often  the  senate  shouted  in  chorus 
on  a  change  of  emperors. 

But  Marius  Maximus  was  not  merely  lengthy  and  frivolous, 
he  was  also,  from  one  point  of  view,  incomplete:  he  confined 
himself  to  reigning  emperors  who  had  really  governed  the 
Roman  world  with  some  legitimate  title;  he  did  not  give  a 
satisfactory  account  of  the  numerous  pretenders  who  for  a 
shorter  or  longer  time  held  an  army  or  a  province,  nor  of  the 
members  of  reigning  dynasties  who  never  got  beyond  a  more 
or  less  titular  rank.  It  was  a  nice  question  sometimes  whether 
a  pretender  had  ever  assumed  imperial  rank,  or  whether  a 
particular  member  of  a  reigning  house  had  ever  received  the 
title  of  Augustus;  but,  upon  the  whole,  the  safest  rule  was  to 
insert  everybody,  for  the  benefit  of  emperors  who  were  curious 
about  their  predecessors,  and  liked  to  be  able  to  turn  to  the 
appropriate  article  in  a  chronological  series  of  biographies. 
Sometimes  the  compiler  felt  that  there  was  not  room  for  a 
vi'hole  book  about  insignificant  persons  like  the  younger  Max- 
imin,  or  the  two  elder  Gordians;  but  even  when  two  or  more 
emperors  were  put  together  in  a  book,  each  still  had  his  own 
division. 

After  Marius  Maximus,  the  compilers  had  no  satisfactory 
material.  There  was  a  Junius  Cordus,  who  had  the  ambition 
of  continuing  Marius  Maximus;  but  he  was  even  more  frivo- 
lous than  his  predecessor,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  paid  so 
much  attention  to  serious  history ;  besides,  he  did  not  give  a 
complete  account  of  every  emperor,  though  he  had  been  care- 
ful to  pick  out  the  obscure  ones.  He  appears  to  be  the  chief 
authority  for  the  life  of  Albinus,  the  competitor  of  Severus; 
he  is  not  quoted  before;  he  continues  to  be  quoted  down  to 
the  end  of  the  dynasty  of  the  Gordians.  After  this  compilers 
had  to  depend  upon  the  Greqks,  whose  activity  in  compiling 


3o6 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


AUGUSTAN  HISTORIES. 


307 


more  or  less  fabulous  histories  of  recent  events  continued 
through  the  third  century,  quite  unabated  by  the  criticisms  of 
Lucian  and  Herodian.  Hence,  when  a  serious  writer  like 
Flavins  Vopiscus  was  asked  to  undertake  a  life  of  Aurelian 
by  his  friend  Tiberianus,  a  man  of  high  rank,  the  only  re- 
sources Tiberianus  could  place  at  his  disposal  were  official 
documents  and  Greek  books. 

The  work  of  compilation  proved  tedious:  this  is  proved  by 
the  insertion  of  non-official  works  in  what  was  meant  to  be  an 
official  compilation,  and  by  the  length  of  time  which  the  work 
was  upon  hand.  It  only  amounts  to  two  moderate  volumes 
of  the  Teubner  series— at  least  this  is  all  that  is  left  of  it,  and 
there  is  no  evidence  that  there  ever  w^as  much  more:  it  is 
quite  clear,  also,  that  the  different  works  comprised  in  it  were 
composed  at  intervals  through  a  space  variously  estimated  at 
from  twenty-five  to  thirty- two  years.  The  latest  editor,  H. 
Peter,  relying  on  tolerably  satisfactory  internal  evidence,  places 
the  lives  of  Hadrian,  the  elder  ^lius  Verus,  Didius,  Severus, 
and  Niger  by  ^:iius  Spartianus,  the  life  of  the  Pretender 
Avidius  Cassius  by  Vulcacius  Gallicanus,  and  those  of  Anto- 
ninus Pius  and  his  two  adopted  sons  by  Julius  Capitolinus, 
and  that  of  Macrinus,  who  seized  the  empire  on  the  death  of 
Caracalla,  between  a.d.  292  and  305,  marking  Hadrian  and 
Antoninus  Pius  as  doubtful.  Between  303  and  305  Trebellius 
Pollio,  the  most  careless  of  all,  had  written  the  lives  of  the 
Philips,  the  Decii,  the  two  Valerians,  and  the  two  Gallieni, 
and  the  thirty  tyrants  (as  those  officials  were  called  who,  dur- 
ing the  paralysis  of  the  central  government,  held  the  revenues 
of  their  provinces  on  their  own  account  for  a  longer  or  shorter 
period),  and  also  Claudius,  the  first  of  the  Illyrian  emperors 
who  restored  the  empire. 

The  life  of  Aurelian  mentions  that  Constantius  was  em- 
peror, and  what  Diocletian  used  to  say  when  he  was  once 
more  in  private  life.  Soon  after  Vopiscus  wrote  on  Tacitus 
and  Florianus,  the  successors  of  Aurelian,  and  then  on  Pro- 
bus,  whom  he  idealizes  probably  in  honor  of  Constantine,  who 
admired  him  ;  and,  as  he  speaks  of  a  civil  war,  it  is  natural 
to  think  of  that  of  Maxentius  in  a.d.  312. 


i 


After  this  Vopiscus  wrote  on  three  or  four  insignificant  pre- 
tenders under  Carus,  Carinus,  and  Numerius,  and  declined  to 
<ro  further,  because  Claudius  Eusthenius,  the  secretary  of  Di- 
ocletian, had  written  the  lives  of  that  emperor  and  his  three 
colleagues  each  in  a  separate  book ;  and  even  when  an  em- 
peror had  been  deified,  it  was  not  wholly  safe  to  write  about 

him. 

Constantine,  who  had  a  great  admiration  for  the  name  of 
Antoninus,  insisted  that  ^lius  Lampridius,  whom  it  is  hard 
to  distinguish  certainly  from  ^lius  Spartianus,  should  write 
the  life  of  Heliogabalus  as  late  as  a.d.  324,  for  he  speaks  of 
following  up  the  lives  of  Claudius,  Aurelian,  and  Diocletian, 
with  Licinius,  Severus,  Alexander,  and  Maxentius,  "  whose 
power,"  he  tells  Constantine,  *' has  come  into  your  hands." 
Now  Licinius  was  not  finally  overthrown  till  a.d.  323.  The 
defeat  of  Licinius  is  mentioned  also  in  the  thirty-fourth  chap- 
ter of  Julius  Capitolinus  on  the  Gordians,  and  the  works  of 
the  same  author  on  Maximus  and  Balbinus  are  probably  of 
the  same  period. 

Spartianus  was  at  work  at  the  same  time  on  the  two  sons 
of  Severus.  He  had  begun  with  the  intention  of  treating  all 
the  emperors,  great  and  small,  legitimate  or  illegitimate,  from 
the  accession  of  Nerva  to  that  of  Diocletian  at  any  rate;  and, 
as  he  is  much  the  best  of  the  six  writers  whose  remains  are 
huddled  together,  it  is  curious  that  we  have  only  fragments  of 
him  supplemented  by  their  inferior  work,  if  he  ever  carried  out 
his  intention.  One  is  inclined  to  suspect  that  the  continuation 
of  Suetonius  proved  a  more  thankless  task  than  he  anticipated  ; 
he  was  probably  an  official  of  the  imperial  chancery  in  a  sub- 
ordinate position,  who  found  he  was  equally  unlikely  to  be 
rewarded  or  pressed  to  complete  his  work.  The  same  may 
perhaps  be  said  of  Julius  Capitolinus,  who  seems  originally  to 
have  intended  a  complete  work  upon  the  whole  series  of  em- 
perors who  bore  the  title  of  Antoninus,  though  with  respect 
to  the  only  two  who  honored  it,  and  to  Verus,  who,  in  the 
judgment  of  contemporaries,  did  nothing  to  disgrace  it,  he 
was  forestalled  by  Spartianus. 

As  for  Vopiscus,  he  seems  to  have  done  as  much  as  he  in- 


I ' 


VA 


3o8 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


tended,  possibly  because  he  was  his  own  master,  or  at  least 
only  wrote  for  Roman  patrons,  for  the  life  of  Probus  is  dedi- 
cated to  one  Celerinus,  if  we  may  trust  the  conjecture  of  Sal- 
masius,  while  those  of  the  four  pretenders  of  the  reign  of 
Aurelian  are  dedicated  to  Bassus.  In  his  case  it  is  a  little 
puzzling  that,  writing  as  early  as  a.d.  305,  he  should  quote 
from  memory  his  father's  report  of  Diocletian's  conviction, 
expressed  when  he  had  abdicated,  that  an  emperor  might  be 
good,  careful,  most  excellent,  he  was  sure  to  be  sold :  a  cote- 
rie of  four  or  five  would  always  be  able  to  hoodwink  him  by 
acting  in  concert.  Perhaps,  when  the  author  was  enumerating 
the  series  of  emperors  from  Augustus  downwards,  he  stopped 
short  designedly  at  Diocletian  and  Maximian ;  for  a  writer 
under  Constantine  could  not  feel  safe  in  deciding  which  of 
those  who  came  after  were  emperors  and  which  were  "ty- 
rants." 

Whether  we  are  dealing  with  a  collection  or  a  selection,  it 
is  certain  that  it  is  incomplete :  the  life  of  Valerian  is  a  frag- 
ment in  our  MS. ;  the  lives  of  the  Philips  and  the  Decii  have 
disappeared  altogether ;  so  have  the  lives  of  Nerva  and  Tra- 
jan, if  they  were  ever  written;  the  MS.  title  makes  the  work 
extend  "A  Divo  Hadriano  usque  Numerianum."  The  oldest 
MS.  certainly  speaks  of  excerpts  from  the  work  of  Spartianus 
on  the  emperors,  but  then  it  introduces  him  as  writing  on 
Vulcacius  Gallicanus  and  Avidius  Cassius,  so  that  we  are  as 
likely  to  have  the  ignorant  conjecture  of  a  mediaeval  scribe  as 
that  scribe's  ignorant  report  of  an  ancient  tradition. 

Taking  all  the  six,  or  five,  authors  together,  one  is  more 
inclined,  upon  the  whole,  to  be  grateful  to  their  entire  good 
faith  than  to  be  vexed  at  their  clumsiness.  They  have  none 
of  the  partiality  of  Tacitus,  or  even  of  Suetonius.  They  do 
not  quarrel  with  the  emperor  for  being  emperor.  They  have 
no  sympathy  with  the  malicious  reports  of  the  capital.  Fla- 
vius  Vopiscus  is  quite  astonished  at  his  own  independence 
when  he  quotes  Diocletian  against  Aurelian.  He  is  puzzled 
that  there  have  been  so  few  good  emperors  that,  as  a  buffoon 
said  on  the  stage  in  the  time  of  Claudius,  one  ring  on  one  finger 
would  hold  them  all.     He  only  reckons  ten  from  Augustus  to 


AUGUSTAN  HISTORIES. 


309 


Diocletian  and  Maximian,  counting  Aurelian,  and  he  has  a 
simple  explanation  of  why  there  are  so  few.  Valerian  and  the 
Decii  were  excellent,  though  unlucky;  but  in  general  an  em- 
peror can  do  what  he  pleases,  commands  the  world,  has  rogu- 
ish friends,  detestable  hangers-on,  greedy  eunuchs,  stupid  or 
wicked  courtiers.  All  this  is  disputable,  it  seems — no  one  can 
deny  that  the  public  business  is  not  understood.  There  were 
many  who  would  not  set  Aurelian  with  the  good  emperors  or 
the  bad.  He  wanted  clemency,  which  is  the  foremost  endow- 
ment an  emperor  ought  to  have.  For  this  reason  Asclepiodo- 
tus,  whoever  he  was,  left  it  on  record  that  Diocletian  used  often 
to  tell  his  pra2torian  prefect  that  Aurelian  was  fitter  for  a  gen- 
eral than  an  emperor.  The  same  Asclepiodotus  is  quoted  for 
a  saying  of  Diocletian,  vouched  for  by  his  privy- councillor 
Celerinus — to  whom  the  life  of  Probus  was  dedicated  (?) — that 
Aurelian  had  been  guilty  of  consulting  the  Celtic  Druidesses, 
or  "  Dryads,"  as  to  whether  the  empire  would  continue  in  his 
family.  The  author  is  entirely  satisfied  with  the  story  that 
the  Druidesses  foretold  that  no  name  in  the  republic  should 
be  more  glorious  than  that  of  the  descendants  of  his  prede- 
cessor Claudius,  and  adds,  "  There  is  the  Emperor  Constan- 
tius  already,  a  man  of  the  same  blood,  and  I  think  his  de- 
scendants will  come  to  the  glory  foretold  by  the  Druidesses." 
This  would  rather  lead  one  to  believe  that  Vopiscus  was  writ- 
ing under  Constantine,  whose  fine  family  might  seem  to  be 
heirs  of  the  promise.  One  cannot  be  sure  that  he  was  so  ac- 
curate as  to  avoid  saying  "  there  is  the  Emperor  Constantius" 
when  he  was  speaking  of  a  dead  man ;  whereas,  if  he  wrote 
while  Constantine  had  rivals,  he  might  have  refused  to  com- 
mit himself  by  speaking  of  the  Emperor  Constantine. 

One  would  naturally  have  expected  that  the  passage  ana- 
lyzed would  have  formed  the  peroration  of  the  life  of  Aurelian, 
but  instead  we  have  a  long  appendix  on  his  achievements  in 
civil  administration.  He  founded  a  perpetual  revenue  for  the 
city  of  Rome,  secured  upon  Egyptian  glass,  paper,  flax  and 
tow,  and  fancy  cloaks.  He  prepared  to  erect  hot-air  baths 
for  winter  use  in  the  region  beyond  the  Tiber,  because  the 
supply  of  cold  water  was  short. there.     He  began  the  founda- 


3IO 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


AUGUSTAN-  HISTORIES. 


3" 


tion  of  a  market  under  his  own  name  in  the  region  of  Ostia 
by  the  sea,  and  a  set  of  public  offices  has  been  estabHshed 
there  since.     He  gave  his  friends  moderate  fortunes,  so  that 
they  should  escape  both  want  and  envy.    He  had  no  garment 
all  of  silk  in  his  own  wardrobe,  and  would  not  grant  it  to  any. 
When  his  wife  asked  him  for  one  cloak  of  spun  silk  he  refused 
it,  saying  it  was  a  shame  for  threads  to  sell  for  their  weight  in 
gold.     He  was  of  opinion  that  gilding  of  all  kinds  was  vicious, 
and  made  gold  scarce,  though  there  was  more  gold  in  the 
world  than   silver.     The  author  hardly  marks  the  inconsis- 
tency of  the  emperor  in  relaxing  sumptuary  restrictions  on  the 
use  of  gold  and  silver.     We  may  make  out  for  ourselves,  if  we 
please,  that  the  new  uses  of  the  precious  metals  which  he 
sanctioned  did  not  ultimately  interfere  with  their  being  melted 
down  for  their  proper  purpose  as  coin  ;  gold  vessels  and  cups, 
silver  mountings  for  carriages,  were  available;  gilding  on  ceil- 
ings  and  gold  brocades   were   not.     The   same  justification 
hardly  extends  to  his  permission  to  all  matrons  who  could 
afford  it,  to  wear  garments  woven  of  silk  dyed  with  cochineal, 
when  hitherto  they  had  been  confined  to  home-dyed  silk,  and 
blush  color  was  thought  a  great  stretch.     Apparently  it  was  a 
piece  of  real  liberalism,  for  he   economized  in  the  gifts  of 
cloaks  of  honor  to  the  soldiery,  only  granting  garments  with 
from  one  to  five  stripes  of  purple,  while  his  predecessors  had 
granted  more  costly  self-colors.     On  the  other  hand,  the  sol- 
diers were  permitted  to  invest  for  themselves  in  gold  buckles, 
instead  of  being  confined  to  silver. 

He  valued  himself  on  his  measures  for  supplying  the  Roman 
people  with  cheap  food.  He  even  wished,  so  Vopiscus  thinks, 
to  found  a  cheap,  though  not  a  gratuitous,  supply  of  wine.  A 
gratuitous  supply,  his  prefect  told  him,  would  have  involved  a 
gratuitous  supply  of  geese  and  poultry.  Then  we  learn  that 
he  did  not  like  living  in  the  palace,  and  made  a  drive  a 
mile  long  in  the  gardens  of  Sallust,  and  when  he  was  at 
Rome  used  to  tire  himself  and' his  horses,  though  he  had  weak 
health,  which  he  thought  best  remediod  by  going  without 
food. 

He  was  a  hard  master  to  his  slaves,  and  often  sent  them 


for  trial  before  the  public  courts.  Again  the  writer  does 
not  see  the  inconsistency  of  trying  to  revive  the  old  fashion 
of  letting  matrons  try  the  members  of  their  own  order  in 

camera. 

The  author  omits  to  describe  one  of  the  greatest  works  of 
Aurelian — the  fortification  of  Rome.  We  are  only  told  that 
he  enlarged  the  walls  without  enlarging  the  pomerium.  He 
is  excusably  vague  with  reference  to  his  victories  over  the 
Goths,  and  his  abandonment  of  Dacia,  which  is  put  on  the 
t^round  that  its  troops  and  population  were  required  for  the 
provinces  to  the  south  of  the  Danube,  which  had  been  deso- 
lated by  the  Goths. 

Nor  does  Vopiscus  explain  the  personal  history  of  his  hero, 
about  whom  he  evidently  differs  from  his  employer.  He 
records  at  intervals  that,  according  to  some  accounts,  he 
ordered  the  execution  of  his  sister's  son  ;  according  to  others, 
of  his  sister's  daughter  ;  according  to  others,  of  both,  without 
deciding  between  his  authorities  ;  and  when  he  sums  up  the 
reasons  for  his  assassination  he  falls  back  upon  the  story  of 
the  sister's  daughter,  as  if  he  had  never  mentioned  another. 
It  is  equally  characteristic  that  he  weavers  between  the  official 
story  of  the  assassination  being  the  contrivance  of  a  perfid- 
ious secretary,  and  vague  hints  that  Aurelian  was  the  victim 
of  the  unpopularity  which  he  had  accumulated  during  a  harsh 
and  bloody,  though  efficient,  administration.  So,  too,  he  de- 
clines to  tell  us  what  the  revolt  of  the  treasurer  Felicissimus 
was  about,  for  he  must  have  had  some  other  pretext  than  his 
own  defalcations.  He  declines  to  explain,  in  the  life  of  Au- 
relian, the  arrangement  in  the  senate  whereby  Tacitus  was 
chosen  for  his  successor. 

On  the  otber  hand,  he  gives  all  sorts  of  interesting  official 
details  :  the  arrogant  speech  which  Aurelian  made  to  Valerian 
upon  his  first  high  promotion  ;  the  list  of  the  troops,  sufficiently 
miscellaneous,  placed  under  his  command ;  the  provision 
made  from  the  treasury  to  enable  him  to  meet  the  expenses 
of  his  consulship.  TheocliuS  is  quoted  for  his  personal 
prowess  in  the  Sarmatian  war,  where  he  killed  forty-eight  men 
with  his  own  hand  in  a  day,  c'\nd  over  nine  hundred  and  fifty 


m 


I 


312 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


before  all  was  over.  Theoclius,  who  was  a  Greek,  inserted 
the  songs  of  Aurelian's  soldiers  at  his  triumph,  just  as  they 
stood  in  Latin,  in  his  history.  ^ 

Vopiscus  is  very  much  afraid  that  these  details,  especially 
the  letter  of  Valerian  on  the  cost  of  Aurelian's  consulship,  are 
frivolous  •  but  they  are  choice  contributions  to  history.     Per- 
haps the  most  valuable  of  all,  if  we  could  trust  the  substitu- 
tion of  one  emendation  for  another  by  the  most  recent  editor, 
would  be  the  information  that  a  Roman  general  had  "  liege- 
men "  in  the  middle  of  the  third  century— men  bound  by  one 
oath  with  him.^     After  Aurelian  had  received  the  decoration 
due  to  his  achievements,  with  promise  of  promotion  to  the 
consulship,  the  emperor,  it  seems,  gave  a  hint  to  Ulpius  Cn- 
nitus,  a  descendant  of  the  family  of  Trajan,  and  a  rich  man, 
who  was  then  commandant  of  the  Illyrian  frontier,  to  adopt 
Aurelian,  who    had  no  fortune  of  his  own  ;  but  the  official 
record    said    nothing  of  this.     On  the  contrary,  it  recorded 
with  great  pomp  the  satisfaction  Ulpius  had  in  following  the 
illustrious  precedents  of  Nerva,  his  own  great  namesake,  and 
the  elder  Antoninus.     There  is  the  same  love  of  official  pomp 
in  the  account  of  what  followed  Aurelian's  death.     We  have 
at  len<-th  the  official  letter  of  the  army  and  the  official  pane- 
cryric  of  Tacitus.     So,  too,  in  the  account  of  the  atfairs  of  the 
East  we  have  what  purports  to  be  the  letter  of  Aurelian  sum- 
moning Zenobia  to  surrender,  and  the  haughty  answer  dic- 
tated by  Longinus,  which,  as  the  story  is  put  in  Vopiscus,  cost 

him  his  life.  ^    ^ 

One  of  the  points  which  Vopiscus  illustrates  at  greatest 
len-th  is  the  consultation  of  the  Sibylline  books  which  Au- 
relitn  ordered.  He  gives  the  official  report  of  the  speech  of 
the  senator  who  voted  first,  and  the  letter  of  Aurelian,  who 
expressed  himself  scandalized  that  the  senate  should  hesitate 
"as  if  they  were  deliberating  in  a  church  of  the  Christians 

>  The  word  is  ^^  conjimUosr  which  used  to  stand  for  conspirators,  substi- 
tuted for  canterio..  The  question  is  whether  Aurelian  boasts  of  spending 
his  liegeman  or  his  geldings  in  the  public  service  The  passage  is  quoted 
from  the  ninth  book  of  the  "Acts  of  Valerian,"  published  by  Achohus, 
the  *'  master  of  admissions."  or,  as  we  should  say,  lord  chamberlain. 


AUGUSTAN  HISTORIES. 


l^2> 


instead  of  a  temple  of  the  gods."  The  reason  he  is  so  full 
upon  the  point  is,  that  the  Marcomanni  had  invaded  Italy  in 
force  and  fought  a  battle  at  Placentia,  which  was  very  like  a 
Roman  defeat. 

Callicrates,  of  Tyre,  seems  to  be  the  chief  authority  for  the 
early  omens  of  his  greatness.  His  mother  was  a  priestess  of 
the  sun ;  his  father  a  silly,  viewy  man,  whom  his  wife  had  a 
fine  way  of  scolding  whenever  he  was  sillier  than  usual.  She 
used  to  say,  "  What  a  father  for  an  emperor !"  which  after- 
wards passed  for  a  prophecy.  When  Aurelian  was  a  baby 
there  was  always  a  serpent  coiled  round  his  footpan,  and  no- 
body could  kill  it,  and  his  mother  cut  up  the  purple  cloak  an 
emperor  had  offered  in  the  temple  to  make  his  swaddling- 
clothes.  An  eagle  flew  away  with  him  and  carried  him  by 
his  waistband,  and  laid  him  down  safe  on  an  altar  where  there 
was  no  fire  alight.  A  calf  was  born  in  his  mother's  herd, 
white,  with  purplish  spots,  which  on  one  side  looked  like  a 
crown  and  on  the  other  like  "  ave."  All  this  is  compara- 
tively serious ;  but  Vopiscus  objects  to  a  story  of  roses  which 
had  the  scent  of  common  roses,  a  golden  color,  and  yet  were 
purple.  When  he  entered  Antioch  in  a  carriage  because  he 
could  hardly  sit  a  horse,  a  purple  cloth  spread  in  his  honor 
fell  on  his  shoulders,  etc.,  etc. 

The  life  of  Aurelian  has  been  analyzed  at  length  because  it 
is  an  unusually  favorable  specimen  of  what  is  and  what  is  not 
to  be  found  in  the  Augustan  histories.  In  spite  of  his  strong 
interest  in  Tacitus,  Vopiscus  does  not  know  whether  he  died 
of  disease  or  was  assassinated  by  the  soldiery,  though  he  had 
read  an  elaborate  life  by  Suetonius  Optatianus,  whence  we 
learn  that  he  gave  the  people  of  Ostia  a  hundred  columns  of 
Numidian  marble,  twenty-three  feet  high  ;  and  that  his  one 
personal  extravagance  was  unmeasured  indulgence  in  let- 
tuces— cost  what  they  would,  he  thought  sleep  cheap  at  the 
price.  The  original  research  of  Vopiscus  was  confined  to  the 
formalities  of  the  accession,  for  as  there  was  some  doubt 
whether  Tacitus,  who  went  away  till  the  senate  was  unan- 
imous, came  back  to  sign  the  decree  for  his  own  appoint- 
ment, he  looked  up  the  original  document  in  the  ivory  tablets 

II.— "14 


3H 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


of  the  Ulpian  Library,  where  all  the  acts  of  the  senate  on  the 
accession  of  new  emperors  were  preserved. 

The  life  of  Probus  is  simply  a  windy  and  meagre  pane- 
o-vric  •  and  there  is  nothing  of  general  interest  in  the  three 

fey  ^ 

lives  that  follow  it. 

Decidedly  the  most  piquant  of  the  other  lives  is  that  of 
Avidius  Cassius,  by  Vulcacius  Gallicanus  ;  but  it  is  much  less 
certainly  authentic.     It  is  full  of  what  purport  to  be  letters 
by  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Lucius  Verus  and  Faustina,  and  by 
Avidius  Cassius  himself;  but  these  are  all  open  to  more  or 
less   grave    suspicion.     The    letters    between    Aurelius    and 
Verus"  are  doubtful  because,  contrary  to  all  other  authorities, 
Verus  is  represented  as  the  son  instead  of  the  brother  of  Au- 
relius.    This  is  not  quite  decisive,  because  Aurelius  was  the 
son-in-law  and  adopted  son  of  the  elder  Antoninus,  and  Verus 
was  the  son-in-law  and  adopted  brother  of  the  younger,  and 
might,  for  all  we  know,  have  passed  for  son  by  courtesy.    The 
objection  to  the  letters  of  Faustina  and  Aurelius  is,  that  they 
make  the  latter  go  through  Italy  on  his  way  from  the  Danube 
to  Syria  without  visiting  Rome,  which  is  not  in  itself  impos- 
sible, but  all  the  details  of  his  severities  and  intended  reforms 
have  a  certain  suspicion  of  Greek  rhetoric  about  them.     Be- 
sides, the  wQX^  prcesides  is  used  indiscriminately  for  governors 
of  provinces  ;  while  it  is  clear  that  for  official  purposes,  at  any 
rate,  the  distinction  between  "proconsuls"  and  "propraetors" 
was  not  obsolete.     So,  too,  Marcus  Aurelius  is  made  to  write 
of  a  "tyrant"  in  the  sense  of  a  usurper.     What  makes  the 
matter  more  suspicious  is,  that  Trebellius  Pollio,  in  his  frag- 
mentary life  of  Valerian,  gives  us  several  letters  to  the  King 
of  Persia  from  his  vassals,  which,  if  genuine,  must  all  have 
been  composed  by  Greek  sophists.     Space  would  fail  to  prove 
how  coins  and  inscriptions  testify  against  Pollio's  account  of 
his  thirty  tyrants. 

^lius  Lampridius,  a  better  writer,  gives  a  very  confused  ac- 
count of  the  jealousy  of  Cominodus,  which  made  him  sacrifice 
one  minister  after  another,  compared  with  Herod ian,  who, 
however,  is  more  reticent.  In  general,  the  majority  of  the 
writers   of  Augustan    history    huddle    notes    from    different 


AUGUSTAN  HISTORIES. 


315 


sources  together  without  criticism.  The  only  point  they  en- 
deavor to  form  a  real  judgment  on  is  the  moral  and  political 
worth  of  the  different  emperors,  and  here  they  are  not  without 
insight.  For  instance,  Capitolinus  observes,  after  recounting 
all  the  proofs  of  the  virtue  of  M.  Aurelius,  that  he  wanted  the 
simiplicity  of  the  elder  Antoninus  and  of  the  two  voluptuous 
Veri.  His  virtue  prepense  has  imposed  upon  posterity,  but 
evidently  it  did  not  impose  upon  contemporaries. 

Upon  the  whole,  the  Augustan  histories  are  more  valuable 
for  manners  and  customs  than  for  political  history.  We  learn 
what  an  emperor  used  to  have  for  dinner,  and  what  a  rare 
dainty  a  pheasant  was  in  the  days  of  a  thrifty  emperor  like 
Alexander  Severus;  and  how  the  Roman  army  was  gradually 
broken  up  into  detachments  ;  and  how  the  senators  distributed 
their  acclamations  in  mechanical  salvos,  repeating  the  same 
thing  ten  or  twenty  times ;  and  how  repeatedly  the  accumula- 
tions of  the  palace  were  sold  to  supply  the  necessities  of  the 
state. 

As  for  style,  it  is  null  rather  than  bad.  ^lius  Spartianus 
at  his  best  might  be  mistaken,  perhaps,  for  the  worst  parts  of 
Suetonius.  The  sentences  are  rudely,  often  vaguely,  terse  or 
ambiguous ;  there  is  no  attempt  at  fine  writing,  very  little 
solecism,  but  a  degenerate  vocabulary,  infected  partly  by  the 
intrusion  of  foreign  words,  partly  by  the  substitution  of  com- 
pound coined  words  for  simple  ones  which  had  been  forgot- 
ten, which  is  one  of  the  worst  signs  of  the  degeneracy  of  a 
language. 


PART  IX. 

THE  REVIVAL  OF  THE  EMPIRE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

RHE  TOKICIANS. 

The    Augustan    histories    are    decidedly   an    unfavorable 
specimen  of  their  period :  they  do  not  show  fairly  of  what 
Latin  writers  were  capable  when  the  military  organization  of 
the  empire  had  been  restored  by  the  great  Illyrian  rulers 
who    succeeded    Gallienus,  and    the    civil    organization   had 
been   transformed   by   Diocletian.     The    whole  period,  from 
the  accession  of  Diocletian,  a.d.  280  to  411,  when  the  bar- 
barians had  Rome  for  the  first  time  at  their  mercy,  was  a 
period   of  restoration.     The    empire  was  burdened  beyond 
its  strength  by  the  administrative  machinery ;  rich  men  had 
the  choice  of  taking  their  chance  of  being  plundered  by  the 
administration,  or  taking  their  chance  among  the  administra- 
tors, in  which  case  they  would  be  safe  from  being  plundered 
unless   they   were    executed.     The    middle    class,  who  were 
represented  by  the  richer  members  of  the  municipal  corpora- 
tions, ran  less  risk,  but  were  more  heavily  burdened  in  pro- 
portion to  their   resources.     But,  heavily  burdened   as   the 
resources  of  the  empire  were,  it  was  possible  throughout  this 
period  to  apply  them,  so  far  as  they  were  disposable,  for  the 
permanent  improvement  of  the  state  of  men.     Even  the  dis- 
aster of  Valens  did  not  materially  affect  culture  for  the  time 
being:  the  Illyrian  frontier  was  never  established  again;  the 
barbarians  were  never  driven  out  of  the  empire  ;  the  country 
between  the  Danube  and  Thessalonica  was  probably  impov- 


ARNOBIUS, 


317 


erished  beyond  recovery;  but  it  had  never  contributed  very 
much  to  the  wealth  of  the  rest  of  the  empire. 

Even  when  we  make  allowance  for  the  activity  of  the  ju- 
rists the  fourth  century  was  much  more  fruitful,  in  a  literary 
sense,  than  the  third,  even  if  we  leave  out,  for  the  moment 
the  -reat  speculative  movement  of  Christian  theology,  and 
also  make  allowance  for  the  foct  that  its  literature  is  much 
better  preserved.  We  do  not  know  that  Servius  or  Donatus 
were  much  superior  to  other  grammarians  who  flourished  be- 
fore them  ;  but  when  education  passed  into  the  hands  of  the 
cler-y  they  naturally  handed  on  the  set  of  school-books  they 
found  in  their  hands;  and  as  this  happened  throughout  the 
West  in  the  course  of  the  fifth  century  (the  clergy  being  the 
only  surviving  representatives  of  the  literary  class),  of  course 
the  books  they  found  in  their  hands  were  in  the  mam  works 
of  the  fourth  century.  By  a  somewhat  similar  accident  Ve- 
cretius,  the  author  of  a  handbook  of  the  art  of  war,  has  reached 
us  while  Frontinus's  work  on  the  same  subject  is  lost 

These  writers  belong  to  the  latter  part  of  the  period.  1  he 
first  si-n  of  the  revival  showed  itself  among  the  rhetoricians, 
and  it'showed  itself  on  the  largest  scale  among  the  Chris- 
tians :  the  works  of  Arnobius  and  Lactantius  are  decidedly 
superior  to  those  of  the  so-called  panegyrists,  who  composed 
solemn  harangues  in  honor  of  most  emperors  from  Maxmi- 
ian  to  Theodosius  the  Elder. 

ARNOBIUS. 

Arnobius,  whose  full  name  is  unknown  to  us,  though  St. 
Jerome  has  preserved  some  facts  of  his  life,  is  the  earliest 
instance  of  an  obscurantist  convert.  He  was  a  successful 
rhetorician,  and  wrote  against  Christianity;  on  his  conver- 
sion he  had  to  prove  his  sincerity  by  writing  against  heathen- 
ism. His  attitude  is  curiously  unlike  that  of  Minucius  Felix, 
or  even  Tertullian  and  St.  Cyprian,  though  the  situation  to 
which  he  addresses  himself  is  substantially  the  same.  Ihe 
heathen  are  always  complaining  that  the  Christians  bring  ill- 
luck  to  the  world,  and  the  reason  is  that  the  gods  are  offended 
at  the  decline  of  piety.     Arnobius  makes  the  old  replies  :  the 


3i8 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


gods  of  the  heathen  are  devils  who  trade  upon  the  homage 
paid  to  dead  men  /  gods  who  were  such  as  their  worshippers 
think  they  believe  would  be  displeased  by  the  heathen  wor- 
ship, which  is  offensive  to  any  spiritual  intelligence,  both  by 
the  ceremonies  prescribed  and  by  the  legends  implied  there- 
in -j"^  for  Arnobius  is  on  his  guard  against  the  obvious  reply 
that  polytheism  was  not  responsible  for  the  poets.  As  to 
the  fact  that  the  world  was  unfortunate,  natural  misfortunes 
— famine  and  pestilence — had  been  felt  quite  as  severely  be- 
fore Christianity  came  into  the  world,  while  civil  misfortunes 
— war,  violence,  fraud,  open  and  secret  murder — are  both 
directly  and  indirectly  mitigated  by  Christianity,  which  di- 
minishes the  amount  of  evil  to  be  borne  and  makes  it  easier 
to  bear  it.^  Of  course  there  is  the  ordinary  argument,  that 
the  Pagans  as  well  as  the  Christians  acknowledged  and  wor- 
shipped one  supreme  Deity.*  As  Christianity  made  this 
worship  far  purer  and  more  prominent,  it  obviously  could  not 
be  said  that  Christianity  was  destructive  of  piety ;  in  fact,  no 
worship  which  ignored  the  supreme  Deity,  as  most  Pagan 
worship  did,  could  deserve  the  name  of  piety.  The  suppres- 
sion of  worship  of  the  inferior  deities  was  the  real  cause  of 
scandal ;  but  then  how  do  the  heathen  know  that  their  infe- 
rior deities  are  better  than  devils  who  have  led  men  captive 
from  their  true  Lord? 

But  here  comes  the  peculiarity  of  the  position  of  Arnobius  : 
he  puts  the  supreme  Deity  at  as  great  a  distance  from  the 
actual  world  as  a  Pagan  or  a  Gnostic  or  a  Neo-Platonist. 
Indeed,  he  makes  the  distance  greater  than  the  Neo-Plato- 
nists,  who,  if  they  were  unwilling  to  bring  the  world  of  mat- 
ter into  close  connection  with  him,  recognized  him  as  the 
Father  and  Fountain  of  the  spirits  of  men  :  Arnobius,  on  the 
contrary,  thinks  that  the  human  soul,  with  its  liability  to  suf- 
fering and  error,  was  quite  unworthy  to  be  the  direct  work 
of  the  Highest,  to  say  nothing  of  being  a  portion  of  his  sub- 
stance.^ He  obviously,  without  knowing  it,  is  half-way  to 
being  a  Gnostic.     He  imagines  no  antagonism  between  the 

^  lb.  i.  3-6.  '  lb.  ii.  36. 

*  lb.  i.  34. 


*  Ainob.  i.  37  ;  vi.  6. 

*  lb.  V.  16,  20. 


ARNOBIUS. 


319 


brilliant  creative  spirit,  one  of  the  bHgMest  an^  highest  in 

3ee,Js  to  be  t^hat  he  has  revealed  the  .^y  of  salvat.on  fo 
the     oul    and   meanwhile   carries    on   the   governmen     of 
the  Tmld   by   the   inferior   deities   who.u   he   employed   to 

"' This'cnostic  way  of  thinking,  which  must  have  held  its 
„rca.nd  within  the  Church,  is  not  carried  very  far  m  Aino 
b  us,  because  his  strong  sense  of  the  mcompe  en  e  of  te^a«,n 
Linclines  him  to  discuss  the  or.g.n  of  evil,  or  any  othei 

Sr-natti-'rilas  it  is  -- -^T^rcotiiS^ 

spirituality  as  Christianity  to  the  small  section  of  the  ^^^ 
cated  claLes  who  cared  for  it  while  explaining    -^  -  g 
in-  the  religious  traditions  of  the  majority.    And  his  cnticism 
In  ares' b-^     He  admits  that  culture  is  on  the  side  of  l.s 
IS  interesting.      >■  .'Fornix"   of  Luc  lus  and   the 

opponents:  they  know   the      loinix      oi 

.^Lrsyas"  of  ^^^^ix::;:t^  ^^^^^  ^ 

r  fo^^rySe'TaVcS'c^^e'into  court;  they  know 
traffference  between  species  and  genus,  between  contraries 
the  ditterence  oc  '       ,„th  of  all  this  they  imagine  they 

and  °PP°;";.^^^,.J;',  V  bet^ "r  falsehood  and  truth,  between 
r  ^Isille 'Sd  U^  impossible,  between  ^^^^^;;^^;^^ 
lowist;  and,  all  j'^  j;;:j;,tr  r  r^L  tuf  cS^r 
.re  at  sea,  and  ^a;^  "f^  ";   "lUvhy  no  fluid  will  mix  with 
conjectures:  t'^^y  ""'"'"^  ;';,,*' ,  ^/the  same  head  before 

oil,  or  why  some   -';";;.,,  '^.i.tthey  hold  to  be  divine 
others,  or  even  why  the  ™    ck  whici        y 

-JSrSr:SnS^:ibLcra.ilyatran^m 
And   then    these    ignorant    philosophers    actually   laugh   at 
Christt:  for  being  believers,  as  if  it  were  possible  to  carry 

"•  lb.  u.o. 
»  Arnob.  11.  I4- 


320 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


ARNOBIUS. 


321 


I  I 


on  the  business  of  life  without  belief.  (Arnobius  does  not 
distinguish  at  this  stage  between  belief  founded  on  authority 
and  belief  founded  on  experience.) 

As  for  the  philosophers  themselves,  they  believe,  after  all, 
on  the  word  of  Plato  or  Porphyry  or  Pythagoras,  who  do  not 
agree  among  themselves,  and  not  one  of  them  had  power  to 
charm  away  so  much  as  a  wart  or  a  boil.  True  enough,  they 
are  laudable  for  integrity  of  morals,  and  accomplished  in  all 
manner  of  study  and  learning :  it  is  known  that  they  speak 
in  the  daintiest  words,  and  fit  them  to  flow  most  smoothly  \ 
that  they  shut  up  their  syllogisms  very  sharply,  arrange  their 
inductions  orderly,  assign  due  formulas  to  every  definition ; 
that  they  are  masters  of  partition  and  division,  have  much  to 
say  on  the  kinds  of  numbers,  and  on  music,  and  have  their 
rules  and  ordinances  for  the  explanation  of  matters  of  geom- 
etry ;  but  what  is  all  this  to  the  purpose  ?  Are  enthymemes 
or  syllogisms,  pray,  any  security  for  their  knowing  the  truth? 
Are  they  worthy  for  that  to  be  believed  perforce  upon  mat- 
ters full  of  obscurity  ?  In  comparing  persons  we  ought  to 
v.eigh,  not  the  power  of  their  eloquence,  but  the  virtue  of 
their  works.' 

Obviously  Arnobius  holds,  like  Professor  Jowett,  that  logic 
is  another  form  of  rhetoric :  not  on  transcendental  grounds, 
but  simply  because  it  was  part  of  a  rhetorician's  training  to 
be  familiar  with  logical  forms.  His  idea  of  a  good  authority 
is  one  who  can  show  divine  works  as  a  security  for  the  truth 
of  what  he  professes.  He  is  surprised  at  the  blindness  of 
his  opponents  in  wilfully  shutting  their  eyes  to  the  facts  that 
the  chariots  of  fire  and  horses  of  fire  of  Simon  Magus  van- 
ished at  the  word  of  St.  Peter,'^  so  that  the  false  gods  in 
whom  Simon  trusted  were  compelled  to  let  him  fall  to  the 
ground  j  after  which  the  unfortunate  man  tried  to  fly,  at  Brun- 
disium,  and  finally  broke  his  neck.  All  which  at  the  time, 
says  Arnobius,  made  numerous  converts  at  Rome,  although 
the  persecution  of  Nero  was  raging.  The  conversion  of  all 
the  world,  and  even  of  many  men  of  letters  and  philosophers, 
is  a  miracle  of  itself  which  ought  to  convince  the  most  in- 
'  Arnob.  ii.  11.  '  lb.  ii.  12. 


credulous.^     Besides,  though  Plato  =■  made  the  mistake  of  be- 
lieving that  the  soul  was  immortal,  even  he  taught  that  sinful 
souls  were  tormented  in  hell,  though  he  did  not  know  of  the 
cruel  spirits  who  carried  them  to  torment.     There  is  a  good 
deal  of  ingenuity  in  the  argument  that,  if  the  soul  were  abso- 
lutely mortal  or  immortal,  philosophy  would  become  unmean- 
ing ;  for  philosophy,  as  he  understands  it,  includes  a  laborious 
anV  costly  repression  of  appetites  which  of  themselves  are 
stronger  than  the  aspirations  with  which  they  compete.     If 
the  soul  is  immortal,  and  in  its  own  nature  purely  spiritual, 
and  all  sin  and  error  are  due  to  its  connection  with  the  body, 
why  should  not  the  desires  of  the  body  be  indulged,  so  long 
as  the  body  is  importunate?     If  the  soul  is  mortal,  and  dies 
with  the  bodv,  why  should  it  be  cultivated  at  the  expense  of 
the  body?     One  sees  that  thought  has  travelled  far  since  the 
days  of   Sallust,  when  an   unscrupulous,  accomplished  man 
could  still  take  his  own  aspirations  seriously,  while  regulating 
his  practical  conduct  by  his  resentments  and  his  interests. 

In  another  way  we  can   trace   the  decline   of  wholesome 
natural  sentiment  which  so  often  either  prepares  or  accom- 
panies the  acceptance  of  a  higher  standard  at  second-hand. 
The  last  words  that  have  come  to  us  from  Arnobius  are  an 
angry  protest  against  the  universal  dominion   of  Rome— a 
city  towering  over  the  world,  and  founded  for  the  ruin  of  the 
human  race.     This  comes  in  oddly  at  the  end  of  a  tirade 
against  the  Pagan  theory  of  local  partial  deities  that  could 
favor  one  nation  at  the  expense  of  another,  and  be  propitiated 
by  having  their  images  moved  from  city  to  city;  and  at  last 
the  crime  of  the  aggrandizement  of  Rome  is  fastened  upon 
Cybele,  because  she  was  the  most  important  deity  transferred 
to  Rome  by  that  simple  process.     Of  course  it  is  quite  rea- 
sonable to  apply  against  the  Pagans  their  own  ideal  of  pure, 
passionless  benevolence  ;  but,  upon  the  whole,  St.  Augustine 
is  more  prudent  when  he   admits   that  the  Romans  were   a 
chosen  people  in  the  temporal  order,  as  the  Israelites  were  in 
the  spiritual— chosen  for  their  merits,  as  the  Israelites  were 


not. 


»  Arnob.  i.  5;  ii.  12. 


lb.  ii.  14. 


II.— 14 


* 


I"! 


322 


LA  TIN  LITERA  TURE. 


The  style  is  almost  as  fluctuating  as  the  structure  of  the 
argument.     Arnobius,  like    Lactantius,  has    been  called   the 
Christian  Cicero,  and  there  is  a  certain  fitness  in  the  title  : 
all  through  his  seven  books  he  seems  to   be  perorating,  or 
trying  to  perorate,  and  he  is  not  unlike  Cicero  when  Cicero 
is    most  vehement   and   most   wordy.     Arnobius's    imitation 
succeeds  best   in   stringing  together  scornful   interrogations, 
interrupted  here  and  there  with  scornful   exclamations  :  for 
instance,  he  spends  a  page '  upon  showing  how  shameful  it  is 
that,  if  the  gods  are  to  be  worshipped  with  wine,  the  worship- 
per should  stipulate  that  they  are   only  to  claim   the  wine 
actually  used  in  the  service  ;  and  upon  the  larger  question, 
whether  w^ne  ought  to  be  used  at  all  in  worship,  he  is  equally 
copious  and  equally  uninstructive.      Occasionally  there  are 
intervals  of  what  is  intended  for  quiet  and  sustained  disqui- 
sition, and    here   Arnobius   does  not  shine.      He  is  always 
overloaded  and  ungraceful ;  he  encumbers  himself  with  his 
own  redundancies,  and  is  generally  too  impetuous  to  get  for- 
ward ;  but  when  he  is  trying  to  be  calm  he  is  tedious  and 
monotonous,  partly  by  reason  of  his  excessive  anxiety  to  vary 
his  cadences  :  the  proportion  of  long  words  chosen  for  their 
sound  is  overwhelming;  no  noun  is  allowed  to  appear  with- 
out  an   adjective,  and  verbs  are   often   imprisoned   between 
doubled  participles.     It  is  difficult  to  make  our  way  through 
a  tangle  of  ablatives  absolute,  especially  when  there  are  two 
of  the  same  number  and  gender,  and  the  nouns  and  parti- 
ciples are  scattered  over  the  whole  length  of  the  clause  in 
accordance    with    the    supposed    requirements    of   euphony, 
which  seldom  or  never  permits  an  adjective  and  substantive 
to  stand  together;  and  even  when  Arnobius  means  to  write 
gravely  and  simply,  he  seldom  resists  for  more  than  a  page 
the  temptation  to  put  three  synonymous  words  for  the  sake 
of  a  climax  where  one  would  do.     He  sometimes  repeats  a 
paragraph  in  two  slightly  varied  forms— though,  as  we  have 
substantially  only  one  MS.,  it  isdifficult  to  say  whether  the 
blame  rests  in  any  manner  on  the  copyist,  who  may  have 
made  a  medley  of  two  different  texts.    Sometimes  he  reminds 

*  Arnob.  vii.  31. 


LACTANTIUS. 


23 


us  of  Apuleius.  We  come  on  five  or  six  nicely  assorted  ad- 
jectives and  substantives ;  sometimes  the  studied  cadences 
are  not  infelicitous  ;  but,  upon  the  whole,  the  artist  of  the  de- 
cline fails  less  egregiously  when  he  tries  to  copy  the  large, 
simple  work  of  the  prime  than  when  he  tries  to  copy  the 
subtle  work  of  the  later  master. 

LACTANTIUS. 

Far  better,  and  saner  both  in  style  and  temper,  are  the  works 
of  Lactantius  Firmianus,  whose  other  names,  according  to  most 
AISS    were  Lucius  C^elius,  or  Caecilius,  who  wrote  his  great 
work  during  the  height  of  the  Diocletian  (or  rather  Galerian) 
persecution.     St.  Jerome  assures  us  repeatedly  that  he  was  a 
pupil  of  Arnobius  :  it  is  clear  from  his  own  writings  that  he 
was  educated  in  Africa,  where  Arnobius  flourished.     He  was 
invited  to  Nicomedia  by  Diocletian  as  a  professor  of  Latin 
rhetoric,  and  in  that  capacity  he  was  a  failure.     Nicomedia 
was  a  Greek  city,  and  the  residence  of  the  court  did  not  do 
much  to  Latinize  it ;   there  was  little  business  in  the  forum, 
and  Lactantius  was  not  employed  in  it ;   he  had  not  many 
pupils,  and  was  in  constant  want  until  Constantine  employed 
him  in  his  old  age  as  a  teacher  to  his  son  Crispus. 

Naturally  he  was  disgusted  with  his  profession,  and  saw  its 
hollowness,  though  he  was  not  ungrateful  to  it,  as  he  had 
trained  his  eloquence  for  the  exposition  of  truth  by  the  dis- 
cussion of  imaginary  law-cases. 

In  his  youth  he  wrote  a  "  Symposium,"  or  poem  in  hexam- 
eters, on  'his  journey  from  Africa  to  Nicomedia,  and  a  book 
entitled  "  Grammaticus,"  and  perhaps  a  copy  of  verses  in 
elegiacs  on  the  phoenix,  in  which  the  latest  form  of  the  legend 
is  set  forth:  The  phoenix  lays  his  own  funeral  pyre,  and  the 
heat  of  pairing-time  lights  it ;  the  result  is  a  worm  which  turns 
into  an  ^g^^  which  turns  into  a  phoenix,  which  flies  away  with 
the  ashes  "of  its  predecessor.  The  poem  does  not  discard 
mythology,  but  the  feeling  of  immortal  life  out  of  death  may 
fairly  be  taken  for  a  sign  of  sympathy  with  Christianity. 

His  earliest  undoubted  work  which  has  reached  us  is  Chris- 
tian, but  still  reserved  in  the  expression  of  doctrine.     Its  title 


324 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


is  "De  Opiticio  Dei,"  and  its  object  is  a  criticism  at  once  of 
the  Epicurean  and  Stoic  doctrines  of  creation.  He  wishes  to 
carry  teleology  just  far  enough  to  prove  a  wise  and  mighty 
and  beneficent  Creator,  and  to  prove  that  it  breaks  down  soon 
enough  to  prove  that  he  is  incomprehensible.  The  writer  fol- 
lows Aristotle  and  Varro  in  extolling  the  mechanism  of  the 
human  body,  and  declines  to  be  baffled  by  the  Epicurean  and 
sceptical  argument  from  the  helplessness  of  human  infancy. 
He  asks  whether  his  opponents  would  like  to  change  with 
dumb  animals  because  they  can  stand  alone  sooner  than  ba- 
bies, and  hints  that  babies  are  better  off  than  birds,  which 
have  to  be  born  twice  over,  first  in  the  egg  and  then  as  fledg- 
lings, and  su2:2:ests  that  the  hen  which  has  to  hatch  them  with- 
out  eating  goes  through  more  than  a  human  mother.  As  for 
physiology,  he  supposes  that  he  knows  the  use  of  the  two 
great  cavities — one  holds  air  and  nourishes  the  soul,  the  other 
holds  food  and  nourishes  the  muscles.  He  has  plenty  to  say 
in  praise  of  the  intestinal  canal,  which  holds  the  food  long 
enough  and  not  too  long;  and  triumphs  over  philosophical 
ignorance  of  the  purposes  of  the  liver  and  the  spleen,  and 
the  "globe  of  the  heart,"  and  "the  most  bitter  liquor  of  the 
gall."  About  the  spleen  philosophers  are  ignorant  still,  but 
the  liver  is  one  of  the  best-known  organs,  and  every  physiolo- 
gist who  likes  may  smile  at  the  suggestion  that  its  primary 
function  is  to  be  the  seat  of  love,  as  the  primary  function  of 
the  "sflobe  of  the  heart"  is  to  be  the  seat  of  fear. 

A  pendant  to  the  treatise  "  De  Opificio  Dei "  is  the  treatise 
"  De  Ira  Dei,"  which  is  a  criticism  of  the  current  doctrines  of 
Providence,  as  the  earlier  work  is  a  criticism  of  the  current 
doctrines  of  creation.  It  corresponds  to  the  doctrine  of  "  a 
moral  governor"  in  the  eighteenth-century  apologetic.  His 
thesis  is,  that  the  Epicureans  are  wrong  in  holding  that  the 
Deity  is  purely  indifterent  to  human  affairs,  and  that  the  Sto- 
ics are  wrong  in  holding  that  he  is  a  being  of  pure  benevo- 
lence :  in  either  case  men  would  have  no  motive  to  fear  God, 
which  is  inseparable  from  the  essence  of  religion.  The  author 
keeps  to  the  divine  working,  and  does  not  seriously  discuss 
the  divine  nature,  so  that  we  do  not  know  how  he  would  have 


LACTANTWS, 


325 


met  the  classical  scholastic  dictum,  "Affectus  in  Deo  denotat 

eftectum."  ^  , 

The  treatise  "  De  Ira  Dei"  contains  references  to  Lactan- 

tius's  -reat  work,  the  seven  books  of  "  Divine  Institutions," 
and  is'^therefore  later;  it  is  addressed  to  Donatus,  to  whom 
another  work,  "  De  Mortibus  Persecutorum,"  was  addressed 
by  CiEcilius,  who  is  still  thought  to  be  rightly  identified  with 
Lactantius,  who,  according  to  St.  Jerome,  wrote  "  De  Perse- 
cutione."  The  "Divine  Institutions"  seem  to  be  dedicated 
to  Demetrianus,  like  the  "  De  Opificio  Dei."  ^      ^^ 

The  chief  ideas  of  the  work  are  "  wisdom  "  and  "  religion, 
which  are  in  fact  inseparable  :  the  simple  feel  the  need  of 
relic-ion,  the  educated  of  wisdom  ;  and  if  they  attain  to  either 
they  attain  to  both.     In  the  first  book  he  attacks  polytheism  ; 
in  the  second  he  explains  its  origin;  in  the  third  he  gives  his 
criticism  of  heathen  philosophy;  in  the  fourth  he  gives  his 
theory  of  true  knowledge;  in  the  fifth,  his  theory  of  virtue. 
Both  are  made  to  depend  upon  true  religion,  and  this  is  illus- 
trated by  the  contrast  between  Christians  and  heathens.    The 
subject  of  virtue  is  continued  in  the  sixth  book,  where  he  ex- 
plains that  charity  to  others  is  the  chief  part  of  the  service 
of  God,  and  explains  the  defects  of  the  Stoic  and  Peripatetic 
theories  of  virtue.     In  the  last  book  we  have  the  doctrine  of 
the  blessed  life,  that  is,  according  to  Lactantius,  a  doctrine 
of  fiiture  rewards  and  punishments;  the  world  was  made  for 
man  in  six  days,  and  it  will  last  six  ages,  which,  according  to 
the  best  chronologies  accessible  to  Lactantius,  had  at  most 
two  hundred  years  to  run  ;^  at  the  end  of  the  six  thousand 
years  came  the  downfall  of  Rome  and  the  reign  of  Antichrist. 
Unlike  Arnobius,  Lactantius  regards  the  downfall  of  Rome 
as  an  unmixed  calamity,^  though  it  is  to  be  followed  by  the 
millennial  reign,  in  which  God  dwells  among  the  righteous 
who  have  part  in  the  first  resurrection,  in  the  holy  city  on 
earth.     Then  comes  the  loosing  of  the  devil,  and  everything 
else  which  crude  interpreters  have  been  led  to  expect  from 
the  Book  of  Revelation.     The  author  is  throughout  quite  as 
dependent  upon  the  Sibyl  as  upon  the  prophets  of  the  Old 
>  Lact.  ♦'  Div.  Inst."  vii.  16.  '  lb.  vii.  15,  25. 


326 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


LACTANTIUS. 


327 


Testament.     He  constantly  takes  the  attitude  of  an  enlight- 
ened moderator  between  the  dogmatist  and  the  sceptic:  he 
holds  that  Socrates  and  the  New  Academy  have  finally  dis- 
posed of  the  theory  that  philosophy  is  a  body  of  independent 
knowledge,  while  the  Stoics  have  disposed  of  the  doctrine  of 
opinion  upon  which  the  Academy  was  anxious  to  fall  back.* 
It  is  equally  absurd  to  hold  that  men  can  know  all  things, 
which  is  the'  portion  of  God,  and  that  they  can  know  nothing, 
which  is  the  portion  of  beasts :  the  rational  position  is  that 
man,  who  has  a  celestial  soul  in  a  terrestrial  body,  is  capable 
of  a  real,  though  a  partial,  knowledge,  though  this  is  only  to  be 
obtained  by  revelation.     Revelation,  according  to  Lactantius, 
is  to  be  authenticated  rather  by  prophecy  than  by  miracles;' 
and  this  shows  his  general   mind  towards   argument:  he  is 
quite  willing  to  admit  that  all  the  stories  of  oracles  and  prod- 
igies which  are  embalmed  in  the  classical  histories  are  true, 
only  this  serves  to  confirm  the  history  of  the  fall  of  the  angels 
in  Genesis.     All  false  religions  originate  with  the  celestial  or 
terrestrial  demons:  the  celestial  demons  are  the  angels  who 
were  appointed  to  guard  mankind  from  the  devil,  and  saw  the 
daughters  of  men  that  they  were  fair,  and  the  terrestrial  de- 
mons are  their  sons;^  and  between  them  they  are  the  authors 
of  all  the  mischief  in  the  world,  and  gratify  their  depraved 
appetites  under  cover  of  the  worship  paid  to  the  images  of 
false  gods,  who  were  nothing  but  deified  kings  —  an  expla- 
nation v/hich  steadily  gained  in  plausibility  up  to  the  time  of 
Diocletian,  the  last  emperor  who  was  solemnly  deified.     Of 
course  all  the  immoralities  of  mythology  are  set  down  to  the 
charge  of  these  deified  kings,  of  whom  Jupiter  was  the  first. 
Here  again  it  is  remarkable  how  closely  the  author  adheres  to 
classical  tradition  :   he  seriously  believes  the  legend  of  the 
golden  age,  when  Justice  dwelt  among  men.*     The  accession 
of  Jupiter  drove  her  away,  because  Jupiter  was  the  first  to  in- 
troduce false  worship,  which  is  the  essence  of  injustice;  till 
the  days  of  Jupiter  men  served  God  rightly  in  abstaining  from 
all  outward  service  except  kindness  to  one  another.     It  is  an 
old   observation  that  the  Christianity  of  Lactantius   is  very 
•  Lact.  "  Div.  Inst."  iii.  4.         "  lb.  v.  13, 19.         ="  lb.  ii.  15.         *  lb.  v.  6. 


f         f 


rudimentary:  he  insists  repeatedly  on  the  fear  of  falhng  into 
lorment  among  the  angels,  and  says  little  or  nothu^g  about 
the  doctrine  of  the  sacraments,  which  perhaps  may  be  mten- 

The  most  penetrating  part  of  the  booi.  is  the  criticism  of 
philosophy,  which  he  regards  as  defective  because  it  has  no 
reference 'to  the  fear  of  God  or  a  future  life.     He  singles  out 
for  rebuke  the  famous  saying  of  Anaxagoras,  that  he  was  born 
to  behold  the  sun  and  the  face  of  heaven.'     The  contrast  is 
really  typical.     Anaxagoras  gives  full  expression  to  the  .deal 
of  philosophy  as  a  life  lived  for  its  own  sake,  and  Lactan  lus 
insists  that  it  is  selfish  precisely  because  .t  .s  d'S'"teres ted 
!  and  does  not  subordinate  life  to  duty  and  to  a  higher  end  (tor 
;  Lactantius,  like  many  others,  cannot  resolve  tlie  conceptmn 
of  duty  into  anything  but  an  external  rule  and  a  motive  for 
obeyin-  it),  and  the  Stoical  ideal,  though  less  openly  egotistic, 
still  found  the  chief  good  in  the  self-consciousness  of  the  wise 
man  at  every  moment.     As  for  the  civic  virtue  of  the  ancient 
world,  Lactantius  makes  exactly  the  same  objection    which 
all  modern  advocates  of  Christianity  used  to  make  until  the 
charitable  foundations  of  the  age  of  Trajan  and  his  successors 
were  understood,  that  pagan  civilization  was  apt  to  forget  the 
value  of  provision  for  the  weak  and  suffering,  which   in  the 
iud-rment  of  Lactantius,  was  the  most  essential  part  of  virtue 
and°the  remedy  for  the  sins  of  the  flesh,  which  it  is  scarcely 
practicable  to  avoid.     He  is  in  agreement,  upon  the  whole, 
with  the  tradition  of  philosophy,  that  the  whole  system  of  pub- 
lic amusements  was  wrong;'  he  protests  especially  against 
the  competitions  in  eloquence  and  poetry,  which  were  still 
apparently  in  sufficient  vigor  to  be  a  temptation. 

He  reasserts  his  superiority  in  the  theory  of  the  passions. 
According  to  the  Peripatetics,  the  important  thing  was  to  keep 
them  within  due  limits ;  according  to  the  Stoics,  they  were  to 
be  suppressed  altogether;  according  to  Lactantius,  they  w'ere 
to  be  rightly  directed— it  is  impossible,  if  we  love  and  fear 
and  hate  aright,  to  love  or  fear  or  hate  too  strongly.  Lactan- 
tius even  reaches  the  observation  that  the  intellect  is  enlight- 
'  Lact.  "  Div.  Inst."  iii.  9.    Mb.vi.i6.    Mb.vi.l8,20.    nb.vi.  15,  i6. 


328 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


THE  PANEGYRISTS. 


329 


ened  by  rightly  directed  feeling ;»  of  course  he  does  no  justice 
to  the  old  opposition  between  the  higher  intellectual  nature 
and  the  lower  passionate  animal  nature. 

His  criticism  of  philosophy  is  of  course  inadequate.  He 
regards  Cicero  as  the  greatest  master  of  it ;  if  Cicero  did  not 
know  a  thing,  it  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the  unassisted  human 
intellect.  He  knows  Plato,  but  only  second-hand,  and  he  does 
not  seem  to  know  any  Peripatetic  author  but  Aristotle,  whom 
also  he  knows  at  second-hand,  and  Seneca  is  to  him  the  one 
representative  of  Stoicism.  In  fact,  his  culture  is  purely  Lat- 
in; the  only  Greek  writer  he  knows  well  is  the  "  Sibyl.''  His 
Latin  culture,  too,  is  limited:  he  knows  Cicero  and  Vergil, 
and  the  authors  to  whom  they  introduce  him.  Even  Cicero 
he  does  not  know  intelligently:  the  distinction  between  his 
oratorical  and  philosophical  style  seems  to  escape  Lactantius, 
who  constantly  speaks  of"  perorating,"  though,  to  do  him  jus- 
tice, it  is  the  last  thing  he  thinks  of  doing.  For  a  book  to  be 
read,  his  "  Institutions"  are  eloquent;  for  a  series  of  speeches 
they  would  be  decidedly  tame.  They  have  less  oratorical  move- 
ment than  the  apologies  of  Tertullian  or  of  St.  Cyprian,  still 
less  have  they  the  clumsy  rhetorical  gait  of  Arnobius,  who,  if 
we  may  trust  St.  Jerome,  was  successful  as  a  pleader,  while 
Lactantius  was  hardly  successful  as  a  rhetorician. 

There  is  much  less  power  than  ferocity  in  the  treatise  "  De 
Mortibus  Persecutorum,"  though  the  passion  is  strong  enough 
to  have  roused  a  suspicion  that  the  author  is  declaiming  with- 
out regard  to  facts.  Yet,  by  a  curious  irony  of  history,  his 
book  has  come  to  be  one  of  our  chief  authorities  for  the  event- 
ful period  between  the  abdication  of  Diocletian  and  the  over- 
throw of  Maxentius ;  for  the  Christian  historians  would  not 
write  freely  of  the  secular  history  of  their  persecutors,  and 
Christian  scholars  refused  to  hand  on  the  pagan  histories  that 
were  written.  The  date  of  the  work,  about  314,  is  fixed  by 
the  entry  of  Licinius  into  Nicomedia  to  publish  the  edict  of 
Milan,  in  the  middle  of  June,  a.d.  313.  It  begins  with  assur- 
ing Donatus,  a  confessor  who  had  been  six  years  in  prison, 
that  his  prayers  are  heard;   the  Church  is  rising  again,  for 

1  Lact.  "  Div.  Inst."  vi.  17.    Cogitatio  nihil  aliud  quam  mentis  agitatio. 


princes  have  been  raised  up  to  cancel  the  wicked  commands 
of  tyrants.  Besides  this  work,  if  it  be  his,  Lactantius  wrote 
two  books  on  some  unknown  subject  to  Asclepiades,  and  four 
books  of  letters  to  Probus,  and  two  to  Severus,  and  two  to 
Demetrianus,  to  whom  he  dedicated  the  work  "  De  Opificio 
Dei."  In  these  last,  and  perhaps  in  the  treatise  to  Asclepia- 
i  des'the  author  shocked  St.  Jerome  by  affirming  that  the  Spirit 
was  not  a  separate  hypostasis ;  but  in  general  his  correspond- 
ence was  lengthy,  and  handled  religious  topics  only  inciden- 
tally, both  which  circumstances  we  know  from  a  letter  of  St. 
Damasus,  who  found  them  equally  objectionable. 

THE    PANEGYRISTS. 

The  Christian  rhetoricians  are  connected  in  one  way  or  an- 
other with  Africa.    The  pagan  rhetoricians,  who  continue  after 
such  a  long  interval  the  work  of  the  younger  Pliny,  are  almost 
all  in  one  way  or  another  connected  with  Gaul,  which,  through- 
out the  fourth  century,  was  the  most  important  province  of  the 
empire  from  a  military  and  administrative  point  of  view.    Per- 
haps we  a  little  overrate  the  importance  and  representative 
character  of  the  Gallic  or  quasi-Gallic  panegyrists,  who  have 
reached  us  simply  because  they  were  at  the  pains  to  write  out 
and  publish  their  speeches,  for  most  of  the  occasions  on  which 
they  were  delivered  were  celebrated  by  many  other  orators  in 
many  other  cities.     An  emperor  who  visited  a  great  city  ex- 
pected to  hear  his  praises  from  its  orators.     Every  five  years 
the  festival  of  his  accession  was  kept,  and  this  was  always  a 
proper  occasion  for  a  speech,  whether  he  was  present  or  not. 
Lastly,  the  birthday  of  the  city  of  Rome  came  every  year,  and 
this  was  an  occasion  for  speeches,  though  perhaps  less  indis- 
pensable than  the  festivals  of  emperors.     Still,  it  is  worth  ob- 
serving that  towards  the  end  of  this  period  Symmachus,  the 
famous  prefect  of  the  city  under  Theodosius  and  Honorius, 
wrote  a  letter  asking  for  a  Gallic  rhetorician  to  train  his  son, 
because  he  himself  had  been  trained  by  an  old  man  from  the 
Garumna,  doubdess  a  member  of  the  school  of  Bordeaux, 
whose  traditions  were  celebrated  by  Ausonius.     Besides,  the 
eloquence  of  Latium,  which  Symmachus  was  anxious  not  to 


i; 


330 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


disparage,  was  an  old  and  hackneyed  thing,  which  those  who 
had  the  knack  went  through  mechanically,  to  receive  the  con- 
ventional plaudits  of  connoisseurs.  It  would  have  been  a 
shocking  thing  if  Rome  had  been  without  distinguished  ora- 
tors or  distinguished  ballet-dancers;  perhaps  the  reputation 
was  of  the  same  kind.  In  Gaul  the  audience,  at  any  rate,  was 
fresh,  and  helped  the  speaker  to  take  himself  seriously.  Gaul, 
in  the  time  of  Maximian,  was,  to  compare  small  things  with 
great,  in  something  the  state  which  the  Roman  world  was  in 
the  time  of  Augustus :  it  was  settling  down  after  an  exhaust- 
ing cr-isis ;  the  struggle  with  Carausius  recalls  the  struggle 
with  Antonius,  the  revolt  of  the  Bagaudae  recalls  the  revolt  of 
Spartacus  and  the  Servile  wars  of  Sicily  :  both  owed  their 
temporary  success  to  the  intolerable  condition  of  the  country 
laborers.  The  wars  of  the  pretenders  which  went  on  during 
the  reigns  of  Gallienus  and  Claudius,  till  at  last  Tetricus  en- 
treated Aurelian  to  deliver  him  from  the  tyranny  of  his  own 
army,  remind  us  of  the  civil  wars  of  the  last  century  of  the 
Republic;  and,  lastly,  the  frontier  was  constantly  threatened, 
as  the  frontier  of  Italy  had  been  till  the  limit  of  the  Danube 
was  established  by  the  victories  of  Drusus  and  Tiberius. 

Juvenal  knew  of  no  occasion  for  literary  display  beyond 
the  games  at  Lyons;  but  in  the  era  of  Constantine  there  were 
public  schools  at  Autun,  which  had  been  suppressed  during 
the  troubles,  and  were  restored  by  the  Hivor  of  Constantine; 
and  Autun  was  by  no  means  a  solitary  instance.  It  was  prob- 
ably every  way  inferior  to  Treves,  the  capital  of  Maximian  and 
Valentinian. 

The  two  earliest  speeches  are  addressed  to  Maximian  :  they 
are  generally  ascribed  to  an  older  Mamertinus,  because  the 
Mamertinus  who  was  made  consul  by  Julian  is  described  as 
the  younger.  The  first  is  in  honor  of  the  birthday  of  Rome, 
and  alludes  to  the  intention  of  subduing  Carausius.  The  au- 
thor is  curiously  frank  in  speculating  upon  Maximian's  igno- 
rance, which  was  sufficiently  notorious ;  but  one  might  have 
expected  that  an  orator,  speaking  in  an  emperor's  presence, 
would  either  avoid  topics  that  the  emperor  could  not  under- 
stand, or  give  him  credit  for  understanding  them,  if  he  had 


THE  PANEGYRISTS. 


ZZ"^ 


not  skill  enough  to  tell  the  story  in  such  a  way  as  to  convey 
the  knowledge  he  assumed  his  hearers  to  possess.    The  speech 
dates  from  a.d.  289,  and  is  comparatively  short  and  simple. 
The  second  is  much  more  curious  :  it  dates  from  293,  or  ear- 
lier, as  Maximian  and  Diocletian  were  still  sole  emperors,  and 
the  author  has  much  to  say  of  their  felicity  and  their  "piety," 
a  curious  topic  in  the  case  of  Maximian,  who,  by  all  accounts, 
was  at  all  times  ferocious.     He  confines  himself  to  these  top- 
ics in  the  main  because  he,  like  other  orators  whom  he  ad- 
mires, has  celebrated  Maximian's   military  merits  (the  only 
real  merits  he  had)  in  another  speech.    It  is  doubtful  whether 
we  can  identify  this  with  the  speech  of  a.d.  289.     There  the 
author  does  not  confine  himself  exclusively  to  Maximian's 
military  merits,  and  has  not  quite  as  wide  a  range  of  particles 
as  we  find  in  the  second  speech,  the  author  of  which  credits 
the  emperor  with  ability  to  follow  his  historical  allusions.     He 
exhibits  his  gaucherie  in  another  way :  he  had  spoken  before 
the  emperor  once,  and  made  a  vow  that  his  majesty  should 
deign  to  hear  him  again  (literally,  "  hear  him  with  the  same 
dignation,"  graciously  thinking  the  speaker  worthy  of  the 
theme) ;  consequently  the  public  expected  to  hear  him  when 
the  five  years'  festival  came  round ;  but,  as  Maximian  could 
Mot  hear  him,  the  public  could  not  hear  him  either;  and  the 
author  gravely  explains  that  he  seizes  the  opportunity  of  the 
emperor's  birthday  to  make  amends  to  both  for  the  delay,  which 
he  does  not  the  least  regret,  but  the  contrary,  as  his  speech 
for  the  fifth  anniversary  of  the  emperor  will  come  in  just  as 
well  for  the  tenth. 

There  is  no  clew  to  the  nationality  of  either  of  these  speak- 
ers, if  they  are  to  be  regarded  as  two,  except  that  neither  was 
in  the  strictest  sense  a  Roman.  We  know  more  of  Eumenius, 
who  was  the  grandson  of  a  Greek  rhetorician  who  settled  at 
Autun.  He  himself  had  not  been  in  the  habit  of  speaking  in 
public,  but  had  confined  himself  to  his  duties  as  a  professor. 
He  had  wished  himself  to  retire  into  the  country,  but  Con- 
stantius  had  employed  him  as  tutor  to  Constantine,  an  office 
for  which  Eumenius,  who  felt  a  little  past  work,  would  have 
preferred  to  recommend  his. son.     The  employment,  however, 


I 


332 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


naturally  required  a  man  of  assured  reputation,  and  Eumenius 
had  to  content  himself  with  launching  his  son  as  advocate  of 
the  exchequer,  while  he  employed  the  magnificent  pension  he 
received  from  Constantius  to  endow  the  schools  of  Autun, 
v/hich  the  emperor  graciously  permitted  to  be  restored.  The 
rhetorician  naturally  took  advantage  of  his  liberality  to  de- 
liver his  first  public  oration  in  296,  soon  after  Constantius 
had  reconquered  Britain.  It  was  addressed  nominally  to  the 
president  of  Gallia  Lugdunensis.  Another  was  addressed  to 
Constantine,  who  was  visiting  Treves,  and  was  still  expected 
to  stand  through  speeches  in  his  honor,  for  which  reason  Eu- 
menius probably  kept  his  speech  as  short  as  he  meant  to  in 
delivery,  though  the  speech,  as  we  read  it,  is  unmercifully  long. 
Apparently  he  had  delivered  a  speech  in  honor  of  Maximian, 
which  did'  not  interfere  with  a  very  enthusiastic  speech  in 
honor  of  Constantine,  addressed  to  him  on  the  birthday  of 
Rome,  soon  after  the  execution  of  INIaximian,  a.d.  310.  which 
is  politely  treated  as  a  suicide,  the  effect  of  remorse,  though 
just  before  he  taunts  the  poor  old  emperor  with  having  allowed 
himself  to  be  taken  alive  and  the  like.  The  speech  has  a 
practical  object,  and  in  this  it  succeeded.  Constantine  did 
pay  a  visit  to  Autun,  and  allowed  the  city  to  take  the  new 
title,  soon  to  be  dropped,  of  Flavia  Augusta,  and,  what  was 
more  important,  reduced  the  taxation  considerably,  by  lower- 
ing the  assessment  from  42,000  taxable  units  to  27,000.  Of 
course  he  was  rewarded  by  a  speech  of  thanksgiving,  in  which 
Eumenius  acknowledged  the  duty  of  celebrating  the  everlast- 
ing fifth  anniversary,  although  it  was  then  happily  over. 

It  is  curious  that  Eumenius,  who  was  a  mere  schoolman, 
should,  upon  the  whole,  show  more  tact  and  taste  than  con- 
temporaries or  successors,  who  were  famous  in  the  forum. 
Perhaps  the  constant  familiarity  with  text-books,  which  pre- 
served some  echo  of  the  tradition  of  better  days,  may  have 
kept  him  out  of  some  pitfalls. 

A  harmless  and  colorless  writer,  whose  name  has  perished, 
wrote  a  speech  to  congratulate  Constantine  on  his  marriage 
with  Maximian's  daughter  in  307.  The  speech  is  interesting 
because  it  shows  how  completely  Constantine  was  identified 


THE   PANEGYRISTS. 


2>12> 


with  his  father-in-law,  whom  Rome  is  made  to  apostrophize  to 
deliver  her  from  the  unworthy  hands  into  w^hich  she  had  fallen 
since  his  enforced  abdication. 

The  author  is  more  or  less  a  pagan,  like  Eumenius  and  an- 
other anonymous  writer  who  used  to  be  identified  with  Naza- 
rius,  who  congratulated  Constantine  on  his  victory  over  Max- 
entius,  w^on  in  spite  of  the  warnings  of  the  haruspices.  He 
himself  is  rather  sceptical ;  he  does  not  know  whether  fate  is 
to  blame  for  evil,  or  whether  the  gods  are  too  much  engaged 
with  other  things  to  be  able  to  prevent  it.  It  is  probably  a 
personal  tribute  to  Constantine'  when  the  author  says  that 
ihe  sun  is  the  god  by  whose  gifts  we  both  live  and  see. 

The  other  anonymous  panegyrist  perhaps  comes  nearer  to 
!3eing  a  theist,  but  he  still  thinks  it  safe  to  say  "  your  deity," 
as  now  we  might  say  "your  majesty."  He  is  perhaps  the 
simplest  of  all  the  panegyrists,  because  he  has  an  exciting  and 
manageable  story  to  tell,  and  he  is  disposed  to  apologize  for 
what  he  takes  for  rhetorical  flights.  He  insists  that  he  is  not 
a  Roman,  perhaps  because  Maxentius  insisted  that  he  was 
the  one  genuine  Roman  emperor,  inasmuch  as  he,  and  he 
klone,  lived  at  Rome. 

Nazarius,  a  professor  of  Bordeaux,  spoke  himself  on  this 
campaign,  as  we  learn  from  a  speech  delivered  eight  years  later 
^o  celebrate  the  fifteenth  anniversary  of  Constantine's  acces- 
sion, and  the  fifth  anniversary  of  the  admission  of  his  son  to 
^ank  as  Caesar.  If  we  could  trust  the  text,  Nazarius  had  de- 
livered two  speeches  on  successive  days,  and  in  the  first  he 
liad  handled  the  campaign  against  Maxentius,  but  it  is  not 
Inadmissible  to  read  pridcin^  "  some  time  before,"  instead  of 
fridic,  "  the  day  before."  In  that  case  the  anonymous  speech 
Imight  not  impossibly  be  the  speech  of  Nazarius,  for  there  is 
no  reason  why  a  rhetorician  should  not  acquire  a  new  manner 
in  eight  years.  The  undoubted  speech  of  Nazarius,  who,  ac- 
cording to  St.  Jerome's  chronicle,  reached  the  height  of  his 
reputation  about  five  years  later,  is  certainly  more  ornate  than 
its  predecessors,  and  rather  more  stately  in  cadences;  be- 

^  His  devotion  to  the  sun  appears  on  his  coins  after  he  saw  "the  sign 
of  the  sun,"  which  he  afterwards  .thought  converted  him  to  Christianity. 


334 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


sides,  the  vocabulary  abounds  in  verbal  substantives,  many 
coined  for  the  occasion,  and  in  semi-poetical  phrases  which 
are  of  the  kind  we  might  expect  from  a  rhetorician  who  had 
lately  been  reading  Tacitus.  The  speech  is  singularly  un- 
real ;  it  is  addressed  throughout  to  Constantine,  though  he  is 

absent. 

There  is  more  actuality  in  the  last  two  speeches  in  the  col- 
lection.    One  is  addressed  to  Julian  in  361  by  Claudius  Ma- 
mertinus,  to  thank  him  for  his  consulship,  and  the  other  by 
Latinus  Pacatus  Drepanius  to  Theodosius  the  Great,  to  thank 
him  for  delivering  Gaul  from  the  usurper  Maximus.     Mamer- 
tinus  is  obviously  anxious  to  rival  the  independence  of  Pliny; 
like  him,  he  assumes  to  be  the  chosen  colleague  of  a  patriot 
prince  who  is  just  closing  an  era  of  oppression  and  opening  a 
new  golden  age  to  mankind.     The  parallel  is  not  very  exact: 
instead  of  being  the  colleague  of  the  emperor,  Mamertinus 
was  the  colleague  of  the  barbarian  Nevitta,  whose  nomination 
^ave  great  offence,  tlie  rather  that  Julian  had  satirized  his  un- 
cle Constantine  for  conferring  the  consulship  on  a  barbarian 
whose  rank  and  services  both  stood  higher;  and  seven  years 
after  his  consulship  ivlamertinus  came  to  be  deposed  from 
office  and  tried  for  peculation.     Even  apart  from  the  sequel, 
the  speech  is  abundantly  grotesque.     The  author  takes  im- 
mortal god  to  witness  — he  takes  his  pure  conscience  to  wit- 
ness, which  he  reveres  as  a  god— that  if  Constantius,  who  was 
dead,  or,  as  the  author  puts  it,  deified,  were  still  alive,  the  Ro- 
mans should  see  with  what  a  steady  spirit  he  would  defend 
Julian  against  that  emperor's  flatterers,  w^io  had  denounced 
the  hero  solely  on  account  of  the  virtues  which  ought  to  have 
been  pledges  of  permanent  friendship.     In  the  same  spirit 
the  author  dilates  on  the  great  goodness  of  the  emperor  in 
giving  unasked  the  consulship  which  he  had  hankered  after 
all  his  life.     He  recounts  with  natural  exultation  the  ceremo- 
nious way  in  which  Julian  did  honor  to  the  first  magistrates 
of  what  had  been  a  republic  (other  observers  thought  Julian's 
behavior  a  piece  of  childish  antiquarianism  in  a  monarch). 
He  actually  assures  us,  apropos  of  the  emperor's  official  salu- 
tation, Ave  consul  amplissime,  that  he  is,  and  means  to  be,  quite 


THE  PANEGYRISTS. 


335 


as  well  as  was  to  be  expected  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  favor 
of  such  an  illustrious  emperor  as  Julian,  and  felt  that  his 
"grandeur"  was  entirely  unalloyed.  Though  he  intends  to 
spare  the  memory  of  Constantius,  he  emphasizes  the  fact  that 
he  brought  the  barbarians  into  Gaul  to  embarrass  Magnen- 
tius,  which  rather  lessens  Julian's  glory  in  driving  them  out. 
He  succeeds  better  in  bringing  out  the  immense  boon  which 
an  emperor  with  simple  tastes  was  to  the  provincials.  Julian 
kept  no  court,  and  he  did  not  care  about  building,  and  so  he 
was  able  to  make  largesses  to  the  communities,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  remit  taxes  all  along  the  road  to  Constantinople. 
It  is  curious  to  find  the  same  praise  given  to  Theodosius, 
>vhom  most  historians  represent  as  one  of  the  most  luxurious 
of  the  emperors.  The  praise  of  Drepanius  *  is  not  pitched  so 
high;  perhaps  we  may  suppose  that  the  habits  of  Theodosius 
on  a  campaign  w^ere  a  real  contrast  to  the  parvenu  luxury  of 
Maximus.  Of  course  it  is  an  embarrassing  question  why,  if  it 
was  a  glorious  achievement  to  put  down  Maximus,  he  was  al- 
lowed to  enjoy  his  usurpation  so  long.  Drepanius  can  only 
dilate  on  his  madness  in  presuming  on  the  forbearance  of  the 
emperor.  The  picture  of  the  misgovernment  of  Maximus  is 
bot  very  characteristic ;  he  is  accused  of  the  kind  of  things 
of  which  every  ruler  of  the  fourth  century,  except  Julian,  was 
accused  when  unpopular — of  living  upon  confiscations,  treat- 
ing wealth  as  a  crime,  and  trafficking  in  the  marriage  of  heir- 
esses—perhaps  the  oldest  of  all  the  incidents  of  feudalism. 
The  only  special  trait  is  that  he  was  more  dependent  upon  his 
army,  and  had  shocked  a  large  body  of  opinion  by  putting 
^ome  Priscillianists  to  death.  Of  this  Drepanius  speaks  just 
as  a  modern  writer  might  speak  of  persecution :  he  has  not  the 
least  susmcion  that  the  Priscillianists  were  heretics,  and  that 
Maximus  had  set  an  example  which  every  orthodox  emperor 
would  have  to  follow. 

'  Drepanius  came  to  Rome  to  offer  his  speech  of  congratulation.  He 
belonged,  like  Nazarius,  to  the  circle  of  Ausonius,  who  dedicates  two  of 
his  lighter  works  to  him.  He  was  a  native  of  the  canton  of  which  Agin- 
num  (Agen)  was  the  capital,  and  doubtless  formed  himself  in  the  rhetor- 
ical school  of  Bordeaux,  though  he  was  not  a  professor  there.  He  never 
rose  higher  in  the  public  service  than  proconsul. 


336 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


SEXTUS  AURELIUS    VICTOR. 


337 


But,  after  all,  there  is  little  to  choose  beween  any  of  these 
writers ;  even  their  mannerisms  are  not  really  distinctive. 
They  all  make  it  their  business  to  multiply  ingenious  excla- 
mations at  as  many  acts  as  they  can  of  the  emperor  pane- 
gyrized ;  they  all  have  the  same  grotesque  affectation  of  pa- 
tronizing independence  as  if  they  were  the  organs  of  public 
approbation,  which  doubtless  springs  in  part  from  genuine 
public  spirit,  though  it  provokes  a  smile  even  in  the  younger 
Pliny.  And  the  younger  Pliny  always  preserves  his  self- 
respect  ;  like  every  Roman  senator  of  the  first  century,  he 
could  foil  back  upon  the  natural  pride  of  traditional  gentility, 
while  it  is  difficult  to  think  that  any  of  his  successors  had  any 
self-respect  to  preserve. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  HISTORIANS. 

The  rhetorical  activity  of  the  time,  imitative  as  it  is,  gives 
us  an  outside  measure  of  its  intellectual  activity.  It  was  bar- 
ren in  poetry  till  the  age  of  Theodosius  ;  it  was  barren  in 
history  till  the  age  of  Theodosius  ;  it  was  barren  even  in  com- 
pilations till  we  come  to  the  second  half  of  the  fourth  century, 
and  then  it  is  true  that  we  have  plenty  which  are  good  of  their 
kind. 

Three  at  least  of  the  works  of  this  period  have  come  to  be 
among  the  first  Latin  books  put  into  the  hands  of  schoolboys, 
and  this  shows  that  they  are  simple  enough  in  style  to  be  tol- 
erably correct. 

SEXTUS  AURELIUS  VICTOR. 

The  two  most  important  of  the  compilers  belonged  at  once 
to  the  literary  class  and  the  official  hierarchy.  Sextus  Au- 
relius  Victor,  who  wrote  under  Constantius,  was  the  son  of  an 
insignificant  father  who  was  not  over-learned,  and  owed  the 
distinction  of  his  own  life  to  his  studies.  He  was  one  of  the 
few  who  did  credit  to  the  patronage  of  Julian,  who  sent  for 
him  on  his  way  to  Constantinople  and  appointed  him  *'  con- 
sular" of  part  of  Pannonia.  He  wrote  a  short  history  of  the 
empire  to  the  death  of  Constantius,  whom  he  mentions  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  work  as  Jioster  princeps;  his  tone  is  com- 
mendably  cool  and  impartial;  he  has  no  affectation  of  homage 
or  independence,  and  closes  his  work  without  an  intimation 
that  the  sequel  requires  higher  inspiration  than  his.  The 
work  is  clear  and  sober,  and  one  can  hardly  draw  any  infer- 
ence personal  to  the  writer  from  the  emphasis  which  he  gives 
to  prodigies.  From  Suetonius  to  Marius  Maximus,  perhaps 
from    Marius   Maximus   to   the  compilers   of  the   Augustan 

H.-15 


I 


338 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


History,  the  importance  given  to  this  part  of  hfe  went  on 
crrowing,  and  the  conversion  of  the  emperors  and  of  the  Greek- 
speaking  parts  of  the  empire  naturally  gave  it  for  the  tune  the 
more  importance.  Every  one  who  clung  to  the  old  ways  or  * 
disliked  the  new  had  an  interest  in  knowing  and  believmg  as 
much  as  he  could  of  tales  which  went  to  prove  that  mscru- 
table  superhuman  powers  had  given  their  sanction  to  the  old 

religion  of  Rome.  .  c  ^.  -. 

His  work  was  so  popular  from  the  first  that  it  was  felt  it 
had  to  be  completed  in  the  fifth  century.  It  had  been  bound 
up  with  a  contemporary  work,  "  De  Viris  lUustribus,"  which 
is  a  sort  of  biographical  history  of  the  regal  and  republican 
period  including  several  foreign  notabilities,  down  to  Cleo- 
patra, whose  lives  were  part  of  Roman  history.  The  work 
begins  with  Procus,  the  father  of  Numitor  and  Amulius.  1  he 
pr'mcipal  sources  seem  to  be  Cornelius  Nepos,  Suetonius,  and 
Florus.  The  author  had  not  read  Livy  for  himself.  The  MSS. 
incorporate  a  work  of  the  fifth  or  sixth  century,  by  a  certain 
Victor  of  Africa,  on  the  origin  of  the  Roman  nation,  which  is 
full  of  a  parade  of  citations  from  works  which  the  compiler 
had  assuredly  never  read. 

An  epitome  of  the  work  on  the  Csesars  was  drawn  up  a 
century  later,  and  carried  down  to  the  death  of  Theodosius 
the  Great ;  apparently  the  epitomist  had  some  independent 
knowledge  of  the  period  before  the  death  of  Constantius. 

EUTROPIUS. 

Eutropius,  who  was  an  "  Italian  sophist,"  according  to 
Suidas,  followed  Julian  in  his  eastern  campaign,  which  he 
calls  a  war  against  the  Parthians,  and  may  very  well  be  iden- 
tified with  the  Eutropius  who  was  proconsul  of  Asia  in  a.d.' 
371,  and,  having  escaped  an  accusation  of  conspiracy,  attained 
the  dignity  of  praetorian  prefect  from  380  to  387.  His  history 
covers^the  period  from  the  foundation  of  the  city  to  the  death 
of  Jovian,  and  it  is  dedicated  to  Valens,  with  a  concluding 
observation  that  the  reigns  of  such  illustrious  princes  as  the 
present  rulers  deserve  a  more  extended  record,  which  he  hopes 
hereafter  to  supply  with  greater  diligence  than  could  be  ex- 


AMMIANUS. 


339 


pected  at  the  end  of  a  mere  compendium.  Through  the  re- 
publican period  Eutropius  follows  Livy,  whom  he  knows  at 
first  hand,  pretty  closely,  and  represents  him  not  inaccurately. 
Afterwards  he  takes  Suetonius  and  the  Augustan  History  for 
his  guides,  without  apparently  using  Herodian  or  the  numer- 
ous more  or  less  trustworthy  writers  who  wrote  in  Greek  of 
the  history  of  the  emperors  of  the  second  and  third  centuries. 
He  was  translated  into  Greek  himself  by  a  certain  Capito,  a 
I^ycian,  and  thus  helped  to  suppress  most  of  the  books  which 
he  had  not  read. 

Short  as  the  compendium  of  Eutropius  was,  it  was  appar- 
ently too  long  for  Valens,  who  commissioned  a  certain  Sextus 
Rufus,  of  whom  we  know  nothing  else,  to  write  a  still  shorter 
abridgment,  which  is  too  meagre  to  be  readable.  He,  too, 
though  aware  that  he  is  incapable  of  fine  writing,  and  too  old 
to  do  his  best,  expresses  a  hope  that  he  will  be  able  to  cele- 
brate the  glories  of  his  patron,  whom  in  his  dedication  he  calls 
an  emperor  better  than  good. 

AMMIANUS    MARCELLINUS. 

Still,  the  period  had  one  considerable  historian  whose  am- 
bition and  natural  intelligence  are  decidedly  above  the  aver- 
age of  Roman  historians.  If  he  does  not  rise  to  the  eminence 
of  Caisar  and  Livy  and  Tacitus,  he  is  almost  in  substance  the 
peer  of  Sallust.  But  Sallust's  style,  though  affected,  is  ad- 
mirable ;  that  of  Ammianus  Marcellinus  is,  upon  the  whole, 
abominable :  it  leaves  the  impression  that  he  might  have  been 
an  eloquent  writer  if  he  had  been  able  to  write  Latin,  and  that 
he  might  have  learned  to  write  Latin  if  he  had  not  insisted  on 
writing  eloquently. 

He  took  to  literature  late  in  life,  for  he  started  with  a  high 
rank  in  the  household  troops  when  he  was  sent  to  Antioch 
with  Ursicinus  in  a.d.  353,  and  his  work  was  probably  not 
completed  till  after  a.d.  395.  He  speaks  of  Theodosius  as 
"  a  most  excellent  emperor,  as  he  afterwards  proved,"  which 
seems  to  imply  he  was  dead  when  he  wrote ;  but  it  is  certain 
that  all  books  up  to  the  twenty-second  must  have  been  writ- 
ten before  a.d.  391,  which  is  the  accepted  date  of  the  sack 


340 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


of  the  Serapeum,  for  in  the  twenty-second  book  the  author 
writes  as  if  the  Serapeum  were  standing. 

Animianus  was  a  Greek  of  Antioch,  and  served  through  the 
Persian  campaign  of  Julian,  as  well  as  the  different  expedi- 
tions to  which  Ursicinus  was  appointed,  and  from  which  he 
was  recalled.  After  the  death  of  Julian,  a.d.  363,  he  accom- 
panied the  retreat  of  Jovian  as  far  as  Antioch,  and  was  still 
there  in  a.d.  371,  when  the  conspiracy  of  Theodorus  was  put 
down,  and  this  is  the  last  point  at  which  we  can  trace  him  bv 
his  own  writings.  It  is  tempting  to  identify  him  with  the  Mar- 
cellinus  whom  we  find  in  high  office  at  Rome  in  a.d.  383,  to 
whom  two  laws  in  the  "Theodosian  Code  "  are  addressed.  At 
any  rate,  we  know  that  he  settled  in  Rome  and  wrote  his  his- 
tory there,  and  even  recited  it  in  periodical  instalments  with 
so  much  applause  that  Libanius  could  congratulate  the  author 
on  what  he  heard  of  his  success.  One  cannot  make  much  of 
this  testimony,  as  we  know  that  Ammianus  was  disgusted  with 
the  high  society  of  Rome — very  likely  he  would  have  been  a 
greater  man  at  Antioch.  Libanius's  compliments  sound  as  if 
he  meant  to  make  his  friend  contented.  Rome  is  more  like 
heaven  than  earth  ;  you  might  be  glad  to  live  there  if  you  only 
listened  to  other  men,  and  you  have  actually  an  audience  of 
your  own.  Besides,  Libanius  wished  to  think  that  Ammianus 
was  doing  his  native  city  credit,  both  by  his  own  reputation 
and  by  his  report  of  its  worthies. 

He  had  the  boldness  to  measure  himself  with  Tacitus  by 
continuing  him.  His  work  extended  from  the  accession  of 
Nerva  to  the  death  of  Valens  in  387.  The  first  thirteen  books 
have  been  lost,  and  the  fourteenth  begins  abruptly  with  the 
tyranny  of  Gallus  in  Antioch  in  a.d.  353,  so  that  eighteen 
books  are  devoted  to  the  events  of  twenty -six  years,  while 
nearly  ten  times  as  many  were  crowded  into  thirteen.' 

'  Hugo  Michael  (in  a  pamphlet  published  by  Maruschke  &  Berendt, 
Breslau,  1880)  argues  that  the  31  or  32  books  (assuming  that  one  has  been 
lost  between  30  and  31)  deal  exclusively  with  the  events  of  Ammianus's 
own  life,  on  the  ground  that,  with  the  digressions  referred  to,  the  years 
from  the  death  of  Constantino  would  fill  thirteen  books,  and  that  in  the 
period  after  Constantine  we  have  reference  from  one  digression  to  another 
instead  of  repetitions ;  while  the  remarks  on  Egypt  seem  to  repeat  what 


AMMIANUS. 


341 


He  is  as  independent  in  temper  as  Tacitus,  but  he  is  not 
in  revolt  against  the  monarchy,  and  takes  a  great  deal  of 
severity  for  granted.  Constantius  and  the  elder  Valentinian 
ordered  at  least  as  many  executions  as  Tiberius,  and  yet  Val- 
entinian is  an  excellent  emperor  on  the  whole,  and  there 
were  many  w^orse  emperors  than  Constantius. 

Here  is  a  fair  specimen  of  both  the  author's  style  and 
temper:  it  describes  what  happened  when  Procopius,  the 
friend  of  Julian  and  his  chosen  successor,  had  failed  in  the 
rebellion  into  which  he  had  been  frightened.  "  When  the 
deadliness  of  war  had  been  rooted  out  by  the  fall  of  the 
leader,  there  was  wrath  upon  many  sharper  than  their  errors 
had  demanded,  or  their  crimes,  and  chiefly  upon  the  defend- 
ers of  Philippopolis,  who  gave  up  themselves  and  the  city 
with  a  very  ill  grace,  and  that  not  till  they  saw  the  head  of 
Procopius,  which  was  being  carried  to  Gaul.  Still  some  had 
gentler  discipline  to  grace  their  intercessors :  among  these 
Araxius  was  conspicuous,  having  in  the  very  glow  of  the 
burning -up  of  the  world  attained  a  prefecture,  and  on  the 
intercession  of  his  son-in-law,  Agilo,  being  visited  with  in- 
sular punishment,  in  a  little  while  escaped.  But  Euphrasius 
and  Phronemius  also  were  sent  to  the  western  regions  and 
subjected  to  the  judgment  of  Valentinian,  and,  while  Euphra- 
sius was  absolved,  Phronemius  was  deported  to  Chersonese, 
being  more  harshly  punished  in  like  case  because  he  was 
favored  by  Julian  of  immortal  memory,  whose  virtues  the 
two  imperial  brothers  depreciated,  since  they  were  neither 
like  him  nor  next  to  him. 

"  Upon  this  came  other  things  more  grievous  and  much 
more  to  be  feared  than  aught  in  battle.  For  the  executioner 
and  the  hooks  and  the  bloody  tortures  without  ^any  distinc- 
tion of  age  and  dignity  were  let  loose  through  every  rank 
and  fortune,  and  under  screen  of  peace  abominable  judg- 
ments were  plied,  till  all  with  one  consent  execrated  the  ill- 
had  been  said  before  in  the  reigns  of  Trajan  and  Severus.  It  would 
follow  that  we  have  the  larger  half  of  a  work  like  the  Histories  of  Tac- 
itus, while  the  work  corresponding  to  the  Annals  has  been  altogether 
lost. 


342 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


omened  victory  more  grievous  than  any  war  to  the  death. 
For  while  arms  clash  and  trumpets  blow  the  peril  is  lighter, 
since  all  have  equal  chance,  and  the  power  of  martial  valor 
either  matches  what  it  dared,  or  unexpected  death,  if  it  befall, 
has  no  sense  of  ignominy  in  it,  and  brings  along  the  end  of 
life  and  pain  at  once.  But  where  right  and  law  forsooth  are 
made  a  screen  to  pitiless  counsels,  and  judges  are  set  down 
bedaubed  with  paint  of  sentencing,  like  a  Cassius  or  a  Cato, 
while  that  is  done  which  is  done  at  the  beck  of  high-swollen 
authority,  and  the  balance  of  life  and  death  was  swayed  at 
the  lust  thereof  for  such  as  fall  into  the  snare,  there  deadly 
and  headlong  destruction  rolls  its  round.  For  as  each  at 
such  a  time,  for  whatsoever  cause  he  would,  hurrying  to  the 
palace,  and  burned  up  by  the  greed  of  plundering  other 
men's  goods,  though  citing  one  whose  innocence  was  clear, 
he  was  received  as  a  faithful  retainer  of  the  household,  to  be 
enriched  by  the  downfall  of  others.  For  the  emperor,  being 
quick  to  hurt,  open-eared  to  accusations,  and  welcoming  the 
deadly  brood  of  informers,  burst  out  with  loosened  rein 
through  manifold  punishments,  not  knowing  the  judgment 
of  Tully,  which  teaches  that  such  are  unhappy  as  have 
deemed  that  to  them  all  things  are  lawful.  This  implaca- 
bility in  a  cause  most  unrighteous  and  a  victory  yet  fouler 
exposed  many  who  were  innocent  to  tormentors,  or  bowed 
them  with  bent  heads  under  the  rack  or  under  the  blow  of 
a  cruel  executioner.  They  would  have  chosen,  if  nature  gave 
leave,  to  spend  ten  lives  apiece  in  fight  rather  than  risk  their 
sides  torn  open  when  they  were  clear  of  every  fault ;  and 
with  every  estate  groaning  over  them,  to  pay  the  penalty  of 
alleged  treason  with  their  bodies  torn  aforehand  with  scourges 
— a  doom  sadder  than  any  death.  Presently,  when  cruelty 
had  burned  out,  being  overcome  of  calamity,  proscription  and 
exile  and  other  punishments,  lighter  as  some  deem,  though 
sharp  enough,  had  to  be  borne  by  men  of  the  highest  rank  ; 
and,  to  enrich  another,  one  of  noble  race,  and  haply  worthier 
of  wealth,  was  driven  headlong  from  his  heritage  and  thrust 
into  exile  to  wear  away  with  grief  or  eke  out  a  living  by  beg- 
ging alms,  and  no  measure  was  set  to  pernicious  miseries  till 


AMMIANUS. 


343 


the  emperor  and  his  favorites  were  filled  full  of  riches  and 

slaughter." ' 

The  writer  is  trying  hard  to  be  eloquent,  and  it  would 
probably  be  granted  that  he  is  eloquent,  at  the  expense  of 
bein'T  tedious  and  ungrammatical  (the  translation  certainly 
does  not  exaggerate  his  incoherences  and  redundancies), 
but  he  is  much  more  pained  than  indignant. 

He  forgets,  indeed,  that  an  officer  who  distinguished  him- 
self by  his  gallantry  in  storming  Cyzicus  in  the  interest  of 
Procopius  was  allowed  to  retain  his  rank  as  well  as  his  life 
when  the  rebellion  was  put  down.     He  has  a  horror  of  Pro- 
copius's  rebellion  simply  because  it  was  rebellion,  and  with 
the  same  incoherence  he  notes  in  his  obituary,  both  of  Val- 
eritinian  and  Valens,  that  each  displayed  a  most  unprincely 
and  unphilosophical  greed  for  the  gains  of  confiscation,  while 
each  distinguished  himself  by  his  unaffected  zeal  to  keep 
down  taxation,  and  to  restrain  provincial  governors  from  un- 
due exaction.     In  speaking  of  Valentinian,  he  adds  that  he 
was    always   glad   whenever  any  judge   of  his   appointment 
turned    out    severe,  though    he    abstained    from    appointing 
judges  for   their   severity.     All   these   traits   might  be   ex- 
plained  naturally  enough   by   supposing   that   honesty  was 
generally  declining,  and    that  Valentinian    and   his   brother 
were  resolved  at  any  cost  to  have  a  cheap  and  honest  gov- 
ernment.     Ammianus's  comment  is,  that  anger  is  always  a 
proof  that  due  fortitude  has  been  lacking.     It  is  curious  that 
he  praises  Constantius  for  his  diligence  in  upholding  the 
"eminence  of  the  imperial  buskin,"  and  setting  "  popularity  " 
at  defiance.     Evidently  it  was  increasingly  difficult  to  find  an 
emperor  with  resolution  enough  to  be  master,  and  not  care 
about  making  things  pleasant   in  his  immediate  neighbor- 
hood at  the  expense  of  the  state ;  a  kindred  merit  was  that 
he  maintained  the  regular  order  of  promotion,  and  never  al- 
lowed a  great  officer  to  become  too  powerful.     It  is  remark- 
able that  a  really  independent  writer  considers  such  things  a 
real  set-off  to  the  ferocious  suspicions  which  made  every  one 
insecure,  and  to  the  intimacy  with  eunuchs,  who  intensified 

»  Amm.  "  Marc."  XXVI.  x.  6-14. 


!H;k: 


344 


LATIM  LITERATURE. 


the  fears  which  fed  their  avarice.  And  this  is  the  explana- 
tion of  the  high  value  which  Ammianus  evidently  sets  upon 
the  imperial  chastity  of  Constantius,  Valens,  and  Valentinian. 
It  has  nothing  to  do  with  religion,  for  he  remarks  that  Jovian, 
who  gave  the  Christians  their  revenge  on  Julian,  was  given 
to  wine  and  women,  without  the  least  attempt  to  triumph  in 
the  inconsistency.  The  real  merit  of  imperial  chastity  was 
that  there  were  no  favorites  of  the  most  discreditable  kind  to 
extort  favors  or  cruelties  from  their  lover  and  bribes  from 
everv  one  else. 

On  religion  Ammianus  gives  a  very  uncertain  sound,  and 
one  can  hardly  tell  how  far  he  expresses  his  own  sentiments 
or  those  which  he  expected  his  audience  to  approve.  He  is 
about  equally  displeased  by  the  superstition  of  Julian  and  by 
the  superstition  of  Constantius.  Julian  was  economical  in 
everything  but  sacrifices,  and  on  them  he  wasted  time  and 
money  as  if  he  had  never  heard  the  epigram  on  Marcus 
Aurelius — 

All  we  white  bulls  greet  Marcus  Caesar  well, 

But  if  he  conquer  we  may  go  to  hell. 

On  the  other  hand,  Constantius  made  the  'irabsolute  sim- 
plicity" of  the  Christian  religion  ridiculous  by  his  endless 
curiosity.  So  far  as  Ammianus  shows  a  preference  for  pagan- 
ism, it  is  in  connection  with  the  ancestral  rites  of  Rome,  and 
the  Roman  aristocracy,  on  the  whole,  still  adhered  to  what 
was  left  of  these  and  regretted  what  was  gone.  The  waver- 
ing attempts  of  Constantius  at  the  suppression  of  paganism 
are  marked  as  signs  of  his  foolish  belief  that  it  was  possible 
to  make  all  men  think  alike  ;  while  Valentinian  is  praised 
for  his  perfect  toleration.  The  great  fight  in  the  Liberian 
Basilica  between  those  who  supported  and  those  who  op- 
posed the  election  of  St.  Damasus  is  used  to  discredit  Chris- 
tians rather  than  Christianity.  Ammianus  is  decidedly  care- 
less of  the  details  of  ecclesiastical  controversy  :  he  confounds 
Didymus  and  Origen,  does  not- know  that  St.  Athanasius  was 
contending  for  any  doctrine  in  particular;  when  he  men- 
tions the  banishment  of  St.  Liberius,  he  tells  us  he  provoked 
the  emperor  by  refusing  to  concur  in  the  sentence  of  other 


AMMIANUS. 


345 


bishops  who  deposed  Athanasius  from  the  jurisdiction  which 
he  had  stretched  beyond  its  proper  limits.  The  truth  is,  he 
seems  to  be  a  theist,  with  no  strong  view  about  special  forms 
of  worship,  except  that  they  ought  to  be  left  to  individual 
choice.  He  is  more  personally  interested  in  what  he  takes 
to  be  philosophical  speculations  about  the  way  stars  shed 
souls  as  flowers  shed  seeds,  and  how  the  sun's  heat  fills  them 
with  prophetic  light,  since  they  are  sparks  from  the  sun  (this 
is  a  perverse  way  of  putting  the  fact  that  a  sudden  flow  of 
blood  caused  by  solar  heat  or  otherwise  gives  temporary 
clearness  to  thought),  and  the  mystical  values  of  letters,  which 
were  a  favorite  device  of  pretenders  to  occult  knowledge. 
When  Valens  put  Theodorus  and  many  who  were  and  were 
not  his  accomplices  to  death,  because  a  soothsayer  had  de- 
cided that  the  first  four  letters  of  Valens's  successor  should 
be  Theod,  his  cruelty  was  no  doubt  mistaken,  but  the  art  of 
the  soothsayer  was  not  mistaken  :  the  fates  really  intended 
to  signify  that  Theodosius  was  to  succeed  Valens.  So,  too, 
though  he  ridicules  Julian  for  the  multitude  of  his  sacrifices, 
he  relates  signs  found  in  the  entrails  of  beasts  which  were 
confirmed  by  the  event. 

The  only  alternative  which  he  offers  to  this  irrational  seek- 
ing after  signs  is  the  tradition  of  experience  embodied  in 
philosophy:  he  seldom  dismisses  any  one  whose  ambition 
has  involved  him  in  calamity  without  reminding  us  of  a  ven- 
erable text  which  might  have  saved  him  if  he  had  known  and 
heeded  it.  And  calamity  was  never  far  off:  one  of  the  points 
which  Ammianus  brings  out  most  clearly  is  that  the  higher 
officials  hated  one  another,  and  those  who  pushed  their  way 
highest  were  almost  certain  to  fall  farthest. 

One  curious  result  of  this  demoralization  is  that  Ammi- 
anus has  no  abhorrence  whatever  of  treachery  ;  he  notices  in 
the  most  matter-of-fact  wMy  that  Julian  kept  Epiphany  sol- 
emnly after  the  Christian  fashign  on  the  eve  of  his  revolt,  in 
order  to  make  sure  of  his  ix>pularity,  some  time  after  he  had 
decided  that  paganism  suited  him  best.  In  the  same  way 
he  applauds  Julian  for  the  cleverness  with  which  he  arrested 
the  son  of  a  Prankish  king  and  a  king  of  the  Alemanni,  who 

II.-15* 


^ 


346 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK, 


AMMIANUS. 


347 


was  said  to  be  in  confidential  correspondence  with  Constan- 
tius  at  the  time  of  Julian's  revolt.  It  is  true  that  in  both 
cases  the  persons  arrested  got  off  very  easily.  Vadomarius, 
the  king  of  the  Alemanni,  had  opportunity  afterwards  to  dis- 
play his  talent  for  dissimulation  as  prefect  of  Phcenice,  and 
even  at  first  was  simply  sent  to  Spain  without  being  roughly 
handled  in  any  way.  It  is  true,  too,  that  Ammianus  could 
not  afford  to  be  squeamish  :  he  had  been  employed  himself 
on  the  staff  of  his  patron  in  one  of  the  most  questionable  of 
the  arrests  of  Constantius,  for  the  person  arrested  was  in  an 
unusually  good  position  to  head  a  revolt,  and  Ammianus's 
patron  sympathized  enough  with  him  to  feel  that  under  the 
circumstances  to  cultivate  his  intimacy  for  days  together  was 
hardly  an  honorable  service.  But  Ammianus  spends  little 
more  space  on  this  than  on  explaining  the  admirable  device 
of  sealed  orders  which  he  seems  to  think  was  applied  for  the 
first  time  for  the  apprehension  of  Vadomarius.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  Vadomarius  had  defeated  two  of  the  reduced 
legions  of  the  day,  with  the  loss  of  their  commander ;  and  it 
did  not  occur  to  Julian  to  avenge  the  defeat  openly,  or  to 
Vadomarius  that  after  such  an  achievement  it  was  very  hazard- 
ous to  cross  the  Rhine.  On  the  contrary,  he  made  a  point 
of  dining  with  the  chief  of  the  nearest  garrison,  and  stayed 
there  while  the  secretary  who  had  the  sealed  orders  went 
home  to  his  lodgings  to  consult  them.  Vadomarius  himself 
was  a  rogue,  for  he  habitually  wrote  to  Julian  as  Augustus, 
and  his  Lord  and  God  to  boot,  while  he  was  sending  de- 
spatches to  Constantius  about  "  his  Ccesar  who  did  not  know 
his  place.'' 

The  account  of  the  way  in  which  Julian  seized  the  empire 
is  instructive  as  showing  how  much  and  how  little  the  author 
knew  of  public  affairs:  the  intercepted  letters  of  Vadomarius 
were  published  ;  those  of  Constantius  were  left  to  rumor  and 
conjecture.  Julian  published  respectful  letters  of  remon- 
strance :  Ammianus  knew  of  others  which  he  had  not  been 
allowed  to  see,  and  would  have  thought  it  improper  to  re- 
produce if  he  had  seen  them. 

His   enthusiasm  for  Julian   throws  little  light   upon  the 


measures  of  his  reign,  though  he  treats  it  at  disproportionate 
length:  out  of  608  pages  of  Erfurdt's  edition,  320  are  de- 
voted to  the  seven  or  eight  years  of  his  administration  as 
Caesar  and  emperor,  against  208 '  for  the  fourteen  years  of 
Valentinian.  And,  after  all,  we  only  know  that  he  was  enter- 
prising and  clever  and  good-natured,  hot-tempered,  vain,  and 
a  little  haughty,  and  that  good  advice,  of  which  he  was  pa- 
tient, kept  his  hot  temper  from  doing  harm.  One  wonders 
to  find  that  he  was  made  a  hero  until  one  notices  that  he 
really  had  a  single  eye  to  the  public  service  :  he  was  so 
benevolent  that  it  was  thought  he  must  be  great.  His 
promptitude  was,  so  far  as  we  can  gather  from  Ammianus, 
his  most  valuable  military  quality,  and  it  was  not  a  sufficient 
provision  for  a  Persian  campaign.  It  is  curious  that,  though 
Ammianus  followed  the  Persian  campaign,  he  is  not  a  first- 
hand authority  upon  it.  A  minute  comparison  between  his 
account  and  that  of  Zosimus  shows  not  only  that  the  two  are 
connected,  but  that  they  both  followed  a  common  source,  and 
that  it  is  by  no  means  always  Ammianus  that  reproduces  it 
more  correctly.  It  seems  to  be  ascertained  that  Zosimus 
followed  Eunapius,  who  followed  Julian's  secretary. 

It  is  in  his  geography  that  Ammianus  is  inferior  to  Zosimus ; 
and  yet  he  makes  a  considerable  parade  of  it.  He  opens  the 
account  of  Julian's  campaign  in  Gaul  with  an  elaborate  de- 
scription of  the  country,  which  is  tolerably  well  done,  but 
taken  from  old  writers  whom  he  knew  through  the  compila- 
tion of  Timagenes,  and  gives  no  impression  of  the  actual  state 
of  the  country  beyond  an  enumeration  of  the  principal  cities, 
with  a  notice  of  casual  traits  like  the  vigor  with  which  a  Gaul- 
ish woman  can  throw  about  her  white  arms  in  a  tavern  brawl, 
or  the  singular  aversion  which  the  poorest,  especially  in  Aqui- 
tania,  showed  to  going  about  in  rags.  Still  more  curious  is 
the  dissertation  on  Thrace  and  the  coasts  of  the  Black  Sea, 
which  is  inserted  for  no  intelligible  reason,  when  the  author 
has  to  mention  Julian's  arrival  at  Constantinople,  except  that 

'  The  author  explains  that  in  recent  history  there  are  two  reasons  for 
reticence  :  one  is,  that  it  is  unsafe  to  mention  some  things ;  the  other, 
that  the  press  of  matter  is  so  great. 


HI 


w 


f 


348  LATIN  LITERATURE. 

the  reader  might  be  rather  tired  of  rhetoric  on  the  felicity  of 
Julian,  even  when  it  was  relieved  by  stories  of  his  sagacity  or 
vanity.  When  Maximus,  a  philosopher,  came  to  see  him,  he 
leaped  up  to  meet  him  from  the  judgment-seat:  when  one 
townsman  accused  another  of  treason  because  he  had  ordered 
a  purple  cloak  of  silken  pall,  he  ordered  the  mischief-maker 
to  be  presented  with  a  pair  of  purple  leggings,  which  he  was 
to  carry  to  his  enemy  to  see  if  a  complete  imperial  outfit  could 
make  an  emperor.  This  is  given  as  an  instance  of  the  em- 
peror's justice.  The  principal  instance  of  his  injustice  is  that 
he  always  decided  in  favor  of  tl;e  municipalities  against  those 
who  claimed  exemption  on  plausible  grounds.  The  author 
has  nothing  to  say  of  the  justice  or  injustice  of  the  execution 
of  several  suspected  partisans  of  Constantius,  but  as  one  of 
them  was  prefect  of  Egypt,  and  his  death  made  the  massacre 
of  George  of  Cappadocia  possible,  we  are  treated  to  a  long 
description  of  Egypt,  which  the  author  tells  us  is  short  com- 
pared to  the  history  given  under  the  reigns  of  Hadrian  and 
Severus.  In  the  same  spirit  the  abortive  invasion  of  Julian  is 
made  an  excuse  for  an  elaborate  description,  as  bookish  as 
the  rest,  of  the  eighteen  provinces  of  the  ancient  Persian 
monarchy,^  which  would  have  been  better  placed  as  an  intro- 
duction to  the  really  important  campaigns  of  Trajan  or  Gale- 
rius,  or  even  ^lius  Verus. 

All  the  digressions  of  Ammianus  are  not  so  pedantic  or 
superfluous.  It  is  true  that  it  would  have  been  quite  possible 
to  say  what  had  to  be  said  about  the  merely  civic  history  of 
Rome,  without  the  brilliant  pictures  of  the  corruption  of  the 
people  and  the  splendid  imbecility  of  the  nobles  :  but  the 
pictures  are  brilliant;  they  are  almost  as  good  as  Juvenal, 
better  than  anything  in  Claudian.  The  description  of  the 
tyranny  of  Gallus  is  also  fresh  and  vivid.  He  seems  to  have 
been  a  cross  between  Nero  and  an  abortive  Haroun  al  Ra- 

*  The  description  of  the  inhabitants  has  more  originality.  The  slender 
figures,  dark-pale  complexions,  goatish  eyes,  and  arched  meeting  eyebrows 
are  all  lifelike,  and  the  union  of  sobriety  in  eating  and  drinking,  with  a 
hyperbolical  ferocity  of  demeanor,  is  a  trait  which  seems  to  be  observed 
first  hand.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  description  of  the  Seres,  it  is  clear 
the  author  do^s  not  know  the  difference  between  silk  and  cotton. 


AMMIANUS. 


349 


i 


schid,  going  about  disguised  at  night,  partly  out  of  love  of 
mischief,  and  partly  because  he  thought  it  ingenious  to  act  as 
his  own  head-spy. 

In  other  ways  Ammianus  throws  light  upon  the  condition 
of  the  empire.  The  number  of  barbarous  names  in  high  ofBce 
is  startling.  We  learn  incidentally  that  Constantine  was  the 
first  to  open  the  consulship  to  barbarians,  though  he  selected 
more  distinguished  candidates  than  Julian,  who  ridiculed  his 
cousin  in  this  matter.  Again,  the  condition  of  Isauria  in  a 
state  of  chronic  insurrection  is  described  without  the  least 
surprise.  All  the  tactics  of  the  mountaineers  and  the  troops 
which  had  to  keep  them  in  check  are  clearly  described,  with 
the  admission  that  the  mountaineers  had  the  best  of  it  while 
they  kept  to  the  mountains,  but  they  could  always  be  block- 
aded when  too  troublesome,  and  so  starved  into  submission, 
as  they  could  make  no  fight  on  the  plain.  Africa,  again,  was 
in  a  state  of  tumult  all  through  the  reign  of  Valentinian,  being 
plundered  alike  by  the  governor  and  the  barbarians.  Yet  the 
writer  has  no  impression  that  the  world  is  crumbling  around 
him  when  he  praises  the  buildings  of  Nicomedia  :  "it  might 
be  taken  for  part  of  the  eternal  city." 

The  crushing  defeat  of  Valens  with  which  the  history  closes 
is  only  a  specimen  of  the  constant  inconstancy  of  fortune. 
He  believes  that  the  invasion  of  the  Goths  and  their  final  de- 
feat in  Paeonia  was  prophesied  in  Greek  verses  engraved  on 
a  stone  laid  bare  when  the  ancient  walls  of  Chalcedon  were 
pulled  down  to  build  a  bath  at  ConstarKinople.  Though  he 
is  indignant  at  the  unprofitable  treachery  of  Valens's  lieuten- 
ants before  the  Goths  had  become  hostile,  he  notes  with  grate- 
ful surprise  that  all  the  commanders  of  the  troops  beyond 
Taurus  happened  to  be  Romans,  so  that  the  energy  of  Julius, 
the  commander-in-chief,  could  display  itself  swiftly  and  whole- 
somely by  a  massacre  of  all  the  Goths  who  had  already  reached 
their  new  quarters :  the  massacre  was  carried  out  without  a 
hitch,  and  the  provinces  of  the  East  were  saved  a  great  risk ; 
and  Ammianus  tranquilly  concludes  by  exhorting  his  succes- 
sors, if  he  has  any,  to  "sharpen  their  tongues  to  a  loftier 
style  "  to  celebrate  the  reigp  of  Theodosius. 


350 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  III. 

POETS  OF  THE  REVIVAL. 

Poetry  was  the  latest  fruit  of  this  last  revival  of  the  maj- 
esty of  old  Rome,  as  it  was  the  first  fruit  of  the  outburst  of 
national  life  which  accompanied  the  Punic  Wars.  There  are 
no  works  that  one  can  assign  with  confidence  to  the  days  of 
Diocletian,  and  it  is  only  the  comparative  correctness  of  the 
versification  and  the  free  use  of  mythology  which  leads  us  to 
put  a  swarm  of  little  versifiers  so  early  as  the  beginning  of 
the  fourth  century.  Reposianus  wrote  of  the  loves  of  Mars 
and  Venus,  and  embodied  a  description  of  a  wood,  which  was 
still,  as  in  the  days  of  Persius,  a  favorite  subject  for  poetical 
apprentices.  Tuo  is  once  a  monosyllable,  and  gratiosa  must 
have  the  first  syllable  short  or  else  the  first  two  syllables  must 
be  scanned  together.  Pentadius  (perhaps  the  friend  of  Lac- 
tantius,  for  whom  he  drew  up  the  epitome  of  his  great  work) 
wrote  some  pretty  elegiac  trifles,  and  we  have  two  school  ex- 
.ercises  in  hexameters,  one  on  the  last  letter  of  Dido  to  ^neas 
before  her  suicide,  which  is  remarkable  because  the  refrains, 
one  of  which  is  repeated  nine  times  and  the  other  eleven 
times,  are  each  divided  between  two  lines;  the  other  on  the 
speech  of  Achilles  in  the  maidens'  bower  when  he  heard  the 
trumpet  of  Diomed.  The  theme  is  well  chosen — it  is  better 
than  the  common  version  that  he  betrayed  himself  by  his 
emotion  at  the  sight  of  arms;  but  the  treatment  and  versifica- 
tion are  tiresome  and  incorrect. 


PUBLILIUS    PORPHYRIUS    OPTATIANUS. 

Even  more  wearisome  is  the  laborious  trifling  of  Publilius 
Porphyrins  Optatianus,  who,  if  w^e  may  trust  St.  Jerome,  was 
recalled  from  exile  in  331  on  the  strength  of  a  volume  of 


JUVENCUS. 


351 


complimentary  poems  addressed  to  Constantine.     There  are 
twenty-six  of  them,  and  they  are  for  the  most  part  in  hexam- 
eters;  each  line  has   as  many  letters   as  there   are  lines  m 
the  poem,  so  that  each  poem  is  a  square,  and  on  the  square  a 
pattern  is  traced  by  writing  some  of  the  letters  in  red,  and  by 
reading  along  the  pattern  we  make  out  sentences  which  look 
sometimes  as  if  they  were,  or  had  been,  meant  for  verses;  oc- 
casionally the  writer  condescends  to  the  comparatively  easy 
device  of  acrostics.     The  work  is  accompanied  by  a  compli- 
mentary letter  of  Constantine's,  who  explains  that  if  poetry  is 
to  be  judged  by  its  serious  meaning  there  is  no  room  for  any- 
thing after  Homer  in  Greek  and  Vergil  in  Latin,  while  for 
amusing  ingenuity  nobody  surpasses  Optatianus.     There  is 
also  a  reply  of  the  author,  who  is  grateful  to  the  emperor  for 
reading  him.    The  first  poem  contains  an  allusion  to  his  exile, 
but  the  prose  correspondence  does  not  mention  it  on  either 
side. 

JUVENCUS. 

Optatianus  was  an  orthodox  Christian,  as  appears  from  the 
sentence  we  are  to  make  out  from  the  patterns  drawn  in  red 
over  his  poem,  but  Christianity  is  no  part  of  his  inspiration. 
His  contemporary,  Vettius   Aquilinus  Juvencus,  a   Spanish 
presbyter  of  noble  family,  on  the  contrary,  inspires  himself 
exclusively  with  the  Bible,  and  is  certainly  better  worth  read- 
ing than  any  Latin  writer  in  verse  between  Hadrian  and  Con- 
stantine.     His  most  famous  work  was  a  paraphrase  of  the 
Gospel  History  in  about  three  thousand  hexameters,  rather 
arbitrarily  divided  into  four  books.     He  explains  in  his  prol- 
ogue that  poetry  is  the  one  immortal  thing  in  this  perishable 
world  (he  seems  to  imagine  that  the  final  conflagration  is  at 
hand),  and  imagines,  as  so  many  writers  have  imagined  since, 
that  in  dealing  with  the  highest  realities  he  may  hope  to  pro- 
duce the  highest  poetry.     In  fact,  his  versification  is  vigorous 
and  easy,  and  readers  whose  taste  was  formed  upon  Vergil 
might  without  discredit  find  him  pleasanter  reading  than  the 
styleless  Latin  versions  of  the  New  Testament  which  preceded 
the  Vulgate.     He  adheres  as  closely  as  possible  to  the  text, 
and  so  escapes  losing  himself  in  amplifications,  and  his  readers 


352 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


at  the  time   would  not  be   scandalized  at  a  paraphrase  like 
sununi  totiantis  for  Dei. 

Either  JuvTncus  or  some  of  his  school  undertook  a  para- 
phrase of  the  Old  Testament,  of  which  the  greater  jDart  has 
only  been  recovered  in  the  present  generation;  165  verses  of 
Genesis  were  long  known  and  attributed  in  the  MSS.  to  St. 
Cyprian,  as  the  complete  work  on  Old  Testament  history  was 
in  a  Lorsch  MS.  of  which  the  table  of  contents  is  preserved; 
the  greater  part  of  Genesis  was  published  in  1733  ^''0"i  ^ 
Corbey  MS.,  which  ascribed  it  to  Juvencus,  and  the  first  half 
of  it — there  are  some  1500  lines  in  all — is  said  to  be  really 
in  his  style  ;  the  rest  is  disfigured  by  an  excessive  effort  after 
abbreviation.  Cardinal  Pitra  published  from  a  Cambridge 
and  two  Laon  MSS.,  all  copies  of  the  same  original,  the  whole 
of  Genesis  and  Exodus,  the  last  nearly  1400  verses,  and  speci- 
mens of  Leviticus,  Numbers,  and  Deuteronomy,  and  the  whole 
of  Joshua,  which  only  contains  586  lines. 

It  is  noteworthy  that,  while  in  the  Gospel  History  the  can- 
ticles are  rendered  in  hexameters,  the  canticles  in  the  Penta- 
teuch are  turned  into  lyrical  metres.  Otherwise  the  better 
parts  of  the  paraphrase  of  the  Old  Testament  resemble  the 
undoubted  work  of  Juvencus,  only  the  author  or  authors  de- 
part further  from  the  original;  in  Genesis  this  tendency  takes 
the  form  of  abridgment,  in  Exodus  it  takes  the  form  of  selec- 
tion and  expansion.  The  work  once  included  the  book  of 
Judges,  the  books  of  Kings,  Esther,  Judith,  and  the  Maccabees; 
the  author  or  authors  used  versions  older  than  the  Vuljrate. 

The  chief  mark  of  the  decay  of  the  language  is  that  the 
quantity  of  vowels  has  become  a  matter  of  pure  erudition, 
which  Juvencus  has  not  troubled  himself  to  acquire.  The 
vowels  which  the  grammarians  had  settled  were  short  or 
long  were  sounded  just  alike,  and  Juvencus  scanned  them 
as  it  suited  him ;  but,  as  has  been  said,  with  this  proviso  the 
verses  run  really  well.  Two  small  and  spirited  copies  of 
verse  on  Sodom  and  Nineveh  are  assigned  to  the  same  date, 
as  also  a  ferocious  declamation  in  which  the  "Mother  of  the 
Maccabees"  is  made  to  sacrifice  her  seven  sons,  less  to  their 
faith  than  to  her  glory. 


A  VIENUS.—A  USONIUS. 


353 


AVIENUS. 

frhe  first  respectable  secular  writer  in  verse  is  a  whole 
o-eneration  later :  his  name  was  Rufus  Festus  Avienus,  a  de- 
scendant  of  the  philosopher  Maximus  Rufus,  who  was  pro- 
consul twice,  in  Africa  in  a.d.  366,  and  in  Greece  371,  before 
he  published  his  works.  We  learn  this  from  an  inscription  in 
verse  addressed  to  Nortia,  the  goddess  of  his  native  Vulsinii, 
in  which  he  dilates  complacently  on  his  offices,  his  good  char- 
acter, his  numerous  children,  and  his  numerous  poems.  In 
fact,  his  complacency  supported  him  through  the  most  volu- 
minous undertakings.  He  translated  the  "  Aratea  "  for  the 
third  time,  trying  to  be  more  accurate  than  Cicero  or  Ger- 
manicus,  and  to  introduce  a  certain  element  of  mystical  learn- 
ing. He  paraphrased  the  "  Periegesis,"  or  tour  of  Diony- 
sius,  in  1394  hexameters,  and  is  said  to  describe  with  more 
spirit  than  his  original ;  he  also  described  the  coasts  of  the 
Mediterranean,  the  Black  Sea,  and  the  Caspian  in  iambic 
trimeters,  and  abridged  Livy  and  the  "  ^2neid  "  in  the  same 
metre.  Allowing  only  a  hundred  lines  to  a  book,  the  abridg- 
ment of  Livy  would  have  been  one  of  the  longest  poems  in 
the  world;  it  has  been  happily  lost,  like  the  abridgment  of 
Vergil  and  the  greater  part  of  the  "  Description  of  the  Coast 
of  the  Sea."  Several  minor  works  of  the  same  author  are  to 
be  found  in  anthologies.  Neither  they  nor  the  hymns  and 
inscriptions  of  St.  Damasus,  who  was  pope  from  a.d.  366  to 
384,  need  detain  us.  His  longest  work  consisted  of  twenty- 
six  hexameters  on  St.  Paul,  intended  as  a  preface  to  his 
epistles. 

AUSONIUS. 

Decimus  Magnus  Ausonius  is  a  much  more  interesting 
writer.  He  was  the  son  of  a  physician  settled  at  Bordeaux : 
he  himself  was  a  tolerable  rhetorician,  and  according  to  his 
own  account  one  of  the  first  grammarians  of  his  day,  and 
without  a  superior  in  Gaul.  This  led  to  his  being  employed 
by  the  elder  Valentinian  to.  educate  his  sons,  and,  once  es- 
tablished in  the  royal  household,  his  promotion  was  rapid. 
He   was   appointed    prsetorian   prefect  for   Gaul,   Italy,  and 


354 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


Africa  and  was  made  senior  consul  in  379,  which  was  still  an 
enviable  honor.     His  bool:  of  epigrams  has  three  dedications 
—one  to  Theodosius  the  emperor,  one  to  Syagrius,  whose  de- 
scendant was  the  last  representative  of  Roman  authority  in 
Gaul,  and   one   to  the   younger  Drepanius.      The  epigrams 
themselves  are  an  imitation  of  the  worst  parts  of  Martial,  his 
servility  and  obscenity,  and  of  the  duller  parts  of  the  anthol- 
o<ry— inscriptions  on  statues  and  the  like.     One  notices  that 
he  repeats  Martial's  unlucky  experiment  of  epigrams  in  hexam- 
eters, and  that  he  is  not  so   impersonal  as  even  Martial. 
Some  half-dozen  epigrams  are  spent  in  ringing  changes  on 
the  notion  that  Sylvius  Bonus,  a  Briton,  cannot  be  both  a 
Briton  and  good  ;  as  much  space  is  spent  on  nasty  imputa- 
tions against  a  certain  Eunus.     The  nastiness  is  gratuitous. 
Ausonius  has  a  better  right  than  Catullus  or  Martial  to  the 
stock  defence  of  poets,  that   their  life  is  better  than  their 
verses ;  he  appeals  to  his  wife,  who  ridicules  his  affectation 
of  naughtiness.     His  verses   to  her  are  really   tender  and 
crraceful :  *     "  Wife,  let  us  live  the  old  life  and  keep  the  old 
names  that  we  took  in  the  bridal  bower,  and  let  no  day  bring 
with  it  the  change  of  time,  but  let  me  always  be  your  lad  and 
you  my  lass,  though  I  be  further  on  in  years  than  Nestor,  and 
you  run  a  race  with  me,  and  even  pass  the  days  of  Deiphobe 
of  Cumce :  let  us  never  know  what  is  ripe  old  age  :  it  is  well 
to  remember  time  is  a  cheat,  and  ill   to  count  his  thefts.'* 
The  wife  to  whom  this  was  written  died  when  she  was  twenty- 
ei^ht.     Several  epigrams  are  occupied  with  enigmatical  com- 
plTments  on  her  skill  in  weaving  figured  stuffs.     And  Auso- 
nius showed  his  respect  for  her  memory  by  remaining  single. 
The    same  graceful    sentimentality,  which   is   new  in  Latin 
literature,  appears  in  an  epigram  to  a  mistress  who  had  refused 
him  in  her  prime :  "  Still  give  me  an  embrace,  join  with  me 
in  the  joys  you  did  not  remember  in  time,  give  me  leave  to 
enjoy,  if  not  what  I  desire,  what  I  desired  once."     There  is 
less  novelty  in  the  pretty  verses  on  Bissula,  a  young  German 
girl  whom  he  received  as  a  slave  and  brought  up  as  a  ward, 
and  in  the  fluent  lines  to  his  pet  secretary,  who,  as  we  can 

1  Aus.  "  Ep."  xix. 


AUSONIUS. 


355 


easily  believe,  took  down  his  compositions  in  shorthand  faster 
than  the  author,  who  has  no  literary  vanity,  could  frame  them. 
The  greater  part  of  his  writings  are  simply  a  grammarian's 
stock-in-trade,  a  vtemoria  tcchnica  of  cities  and  emperors,  and 
heroes  of  the  Trojan  War  and  wise  men  of  Greece.  The 
so-called  play  of  the  Seven  Sages,  in  which  each  of  the  seven 
by  turns  expounds  the  maxim  which  immortalized  him,  could 
only  pass  for  a  play  in  a  schoolroom.  Most  of  his  playful 
verse,  outside  the  epigrams,  consists  of  centos  and  macaronic 
verse,  where  the  only  wit  consists  in  tacking  Greek  termina- 
tions to  Latin  words,  or  beginning  a  verse  in  one  language  and 
ending  it  in  another.  Then  there  are  sets  of  verses  that  be- 
gin and  end  with  monosyllables.  The  series  ends  very  ap- 
propriately with  a  Grammaticomastix  on  all  the  monosyllabic 
words  that  a  dispute  can  fairly  be  raised  about. 

The  commemoration  of  the  different  professors  at  Bordeaux 
is  better;  although  the  writer  is  complimentary,  he  is  not  in- 
discriminate in  his  eulogy.  One  of  the  most  curious  points  is 
that. several  Druids  who  found  their  occupation  gone  took 
refuge  in  professorships.  Sometimes  a  professor  had  am- 
bitions like  Ausonius,  who  affected  to  believe  that  for  other 
men  the  safe  rule  was  to  stick  to  a  purely  literary  career, 
which  he  rated  so  highly  that  he  praised  Jucundus  for  having 
aspired  to  it  though  unqualified.  When  Ausonius's  own  pro- 
motion came  he  wished  to  bequeath  his  chair  to  his  sister's 
son,  who  is  commemorated  both  among  the  professors  and 
among  the  members  of  his  fiimily.  He  seems  to  have  been 
exceedingly  clever,  but  did  not  live  to  sow  his  wild  oats  and 
settle  down,  as  Ausonius  says  he  missed  the  turning  of  Pythag- 
oras's  letter. 

Another  quaint  figure  is  Victorius,  the  deputy  of  Ausonius, 
who  knew  the  pedigree  of  the  priests  of  Cures  before  Numa, 
and  the  legislation  of  Themis  before  the  days  of  Jupiter, 
better  than  he  knew  Vergil  or  Cicero,  whom  he  did  not  live 
to  study.  The  fiimily  epitaphs  have  less  variety:  the  most 
noticeable  figures  are  two.  aunts  who  declined  on  religious 
grounds  to  marry,  one  of  whom  practised  as  a  doctor.  His 
widowed  sister  was  also  a  devotee,  with  skill  enough  to  earn 


356 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


her  living  and  guard  her  honor  with  her  spindle,  teaching  her 
household  the  rule  of  good-living  she  had  learned  herself, 
whose  one  care  it  was,  and  dearer  than  her  life,  to  know  the 
true  God,  and  love  her  brothers  above  all  the  world.  The 
poet's  own  attitude  to  religion  is  curious:  he  repeatedly  wishes, 
and  quite  sincerely,  that  the  manes  of  his  friends  may  be  sooth- 
ed by  his  song  ;  sometimes  he  wonders  if  they  have  any  sense 
of  what  happens  after  their  death ;  once  at  least  he  seems  to  an- 
ticipate a  general  resurrection  and  a  last  judgment,  after  which 
men  shall  share  the  days  of  gods ;  elsewhere,  even  when  he 
speaks  of  the  manes,  he  speaks  as  a  monotheist. 

At  some  time  in  his  life,  perhaps  when  he  was  appointed 
tutor  to  the  sons  of  Valentinian,  he  conformed  sincerely  and 
solemnly  to  the  new  religion.  His  idyls  are  prefaced  by  a 
curious  comparison  between  the  heavenly  Trinity  and  the 
earthly  trinity  of  the  three  emperors,  two  of  whom  are  par- 
takers of  the  undivided  power  of  their  father.  In  another 
rather  entertaining  poem,  on  the  employments  of  the  day,  we 
have  a  long  prayer  in  hexameters,  of  which  tifty-seven  lines 
out  of  eighty-five  are  taken  up  with  an  anxiously  orthodox  in- 
vocation of  the  Trinity,  and  a  detestation  of  idolatry  and 
bloody  sacrifices  (which  were  forbidden  by  imperial  authority). 
The  prayer  itself  is  like  the  prayers  of  Horace  and  Juvenal.' 
"  Let  me  desire  nothing  and  fear  nothing,  let  me  be  content 
with  what  is  enough  ;  wish  nothing  base,  never  have  to  be 
ashamed  of  myself;  do  to  none  what  in  like  case  I  would  not 
were  done  to  me  ;  let  no  true  accusation  harm,  no  doubtful 
accusation  blemish,  me.  Let  me  have  no  power  to  do  evil, 
but  calm  ability  to  do  good.  Let  my  dress  and  diet  be  plain, 
let  my  friends  prize  me,  and  let  me  always  bear  the  name  of 
father,  nor  be  wounded  therein.  Without  pain  of  body  or 
mind,  let  all  my  limbs  do  their  work  quietly  ;  let  me  have  all 
to  use,  with  no  pain  to  maim  me ;  let  me  have  peace  and  a 
quiet  life,  never  believe  in  wonders  on  earth :  when  my  last 
hour  comes,  let  a  good  conscience  keep  me  from  fearing  or 
wishing  death.  When  by  thy  mercy  I  seem  pure  from  secret 
faults,  let  it  all  be  nothing  in  my  eyes,  since  it  should  be  my 

1  Aus.  "Eph.or."59  sqq. 


AUSONIUS, 


111 


only  pleasure  to  wait  for  thy  judgment;  and  while  the  time 
is  prolonged  and  the  day  tarries,  drive  far  away  the  cruel 
tempter  with  his  flattering  snares."  The  most  distinctively 
Christian  part  of  the  prayer  is  that  he  looks  to  be  heard  in 
that  he  fears.  He  still  retains  enough  of  the  old  leaven  to 
anticipate  riding  up  the  Milky  Way  to  heaven.  The  prayer 
comes  after  a  sapphic  ode  calling  the  page,  and  a  shorter  ode 
in  dimeter  iambics  scolding  him  for  loitering,  and  telling  him  to 
get  the  chapel  open,  where,  the  poet  explains,  no  frankincense 
or  sweet  cakes  or  fire  of  live  turf  will  be  needed.  After  the 
prayer  he  goes  out  with  evident  relief  to  pay  visits,  and  sends 
his  page  at  ten  to  bring  his  friends — five  friends,  not  more — 
to  breakfast,  and  is  left  with  the  cook:  the  directions  unfort- 
unately break  off  just  after  the  cook  has  been  told  to  be  sure 
and  lick  his  fingers  to  find  out  whether  his  sauce  is  savory. 
The  poem  concludes  with  a  lengthy  description  of  bad  dreams. 
The  most  poetical  of  his  works  is  a  long  idyl  on  the  Mo- 
selle. There  is  a  great  deal  of  rather  clumsy  imitation  of 
Vergil's  praise  of  Italy,  and  a  great  deal  of  the  matter  which 
we  should  expect  in  a  guide-book,  amplified  by  being  given 
in  verse  instead  of  in  prose.  For  instance,  w^e  have  a  long 
catalogue  of  the  fish  of  the  Moselle,  from  perch  and  tench  up 
to  the  shad,  the  river  dolphin.  Still,  there  are  touches  of 
genuine  feeling  and  insight ;  the  poet  is  glad  to  get  out  of  the 
shadow  of  the  Hochwald  into  the  sunny  valley  of  the  Moselle, 
which  reminded  him  of  his  own  Garonne,  as  both  were  clad 
with  vines.  He  recognized  the  peculiar  character  of  the 
scenery  of  the  Moselle,  which  strikes  a  modern  tourist  as  a 
chain  of  lakes,  only  its  depth  and  transparency  in  the  enclosed 
reaches  impress  him  more  than  the  apparent  absence  of  an 
outlet.  His  highest  expression  of  admiration  is  to  imagine 
that,  while  the  rocks  and  shivering  wood  and  hollow  channel 
ring  with  the  shouts  of  boatmen  and  vintagers,  the  satyrs  of 
the  field  meet  the  gray-eyed  naiads  on  the  margin,  till  the 
tramp  of  the  goat-footed  Pan  drives  the  nymphs  to  shelter 
under  the  water.  Often,  too,  Panope  rises  from  the  river  to 
trespass  among  the  vineyards  in  company  with  the  nymphs 
of  the  mountain,  till  the  wanton  Fauns  chase  her  back.     This 


\ 


358 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


is  real  live  mythology :  the  mist  rising  from  the  river  to  the 
hills  and  driven  away  by  the  wind  is  conceived  in  an  anthro- 
pomorphic manner;  so,  too,  the  voluptuous  day-dreams  of  the 
noonday  haze,  when  the  banks  are  solitary,  translate  them- 
selves into  dim  visions  of  nymphs  romping  with  satyrs  and 
taking  them  at  advantage  on  the  water,  ducking  them  first, 
and  slipping  through  their  hands  while  they  are  trying  clum- 
sily to  swim.     But  the  poet  sensibly  reflects  that  he  has  never 
seen   such  sights   himself,  and   so   proceeds   to  describe  the 
beauty  of  the  reflection  of  the  wooded  heights  in  the  river, 
especially  towards  evening.     Here  he  turns  to  the  concrete 
picturesque  of  races  and  sham  fights  between  flower-decked 
boats,  which  are  quite  as  well  worth  seeing  as  those  of  the 
bay  of  Naples.     The  racers  themselves  enjoy  the  spectacle, 
for  they  can  look  at  the  reflection  in  the  water,  as  a  girl  is 
deceived  by  her  own  image  when  her  nurse  shows  her  a  mir- 
ror for  the  first  time.     Then  we  have  a  set  of  fishing-scenes, 
winding  up  with  a  mythological   reminiscence  :    a  boy  who 
jumps  into  the  water  after  a  fish  that  has  got  back  to  the 
river  is  like  Glaucus.     So,  too,  the  villas  on  opposite  heights 
are  like  Sestos  and  Abydos,  not  to  say  Chalcedon  and  Byzan- 
tium ;  their  architecture  is  worthy  of  all  the  famous  builders 
of  antiquity,  from  Daedalus  and  Ictinus  down  to  the  builder 
of  the  temple  of  Arsinoe,  where  Zephyr  was  made  fast  in  the 
roof  and  held  her  iron  hair  by  the  help  of  a  magnet.     Apart 
from  this  cumbrous  erudition,  the  description  of  the  villas  is 
lively  and  effective. 

We  may  notice  a  certain  aesthetic  progress  since  Pliny's 
time,  for  AQsonius  thinks  not  only  of  the  view  from  the  villas 
(though  he  observes  that  one  looks  down  into  darkness),  but 
much  more  of  the  effect  of  the  villas  as  objects  in  the  land- 
scape. One  towers  above  the  meadow  like  the  Pharos  of 
Egypt,  another  stands  aloft  on  a  mound  of  native  rock. 
Others  have  their  baths  arranged  so  that  it  is  possible  after 
the  hot  bath  to  take  a  plunge  straight  into  the  river.  In  fact, 
the  banks  of  the  Moselle  are  a  miniature  Baiae.  Then  comes 
a  catalogue  of  the  tributaries  of  the  Moselle,  and  an  apology 
for  not  enumerating  the  notabilities  of  Treves,  which  he  pro- 


AUSONIUS. 


359 


posed  to  do  in  a  separate  work  like  that  on  the  Bordeaux 
professors.  Happily  we  are  spared  this,  and  the  descriptive 
classification  of  celebrities  to  be  commemorated  therein  is 
adapted  with  real  grace  and  dignity  from  Vergil's  description 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Elysium.  After  a  pompous  description 
of  the  triumph  of  Valentinian  at  Treves,  the  poem  ends  rather 
lamely  with  an  enumeration  of  the  rivers  of  Gaul,  and  the  as- 
surance that  the  Moselle  is  second  to  none. 

The  only  other  idyl  which  can  make  any  pretence  to  poetry 
is  on  a  painting  in  a  villa  at  Treves,  Cupid  crucified  by  all  the 
heroines  of  antiquity  who  died  for  love.     Ausonius  has  too 
good  tpste  to  describe  the  picture:  instead,  he  has  a  dream 
of  the  whole  story,  ending  with  the  descent  of  Venus  to  pun- 
ish her  son  who  has  involved  her  in  so  many  unlucky  amours. 
She  whips  him  with  her  wreath  of  roses,  which  turns  redder 
as  he  bleeds ;  at  last  the  heroines  intercede,  and  the  mother 
pardons,  and  the  poet  awakes.    Cupid  is  not  strictly  crucified, 
he  is  simply  tied  up  to  be  tormented  to  the  myrUe  stump 
where  Proserpine  had  tortured  Adonis  because  he  was  not 
willing  to  accept  her  as  a  substitute  for  Venus.    The  allusions 
are  overloaded;   now  and  then  w^e  get  pretty  images.      All 
the  phantom  tale  of  Minos  and  of  Crete  goes  hovering  in  a 
pageant  as  bodiless  as  a  picture  ;  Love's  wings  ply  lazily  un- 
der the  thick  night,  the  ghosts  gather  into  a  cloud  and  bear 
him  down.     Perhaps  something  may  be  said  for  the  affec- 
tionate ingenuity  of  the  verses  addressed  to  his  grandson 
when  he  was  of  age  to  begin  his  lessons.    But,  upon  the  whole, 
Ausonius  is  hardly  a  poet :  he  is  always  apologizing  for  his 
verses  as  a  triviality  or  impertinence  ;   it  is  an  accomplish- 
ment which  he  feels  he  has  but  imperfectly  mastered,  although 
he  is  vain  of  it.     His  letters  are  filled  too  much  with  amiable 
importunities:  he  is  the  man  of  leisure  who  has  made  a  large 
success,  and  expects  everybody  to  be  willing  to  take  an  in- 
terest in  him,  and  to  spend  time  and  thought  in  intercourse 
with  him.     Paulus  and  Symmachus  seem  to  have  taken  his 
attentions  as  they  were  meant;  but  his  letters  to  Theon,  an- 
other professor,  and  Paulinus,  an  old  pupil  who  had  retired 
first  to  Spain  and  then  to  Nola,  are  decidedly  querulous  though 


360 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


PRUDENTIUS. 


361 


good-natured.  In  the  letters  to  Theon  there  is  an  attempt  at 
banter  ;  in  the  letters  to  Paulinus  there  is  a  parade  of  wounded 
feeling. 

PRUDENTIUS. 

The  works  of  Ausonius  were  in  the  main  the  amusement 
of  his  old  age,  and  something  the  same  may  be  said  of  Au- 
relius  Prudentius  Clemens,  who  belongs  to  a  younger  genera- 
tion, only  there  is  also  a  desire  to  make  amends  for  what  has 
been  amiss  in  the  active  part  of  his  life.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  what  he  reproaches  himself  most  for  is  "  worldliness." 
He  does  not  seem  to  have  any  positive  vices  to  repent. 

He  was  born,  as  he  tells  us,  in  a.d.  348,  and  published  his 
collected  works  in  405,  when  he  was  fifty-seven.  He  had  stud- 
ied rhetoric  and  practised  as  an  advocate,  and  was  ashamed 
of  both.  Afterwards  he  was  employed  twice  as  provincial  gov- 
ernor, and,  like  Dr.  Arnold,  he  thought  as  highly  of  the  office 
of  judge  as  meanly  of  the  office  of  advocate.  It  shows  how 
firmly'^the  monarchy  had  established  itself  that  he  thought  it 
still  higher  promotion  to  be  employed  at  court,  near  the  per- 

son  of  the  prince. 

His  works  are  varied  in  form  and  substance,  but  he  suc- 
ceeds decidedly  better  with  his  lyrics  than  with  his  hexame- 
ters :  in  the  latter  he  is  often  labored  and  confused  ;  in  the 
former  he  is  always  spirited  and  often  graceful,  though  gener- 
ally exceedingly  diffiise.  All  his  contributions  to  the  service 
of  the  Church  have  been  centos  taken  from  different  parts  of 
the  same  poem.  To  an  eager  reader  he  is  exciting:  to  a 
reader  without  sympathy  for  his  subjects  he  is  tedious.  Per- 
haps his  highest  power  is  rapid  narrative :  the  hymn  on  St. 
Eulalia  is  more  like  ballad  than  almost  anything  in  ancient 
literature,  and  has  the  honor  of  having  suggested  one  of  the 
very  oldest  of  romance  poems. 

The  earliest  of  his  works  was  the  "Cathemerinon."  The 
tide,  which,  like  all  Prudentius.'s  titles,  is  Greek,  fits  best  the 
six  hymns  which  open  the  collection  :  these  are  for  the  six' 

»  The  seven  canonical  hours  are  made  up  by  dividing  the  time  between 
sunrise  and  sunset  into  equal  divisions  of  three  hours.  So  that  the  prayer 
before  food  is  replaced  by  *'  terce  "  and  "  sext." 


stated  hours  of  prayer — cockcrow,  morning,  before  food,  after 
food,  at  the  lighting  of  the  lamp,  and  before  sleep.  The  other 
six  are  for  a  fast  and  after  a  fast ;  a  hymn  for  every  season, 
on  the  wonderful  works  of  Christ  \  on  the  burial  of  the  dead  ; 
and  for  Christmas  and  Epiphany.  The  last  two  resume  the 
thought  which  runs  through  the  hymns  for  the  day,  that  earth- 
ly light  is  the  best  symbol  of  the  Light  that  lighteth  every 
man.  Only  the  imagery  is  taken  from  the  annual  instead  of 
the  daily  round.  The  first  two  follow  the  precedent  set  by 
St.  Ambrose  pretty  closely:  they  consist  of  strophes  of  dime- 
ter iambics  with  four  lines  in  each  ;  but  afterwards,  partly  for 
sentimental,  partly  for  literary  expansion,  the  limit  is  entirely 
disregarded.  Even  the  shortest  poem  runs  to  as  many  as 
eiglity  lines.  All  the  rest  range  from  100  to  226  lines,  and  are 
amplified  by  descriptions,  for  instance,  of  the  different  kinds 
of  lights  w^hich  the  author  knew  of,  or  the  different  kinds  of 
food  which  nature  offers.  It  is  noticeable  that  he  strongly  dis- 
approves of  flesh-meat,  and  regards  vegetarianism  as  the  ideal. 
He  makes  an  exception  in  favor  of  fish  and  fowl,  apparently 
because  they  do  not  lie  heavy  on  the  stomach,  or  involve  the 
ugly  accessories  of  butchers'  shops.  (It  is  important  also  to 
remember  that  rearing  beef  and  mutton  for  the  table  was  then 
an  unknown  industry.) 

It  is  curious  that  these  speculations  are  treated  as  mystical. 
He  bids  the  muse  despise  the  light  ivy  with  which  she  is  wont 
to  braid  her  brows,  and  bind  on  a  fillet  of  dactyls,  the  mystic 
wreath  she  has  learned  to  weave,  and  ijpeak  out  in  light  with 
a  chaplet  on  her  locks.'  This  blithe  spirit  runs  through  the 
whole  series  of  poems  :  in  the  hymn  for  fasters  w^e  find, 

Adesto  castis  Christe  parcimoniis 
Festuniqiie  nostrum  rex  divinus  adspice — 

and  throughout  fasting  is  treated  as  part  of  a  system  of  trans- 
cendental hygiene,  intended  to  liberate  the  spirit  from  the 
bondage  of  the  corruptible  body,  rather  than  as  a  penitential 

*  Spcrne,  Camcena,  leves  hederas, 
Cingere  tempora  quels  solita  es, 
Sertaque  mystica  dactylico 
Texere  docta  liga  strophio. 

II.— 16 


!:r. 


% 


S6: 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


PRUDENTIUS. 


l^Z 


discipline.  In  the  hymn  after  the  fast  we  have  a  tribute  to 
the  indulgence  of  the  master — 

Major  exemplis  fimulos  remisso 
Dogmata  palpcs. 

Nor  is  there  any  trace  of  the  passion  for  pain  which  we  find 
later  in  the  "  Peristephanon  :"  in  the  hymn  for  the  Epiphany 
the  well-known  verses  on  the  Innocents  are  singularly  idyllic 
in  tone  when  we  remember  that  they  commemorate  a  cruel 
tragedy. 

The  most  graceful  and  pathetic  of  the  hymns  in  the  "Cathe- 
merinon  "  is  the  burial  hymn,  which  gives  a  perfect  expression 
to  the  average  pious  sentiment  about  death,  which  has  since 
prevailed.  It  is  perhaps  the  earliest  expression  of  the  feeling 
that  cremation  is  necessarily  shocking  to  believers  in  the 
resurrection  of  the  body :  the  metre,  too,  dimeter  anapceslic 
catalectic, 

Jam  moesta  quiesce  querela, 
Lacrimas  suspendite,  matres, 

moves  with  uniform  ease  and  2:race. 

The  sapphics  are  almost  always  wooden  and  prosaic,  and 
the  hendecasyllabics  in  the  hymn  after  food  are  rather  heavy: 
in  iambics  the  writer  never  sinks  too  low,  if  it  is  difficult  to 
rise  very  high.  The  catalectics  in  the  hymn  before  sleep  are 
rather  like  monotonous  anacreontics  :  a  line  like  "  Procul  hinc, 
procul  vagantum  "  is  rare,  while  the  heavier  movement, 

Tali  dicata  signo 
Mens  fluctuaie  nescit, 

is  common.  (We  may  note,  in  passing,  that  Prudentius  has  a 
great  horror  of  dreams.)  The  dactylic  metre,  of  which  a  speci- 
men is  given  above,  is  very  spirited  and  sparkling,  but  in  the 
long-run  there  is  something  wearisome  in  the  way  one  is 
brought  up  by  the  long  syllable  at  the  end  of  each  line.  The 
trochaic  tetrameters  on  the  works  of  Christ  have  not  yet  the 
assured  majestic  march  of  later  hymns  in  the  same  metre. 

Prudentius  seems  among  his  contemporaries  and  in  the 
middle  ages  to  have  owed  his  reputation  very  largely  to  the 


hexameter  poems  which  he  enumerates  in  his  preface  between 
the  "  Cathemerinon  "  and  the  "  Peristephanon  :"  one  of  them 
attained  to  the  honor  of  an  illustrated  edition,  and  the  illus- 
trations were  copied  in  more  than  one  IMS.  written  in  Eng- 
land before  the  Norman  conquest.  The  two  earliest  are  the 
"  Hamartigenia"  and  the  "Apotheosis,"  either  of  which  cor- 
responds to  his  intention  to  fight  against  heresies  and  discuss 
the  Catholic  faith.  The  former  is  an  explanation  of  the  origin 
of  evil  intended  to  exclude  the  dualism  of  Marcion  :  the  sec- 
ond is  an  exposition  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Trinity  and  the 
Incarnation,  with  express  reference  to  the  Patripassian,  Sa- 
bellian,  and  Arian  heresies,  and  the  different  forms  of  Gnosti- 
cism. In  his  reply  to  the  Patripassian  heresy  he  depends  very 
much  upon  Tertullian  :  he  is  most  original  in  his  polemic 
against  the  Jews,  but  the  whole  exposition  is  confused  and 
tame ;  though  the  declamation  on  the  unbelief  of  the  Jews, 
when  all  the  world  except  Julian  believed,  is  vigorous,  and  re- 
lieved by  the  tribute  to  the  emperor  who  broke  faith  with  God 
and  kept  faith  with  the  world.  Less  use  in  proportion  is  made 
of  Tertullian  in  the  "  Hamartigenia;"  instead  of  the  argument 
that  the  "Good  God"  of  Marcion  acts  unjustly  in  intruding 
upon  the  work  of  "the  just  Creator,"  Prudentius  insists  on 
the  impossibility  of  admitting  more  gods  in  any  sense  than 
one.  Then  he  sets  forth  the  ordinary  theory  of  "temptation'^ 
and  "  probation,"  after  a  description  of  the  tempter,  which  is 
too  plainly  modelled  on  the  furies  of  mythology,  as  the  de- 
scription of  hell  is  a  compromise  between  the  bottomless  pit 
of  the  Revelations  and  the  Jewish  Gehenna  and  the  Tartarus 
of  the  poets.  Prudentius  more  than  half  expects  to  be  con- 
demned for  bodily  stains  to  the  lower  world  of  darkness,  and 
entreats,  if  so,  that  his  place  may  be  far  from  the  fiery  f;tce  of 
the  king  of  darkness,  in  some  region  of  slow  heat  and  sooth- 
ing streams,  which  almost  suggests  that  he  was  attached,  or 
had  been  attached,  to  the  hot  bath,  which  is  not  mentioned  in 
his  formidable  tirade  against  the  luxury  of  the  day,  in  w^hich 
he  declaims  in  the  old-schOol  style  against  the  shows  of  the 
theatre  and  the  circus,  and  the  toilet  excesses  of  men  and 
Women. 


rl 


3^4 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


In  the  two  books  against  Symmachus  Prudentius  combats 
with  little  generosity  or  insight  the  last  attempt  of  the  Roman 
aristocracy  to  take  advantage  of  the  fact  that  they  had  once 
more  an  emperor  of  their  own,  independent  if  not  jealous  of 
the  emperor  of  the  east,  in  order  to  revive  some  of  the  cherished 
ceremonial  of  the  old  religion.     Of  course  Honorius  resisted 
the  attempt  to  set  aside  his  father's  policy,  and  Prudentius 
presses  the  young  emperor  to  go  further  and  abolish  the  shows 
of  ^ladiators.     In  the  first  book  all  the  old  arguments  against 
paganism  figure  once  more,  and  due,  perhaps  excessive,  stress 
is  laid  upon  the  perfect  civil  equality  which  the  pagan  aris- 
tocracy still  enjoyed.    They  were  deprived  of  the  sacra  piiblica  ; 
they  were  punished  if  they  attempted  to  replace  them  by  sacra 
privata,  which  as  a  rule  they  seldom  cared  to  do ;  but  they 
were  at  liberty  to  honor  the  old  gods  without  sacrifice  in  their 
hearts,  and  no  conformity  to  the  new  religion  was  required  as 
a  condition  of  promotion  in  the  service  of  the  state.    The  most 
important  novelties  are  the  express  polemic  against  the  wor- 
ship of  the  sun,  a  god  whose  temple  no  emperor  could  shut, 
and  the  prayer  put  into  the  mouth  of  Rome  that  she  may  be 
a  Christian  city  like  the  rest  of  the  empire.    When  Prudentius 
wrote  it  is  probable  that  Christianity  had  become  the  popular 
creed,  for  the  conversion  of  the  female  aristocracy  added  im- 
mensely to  the  power  of  the  Church  as  an  institute  for  the  re- 
lief of  distress. 

The  second  book  versifies  with  more  or  less  spirit  and  suc- 
cess St.  Ambrose's  reply  to  the  memorial  which  Symmachus 
had  presented  with  the  same  object  to  the  younger  Valentinian  : 
he  is  able  to  carry  the  argument  further  by  claiming  the  vic- 
tories of  the  Christian  Stilicho  as  triumphs  alike  of  Rome  and 
of  the  Cross. 

The  "  Psychomachia"  is  not  very  distinctly  mentioned  in 
the  preface,  and  it  contains  a  curious  parallel,  pointed  out  by 
Ebert,  to  the  nineteenth  book  of  St.  Augustin's  City  of  God, 
which,  if  the  ordinary  chronology  of  St.  Augustin's  works  is  to 
be  trusted,  would  imply  that  Prudentius,  when  a  good  deal 
over  seventy,  had  read  and  imitated  the  last  instalment  of  the 
great  theological  work  of  the  day,  or  else  that  Prudentius,  who 


PRUDENTIUS, 


65 


<Tenerally  imitates  Christian  prose  writers,  for  once  in  the  way 
found  a  prose  writer  to  imitate  him  without  quoting  him. 

The  poem  itself,  as  Ebert  points  out,  is  the  expansion  of 
393  ff.  of  the  "  Hamartigenia,"  where  the  poet  enumerates 
the  hosts  of  the  prince  of  darkness  that  war  against  the  soul. 
There  the  list  is  headed  by  Anger  and  Superstition,  Sadness, 
Strife,  and  Luxury,  and  we  are  still  in  some  measure  on  Stoical 
ground.     In  the  "  Psychomachia"  the  allegory  is  carried  into 
Sreat  detail :  it  seems  to  represent  the  successive  stages  of  the 
Christian's  conflict  through  life.     The  first  struggle  is  to  be  a 
Christian  at  all.     "Faith"  has  to  overcome  the  "worship  of 
old  <>-ods ;"  one  is  a  simple  unarmed  peasant  (one  that  sees 
paganism  has  not  yet  been  driven  to  its  last  refuge,  the  coun- 
try altars),  the  other  in  the  array  of  a  Roman  Flamen.     This 
combat  is  comparatively  easy,  and  the  legion  of  Faith,  made 
up  of  the  thousands  of  martyrs,  soon  intones  the  song  of  vic- 
tory, which  follows  every  battle.    The  next  struggle  is  between 
Chastity  and  the  Lust  of  Sodom.     Then  comes  the  battle  be- 
tween Patience  and  Wrath,  in  which  Patience  has  only  to  stand 
invulnerable  till  Wrath  falls  upon  his  own  spear.     Perhaps 
we  are  to  understand  that  all  these  victories  give  an  oppor- 
tunity to  Pride :  an  orthodox,  clean-living,  self-possessed  man 
will  not  resign  himself  to  be   a  poor,  insignificant  creature. 
Pride  on  her  unbroken  steed  threatens  to  ride  roughshod  over 
Humility'  and  his  lean  train,  needy  Righteousness  and  poor 
Honor,-  meagre  Temperance,  pale   Fasting,  blushing  Shame, 
and  bare  Simplicity.     It  is  true  that  Hope  is  with  them,  and 
it  is  Hope  that  encourages  Humility  to  slay  Pride  when  Pride 
has  fallen  into  the  pit  which  Treachery  dug.    Then  comes  the 
conflict  with  Luxury  :   when  a  man  has  given  up  pretensions 
he  likes  to  make  himself  comfortable  and  amuse  himself,  and 
then  sensuality  revives.     Love  is  the  charioteer  of  Luxury, 
and  the  virtues  are  inclined  to  retreat  from  their  artillery  of 
flowers,  till  rebuked  by  Temperance,  who  sets  up  the  standard 
of  the  Cross. 

'  Mem  huviilis,  not  JunniliLis:  in  a  f;imiliar  word  Prudentius  knows  the 
quantity. 
^  Ilonestasy  not  yet  honesty,  nor  the  best  policy. 


366 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


CLAUDIAN. 


367 


When  the  desires  are  all  vanquished,  men  turn  to  money- 
making,  and  so  Avarice,  with  all  her  train,  appears  to  gather 
up  the  spoils  of  Luxury.  First  she  makes  a  speech  in  which 
she  boasts  of  her  triumphs,  and  then  decides  to  attack  the 
Christians  under  the  guise  of  Frugality,  with  momentary  suc- 
cess, until  Almsgiving*  pummels  her  to  death.  At  last  the 
soul  is  at  peace  with  itself  and  with  all  men,  and,  though  Her- 
esy may  creep  into  the  fold  and  seek  to  sow  dissension,  she  is 
soon  detected,  silenced,  and  slain,  and  then  the  building  of 
the  spiritual  temple  can  go  forward  to  the  accompaniment  of 
songs  of  thanksgiving. 

If  the  hexameter  poems,  including  the  ''  Psychomachia," 
form  a  continuous  series,  this  would  not  imply  a  complete  in- 
terruption of  his  lyrical  activity.  Each  of  the  books  has  a 
lyrical  preface,  and  one  has  a  double  preface,  in  hexameters, 
and  in  the  metre  of  Horace's  earlier  epodes. 

The  "  Peristephanon  "  is  partly  lyric  in  form,  though  the 
substance  is  often  narrative  and  even  dramatic,  if  long  de- 
bates on  polytheism  are  to  be  called  dramatic.  The  poems 
are  full  of  the  passion  of  a  struggle  just  decided,  and  they  pre- 
suppose the  same  passion  in  the  readers.  Perhaps  we  might 
compare  them  in  this  respect  to  Aytoun's  "Lays  of  the  Scot- 
tish Cavaliers,"  though  Aytoun,  whose  work  possesses  about 
the  same  degree  of  objective  merit,  was  the  poet  of  a  losing 
cause. 

ALany  of  the  poems  turn  on  the  sentiments  of  a  pilgrim  : 
for  instance,  at  Imola  Prudentius  sees  the  picture  of  St.  Cas- 
sian  being  stabbed  to  death  with  the  "styles"  of  his  pupils 
(he  was  a  writing-master),  and  learns  and  tells  the  legeud  of 
his  martvrdom :  at  Rome  he  learns  that  St.  AG;nes,  whose 
legend  is  given  in  very  spirited  major  alcaics,  is  the  patroness 
not  only  of  Romans  but  of  strangers,  and  prays  her  to  purify 
his  heart.  The  elegiac  hymn  on  St.  Hippolytus  is  one  of  the 
earliest  examples  of  mythology  passing  into  hngiology.  His 
martyrdom  is  evidently  taken  from  the  fate  of  his  namesake, 
the  son  of  Theseus.  All  the  martyrs  commemorated  are 
Spanish  or  Italian,  with  the  exception  of  St.  Cyprian,  who  ap- 

J  Olerafio,  which  recalls  St.  Cyprian's  treatise  *'De  Opere  et  Eleemosynis." 


M 


ne-irs  because  Christianity  reached  Spain  from  Africa.     One 
of  \he  poems,  the  eighth,  is  not  a  hymn  at  all,  but  an  mscrip- 
tion  in  nine  elegiac  couplets  for  a  place  in  Calagurris,  where 
some  martyrs  had  suffered,  which  was  afterwards  turned  nito 
a  baptistery.     In    the    hymn  for    St.  Laurence,'   Prudentms 
boasts  in  the  same  spirit  that  a  Vestal  enters  his  shrine  to 
pray      Throughout  one  of  the  most  remarkable   features  is 
the  poet's  exuUation  in  the  conversion,  not  merely  of  the  em- 
pire but  of  the  actual  city  of  Rome.     This  comes  out  very 
stron-ly  in  the  hymn  on  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul.     His  Spanish 
patriotism  is  equally  strong :    the  eighteen  martyrs  of  Sara- 
aossa  are  sure  to  deliver  the  city  in  the  day  of  judgment. 
"^  The  hymns  are,  upon  the  whole,  shorter  than  in  the  "  Cath- 
emerinon,"  but  those  for  St.  Laurence,  St. Vincent,  and  St.  Ro- 
manus  are  longer  ;  the  two  first  are  nearly  600  iambic  dim- 
eters each;  the  last  is  over  iioo  trimeters:  all  the   tortures 
of  the  saint  are  detailed,  and  his  speeches  before  and  after 
his  tongue  was  cut  out:  besides,  there  is  the  episode  of  St. 
(-yriac,  the  child  to  whom  he  appealed  for  confirmation  of  his 
words,  which  was  given  so  freely  that  the  judge  asked, 
"Quis  auctor,"  inquit,  *  vocis  est  hujus  tibi  ?" 
Rcspondit  ille,  "Mater  et  malri  Deus." 

This  is  in  the  best  manner  of  Seneca's  tragedies,  where  it 
would  be  hard  to  match  this  line  on  St.  Eulalia,  who  at  the 
age  of  twelve  ran  away  from  home  to  break  down  idols  and  be 

^  Ludcre  nescia,  docta  mori. 

That  is  worthy  of  Crashaw,  but  neither  Crashaw  nor  Seneca 
would  have  sunk  to  the  doggerel  in  which  Prudentms  promises 
to  bear,  in  the  midst  of  the  choir,  chaplets  woven  in  dactylic 
measure,  neither  precious  nor  ever  green,  but  good  lor  a  tes- 
Uival.'^ 

CLAUDIAN. 

A  contemporary  of  Prudentius  is  an  exception  to  the  gen- 
eral inferiority  of  secular  literature  in  this  period.     Claudius 

'  ylulemque  Laurenti  tuam 
Vestal  is  intrat  credula. 

2  "Perist."iii.  208-211. 


368 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


Claudlanus  is  a  better  writer  of  his  kind  tiian  had  appeared 
since  Statius.  His  chief  activity  falls  between  a.d.  395  and 
404.  He  wrote  little  or  nothing  after  408,  the  year  of  the 
death  of  Stilicho.  By  a  curious  irony  of  fate  his  admirable 
pamphlets  in  verse  in  favor  of  his  patron  and  against  Ciau- 
dian's  enemies  are  the  principal  source  for  the  accepted 
history  of  the  reign  of  Honorius.  We  do  not  know  the  cir- 
cumstances which  led  a  clever  poet  of  Alexandria  to  attach 
himself  for  thirteen  years  to  the  fortunes  of  the  barbarian 
generalissimo,  for  it  was  only  three  years  after  the  connection 
began  that  the  patron  conferred  any  benefit  upon  his  client, 
and  then  it  was  done  in  a  manner  characteristic  of  the  aire. 
Stilicho  had  married  his  daughter  Serena  to  Honorius,  and  he 
provided  for  his  client  by  getting  him  a  letter  from  the  em- 
press to  secure  his  acceptance  by  the  parents  of  an  heiress. 
When  Stilicho  fell,  Claudian  too  found  himself  in  difficulty 
and  danger,  chiefly  from  Hadrianus,  the  prefect  of  the  city, 
whom  he  had  offended  when  patronized  by  Stilicho.  He  ap- 
parently escaped  with  the  loss  of  his  military  rank  and  emolu- 
ments, and  was  consequently  in  a  rather  destitute  condition 
when  he  wrote  to  Gennadius*that  he  could  send  him  no  verses 
because  he  had  nothing  to  eat,  and  when  poverty  comes  in  at 
the  door  songs  fly  out  at  the  window. 

His  first  Latin  poem  was  on  the  consulship  of  Olybrius  and 
Probinus,  a.d.  390,  and  in  his  distress  he  writes  to  each  to 
ask  why  his  letters  remain  unanswered.  Perhaps  during  the 
last  five  years  of  Stilicho's  life  the  prosperous  poet  may  have 
occupied  himself  with  a  work  too  ambitious  to  be  completed, 
on  the  Rape  of  Proserpine,  in  which  he  returns  to  mythology. 
He  began  with  mythological  poems:  we  have  fragments  both 
in  Greek  and  Latin  of  a  poem  on  the  Giants'  Wars  :  in  the 
Greek  there  is  a  pretty  conceit  of  Cypris  going  to  the  battle 
armed  only  with  her  beauty,  and  the  Latin  poem  is  in  a  cer- 
tain sense  spirited  and  original,  though  dreadfully  pragmatic  ; 
the  motive  is  that  Earth  is  shocked  to  find  herself  inferior  to 
Cybele.  One  merit  is  that  there  is  no  inv^ocation  ;  the  narra- 
tive begins  in  a  simple,  business-like  way.  Again,  there  is  a 
certain  ingenuity  in  the  imitation  of  Ovid.     Pallas  the  eiant 


CLAUD  I  A  iW 


369 


is  turned  into  a  stone  snake  at  the  sight  of  the  Gorgon  breast- 
plate of  Pallas  the  goddess  ;  and  his  brother  Damastor,  look- 
ino-  round  for  a  rock  to  hurl,  takes  up   the   petrified  giant 
Echion,  attacks  the  goddess,  and  is  petrified  too.     Palleneus 
reaches  out  his  hand  to  wound,  while  he  turns  his  angry  looks 
another  way  ;  she  strikes  him  with  her  sword,  and  the  wound 
is  deadly  to  his  human  half;  the  snakes  below  are  turned  to 
stone  by  the  Gorgon.     The  poem  on  Ceres  and  Proserpine  is 
meant  to  be  the  author's  masterpiece.     In  the  neatly  turned 
elegiacs  prefixed  to  the  first  book  he  compares  himself  to  a 
sailor  to  whom  art  opens  the  path  which  nature  forbids,  whose 
heart  has  unlearned  the  lethargy  of  fear,  so  that  he  can  leave 
the  shore  and  career  at  will  over  the  open  sea.     The  preface 
to  the  second  book  is  less  jubilant :  the  poet  is  another  Or- 
pheus, recalled  to  song  after  long  and  listless  silence  by  an- 
other Alcides,  whose  Latin  name  is  Florentinus  ;  as  Alcides 
had  suppressed  the  ferocious  Diomedes,  so  perhaps  Floren- 
tinus had  suppressed  Claudian's  persecutors.     The  opening 
of  the  poem  itself  is  as  disagreeable  as  the  opening  of  the 
"Thebaid,"  only  Claudian  is  a  vigorous  tyro  in  the  line  in 
which  Statius  is  a  master.     Claudian  stops  again  and  again 
:in  his  exordium  of  thirty-one  lines,  while  in  the  forty-five  lines 
of  Statius  there  is  no  pause   and   nothing  separable.     The 
whole  poem  is  made  up  of  machinery  :  instead  of  being  orna- 
bients  to  a  story  of  human  heroism  or  passion,  the  intrigues 
of  mythological  deities  are  made  the  substance  of  the  story. 
Even   so,  the   story   is  incoherent :   at  the   beginning  of  the 
poem  Pluto  threatens  his  brother  unless  he  is  provided  with 
a  wife  ;  as  the  poem  goes  on  we  learn,  first,  that  it  was  a  great 
and  difficult  triumph  for  Venus  to  make  Pluto  in  love  with  Pros- 
erpine, and  next  that  it  was  a  deliberate  scheme  of  Jupiter 
to  benefit  mankind  by  sending  Ceres  over  the  world  to  teach 
men  agriculture,  as,  so  far,  the  suppression  of  the  spontaneous 
plenty  of  the  golden  age  had  done  more  harm  than   good. 
This  is  explained  at  a  synod  of  the  gods,  convoked  to  hear 
the  pains  and  penalties  which  any  god  or  goddess  will  incur 
who  may  tell  Ceres  what  has  become  of  her  daughter.     The 
elder  rivers  are  allowed  seats  like  all  the  deities  of  sky  and 

n.— 16* 


370 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


CLAUDIAX. 


371 


sea,  but  most  rivers,  like  the  nymphs  and  wind  gods,  have  to 
stand.  There  are  several  Ovidian  graces :  when  Ceres,  hav- 
ing left  her  daughter  safe,  as  she  thinks,  in  Sicily  from  the 
courtship  of  ]\Iarsor  Apollo,  comes  to  take  her  ease  with  Cyb- 
ele,  that  goddess  stoops  her  towers  to  a  kiss;^  when  Ceres 
finds  her  daughter's  bower  empty,  the  spider  has  woven  a 
fringe  round  the  unfinished  broideries  of  a  goddess.' 

There  is  plenty  of  mythological  allegory  even  in  the  histor- 
ical poems.  When  Olybrius  and  Probinus,  two  brothers  of 
the  Anician  family,  are  made  consuls  together,  the  poet  asks 
the  Muse,  since  he  does  not  know  himself,  what  deity  vouch- 
safed such  a  rare  fiivor.  It  was  Rome  who  came  to  the  pass 
of  Aquileia,  which  only  Augustus  could  force,  to  ask  this  grace 
for  her  sons.  The  journey  of  the  goddess  and  the  repose  of 
the  hero  are  splendid  in  their  way.  Father  Tiber  hears  the 
news,  and  stands  on  his  island  to  watch  the  procession  of  two 
consuls  from  one  house,  and  to  make  a  speech  comparing  them 
to  the  twins  of  P^urotas,  and  invites  all  the  rivers  of  Italy  to 
keep  the  feast  with  him  ;  the  poem  concludes  with  the  ordinary 
wishes  for  a  seasonable  year.  There  was  little  else  to  be  said, 
perhaps,  in  honor  of  two  nobles  of  high  character  and  family, 
whose  father,  though  often  in  office,  seems  to  have  been  chief- 
ly remarkable  for  his  liberality.  But  when  Mallius  Theodo- 
rus  is  made  consul,  Justice  descends  from  her  place  in  the 
zodiac  to  urge  him  to  return  to  the  cares  of  active  life,  and 
when  he  accepts  the  office  of  praetorian  prefect  he  gathers  up 
four  reins  from  the  car  of  justice,  each  of  which  corresponds 
to  one  of  the  provinces  under  his  care.  And  Mallius  was  a 
remarkable  man  :  he  had  been  governor  of  several  provinces, 
and  then  employed  at  court  as  qucEStor,  then  one  of  the  high- 
est titles  in  the  state,  as  the  officer  who  bore  it  had  to  draft 
the  laws  and  decisions  of  the  emperor.  From  this  office  he 
had  frone  back  to  his  books  and  his  farms,  until  it  was  neces- 
sary  to  find  a  civilian  who  would  act  with  Stilicho  as  praetorian 
prefect.  One  doubts  whether  his  administration  was  a  success, 
for  he  was  soon  relieved  of  his  functions  by  promotion  to  the 
higher  rank  of  consul.  The  poet  is  anxious  for  the  splendor 
1  "  Dc  Rapt.  Pros."  i.  213.  *  lb.  iii.  156,  157. 


i 


and  success  of  the  pageants  the  new  consul  is  to  give,  and 
sends  the  Muses  over  the  world  to  collect  Andalusian  horses 
and  Greek  boxers  and  wild  beasts  for  the  arena.  Perhaps  we 
are  to  suppose  that  the  new  consul  was  poor,  and  that  the 
splendor  of  his  year  of  office  would  depend  upon  the  liberality 
of  Augustus ;  perhaps,  that  an  elderly  man  might  not  be  suffi- 
ciently lavish.  Otherwise  the  poem  is  fine  and  serious:  the 
reflections  upon  the  value  of  rank  as  an  addition  to  character, 
the  comparative  usefulness  of  the  philosopher  and  the  states- 
man, and  the  recapitulation  of  the  studies  of  Mallius,  are  all 
sincere  and  dignified. 

Almost  all  Claudian's  other  poems,  in  one  form  or  other,  are 
dedicated  to  the  glory  of  Stilicho.     The  two  most  famous  are 
invectives  against  the  two  ministers  of  the  Eastern  court,  whose 
sacrifice  the  generalissimo  of  the  West  exacted  before  his  own 
fall.     When  we  see  how  bitterly  a  comparatively  disinterested 
writer  like  Numatian  spoke  of  Stilicho,  we  need  not  pin  our 
faith  to  the  interested  though  sincere  invectives  of  Claudian. 
Ijoth  Rufinus  and  Eutropius  had  been  employed  and  trusted 
by  the  great  Theodosius.     Rufinus  was  skilful,  Claudian  tells 
us  himself,  in  the  art  of  infusing  suspicion,  and  the  rate  at 
which  pretenders  multiplied  was  a  proof  that  suspicion  was 
more  often  well  founded  than  not.      Claudian's   indictment 
against  Rufinus  comes  to  this,  when  we  confine  ourselves  to 
what  he  alleges  as  fact— that  Rufinus  preferred  temporizing 
with  the  barbarians  encamped  within  and  without  the  Eastern 
empire  to  allowing  Stilicho  to  coerce  them;  that  he  was  sus- 
pected of  provoking  their  attacks;  that,  like  almost  all  minis- 
ters of  despotic  governments,  he  took  care  to  be  paid  by  the 
parties  concerned  for  expediting  public  business,  and  that  the 
cruelty  of  an  Oriental  despotism  was  plainly  perceptible  under 
his  administration.     How  much  of  this  was  due  to  himself, 
how  much  to  Theodosius,  is  a  question  on  which  Claudian  is 
more  confident  than  history.     Of  course  the  avarice  of  Rufi- 
nus is  the  text  for  a  irreat  deal  of  declamation  in  the  manner  of 
the  Stoics.     The  debate  on  providence,  with  which  the  poem 
opens,  is  not  Stoical  :  the  writer  consoles  himself  for  the  ine- 
qualities of  human  life,  \yhich  contrast  so  strongly  with  the 


» 


372 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


admirable  order  of  nature,  not,  as  the  Stoics,  with  the  thought 
that  character  shines  brightest  in  the  conflict  with  adversity, 
but,  as  the  ancient  Hebrews,  with  the  creed  that  the  prosper- 
ity of  the  wicked  only  prepares  their  ruin  ;  the  punishment  of 
Rufinus  is  the  absolution  of  the  gods. 

There  is  endless  imitation  of  the  ancients.  Alecto  tempts 
Rufinus  as  she  had  tempted  Turnus;  the  people  exult  at  the 
massacre  of  Rufinus  as  they  had  exulted  at  the  execution  of 
Sejanus  in  Juvenal.  The  indignation  of  Stilicho  at  not  being 
allowed  to  conduct  the  Eastern  troops  in  person  to  the  East- 
ern capital  is  very  eloquent;  but,  as  they  massacred  Rufinus, 
it  seems  rather  superfluous.  The  contrast  between  the  infat- 
uated friends  of  Rufinus  and  his  approaching  doom  is  dra- 
matic— all  the  more  because  Claudian  discreetly  omits  in  this 
poem  any  allusion  to  the  part  of  Eutropius  in  the  overthrow 
of  his  predecessor.  The  eunuch  had  saved  his  master  from 
the  match  which  the  praetorian  prefect  had  planned  to  secure 
his  ascendency:  or  else  Rufinus  might  have  ruled  Arcadius 
as  long  as  Stilicho  ruled  Honorius.  The  poem  on  Eutropius 
is  certainly  masterly,  the  more  that  the  material  is  deficient. 
Rufinus  was  massacred  in  a  tragic  manner;  his  fall  was  a  rev- 
olution. Eutropius  was  simply  banished  after  a  consulship 
granted  in  recognition  of  the  successes  he  claimed  in  Arme- 
nia, because  Stilicho  chose  to  hold  him  responsible  for  the  re- 
volt of  a  Gothic  chief  in  Phrygia,  which  his  general  failed  to 
suppress  with  desirable  promptitude.  The  scandals  to  which 
a  eunuch  is  exposed  are  detailed  with  an  evident  imitation 
of  Juvenal.  This  succeeds  better  in  the  description  of  the 
council  held  on  the  revolt  of  Targibilus,  which  is  worth  read- 
ing even  after  Juvenal's  "Council  of  the  Turbot :"  the  froward 
youths  and  wanton  elders  who  value  their  villas  on  the  Bos- 
phorus  above  the  glories  of  Rome  ;  the  Grecian  Quirites  and 
the  Byzantine  Fathers  who  are  ready  to  applaud  the  eunuch 
consul,  who  think  that  peacocks  and  parrots  and  sturgeons 
must  be  delicacies  because  they  are  costly,  are  a  worthy  back- 
ground for  the  more  elaborate  portraits  of  the  ex-cook  Hircus 
and  the  ex-woolcomber  Leo,  who  are  the  seconds  of  the  eu- 
nuch.    There  is  a  certain  humor  in  Leo's  bluster,  all  in  terms 


CLAUDIAN. 


37, 


of  his  old  profession:  a  web  of  woes  is  weaving  while  they  sit 
spinning  out  the  time,  he  is  the  man  to  sweat  out  the  job,  his 
hand  was  never  slack  at  the  iron ;  if  the  goddess  of  weaving 
and  war  will  but  bless  him,  the  work  begun  shall  soon  be  fin- 
ished ;  though  the  fury  of  Targibilus  lies  heavy  on  the  land, 
he  wiU  dress  him  till  he  is  lighter  than  a  ball  of  wool,  and  lay 
waste  the  renegade  Guthrungi  like  sheep,  and  restore  peace, 
and  send  the  matrons  of  Phrygia  back  to  their  spindles.     He 
is  applauded  to  the  echo,  like  an  actor  in  the  theatre,  and  the 
comicil  begins  with  some  lively  gossip  on  the  circus  and  the 
new  ballets,  until  the  president  calls  it  to  order  by  stating  the 
business  of  the  day.     Claudian's  horror  at  the  indecorum  is 
worthy  of  Juvenal  or  Cicero. 

He  is  equally  eloquent  upon  the  turpitude  of  Eutropius,  who 
actually  contrived,  not  only  that  the  garrison  of  Constantinople 
should  go  into  summer  quarters  at  Ancyra,  but  that  their  re- 
turn should  be  a  military  spectacle.     Of  course  there  is  a  de- 
scription of  the  boundaries  of  Phrygia,  which  is  clear  enough 
^ind  dull  enough  for  a  book  of  geography.     Of  course  Cybele 
makes  a  pathetic  prophecy.     Of  course,  too,  Targibilus  does 
not  act  upon  the  offence  given  him  without  supernatural  in- 
stigation.    Mars  and  Bellona,  who  is  almost  a  Y\vcy,  hold  high 
council  how  to  clear  the  honor  of  Rome  from  the  disgrace  of 
a  eunuch  for  a  consul  (throughout  the  condition  of  Eutropius 
is  regarded  as  far  more  disqualif>'ing  than  his  character) :  "  the 
stranger  from  the  north  is  to  avenge  the  violated  laws,  and 
barbarian  arms  to  rescue  Roman  honor."     The  pure  Roman 
feeling  of  Claudian  is  everywhere  remarkable;  it  is  a  feeling 
not  for  the  Roman  Empire  so  much  as  for  the  city  Rome ;  he 
is  fond  of  every  piece  of  Roman  antiquity  like  the  cindus 
Gabinus;  he  more  than  hints  in  the"  ''War  of  Gildo ''  that 
Rome  would  be  very  grateful  to  see  more  of  her  ruler :  it  was 
clearly  a  disappointment  to  him  that  the  pageant  of  Honori- 
us's  fourth  consulship  passed  away  from  Rome.     It  is  the  maj- 
esty of  the  Eternal  City  which  conquers  Gildo  and  Alaric :  he 
has  a  sense  that  Rome  has  lost  something  because  the  fiithers 
and  the  commons  no  longer  grow  their  own  harvests  or  fight 
their  own  battles ;  but  for  him  she  is  still  the  mistress  of  the 


i; 


M 


374 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


world  ;  her  dominion  has  been  neither  shaken  nor  diminished; 
that  barbarians  were  settling  within  it  in  ever-growing  num- 
bers is  no  reason  for  alarm  ;  it  is  the  glory  of  the  reign  of 
Honorius  that  so  many  tribes  so  hard  to  conquer  voluntarily 
offered  their  allegiance  to  Rome. 

This  is  not  pure  conventionalism  :  Claudian  treats  the  first 
invasion  of  Alaric  seriously  enough  :  he  hazards  his  own 
precious  fame  by  writing,  after  a  silence  of  two  long  years,  on 
the  campaign,  which  he  compares  to  the  campaign  of  Fabius 
against  Hannibal,  of  Fabricius  against  Pyrrhus,  of  Marius 
against  the  Cimbri.  He  hardly  exaggerates  the  merits  of 
Stilicho's  momentary  pacification  of  the  Rhine,  since  it  en- 
abled cultivation  and  building  to  be  resumed  upon  both 
banks :  even  Claudian  does  not  venture  beyond  a  promise 
that  in  the  future  revenue  would  come  in  once  more  from  the 
province  of  Ulyricum.  Historians  have  generally  accepted 
Claudian's  estimate  of  Stilicho,  and  rejected  his  equally  hon- 
est estimate  of  Honorius.  He  describes  him  as  a  gallant,  in- 
nocent, accomplished  boy,  with  a  precocious  ambition  to  share 
his  f^ither's  campaigns,  and  perhaps  this  precocity  was  the 
reason  of  his  collapse  into  jealous  timidity  after  the  massacre 
of  Stilicho  and  his  family.  We  are  told  that  he  always  wished 
to  rule  at  Rome  even  when  his  father  was  only  emperor  of  the 
East,  and  of  course  it  is  added  that  the  usurper  who  overthrew 
the  last  relic  of  the  house  of  Valentinian  deserved  well  of  the 
state,  since  the  necessity  of  suppressing  him  prepared  the 
way  for  Honorius. 

After  all,  the  sons  of  Theodosius  were  not  responsible  for 
the  number  of  the  barbarians  encamped  within  the  empire  :  it 
would  have  required  genius  beyond  the  measure  of  most  hered- 
itary kings  to  avert  the  resulting  calamities,  and  Honorius 
after  the  death  of  Alaric  recovered  a  considerable  measure  of 

authority. 

They  were  almost  the  first -emperors  whom  it  is  natural  to 
try  by  the  standard  of  hereditary  kings  who  survive  calamities 
they  cannot  avert,  while  the  unfortunate  emperors  who  had 
preceded  them  paid  the  penalty  in  person  for  the  failures  of 
their  government.     The  great  Theodosius  appears  to  his  son 


CLAUD  TAN. 


375 


in  dreams  to  teach  him  the  duties  of  his  station  ;  but  in  Clau- 
dian the  great  emperor  is  not  a  Christian,  but  a  mixture  of 
Stoic  and^'piatonist;  his  sense  of  public  duty  and  honor  is 
fed  by  Stoicism  ;  his  hope  of  immortality  is  Platonic  ;  there 
are  two  souls  in  a  man,  and  only  the  soul  which  is  lodged  in 
the  brain  is  capable  of  rising  after  death  to  heaven,  while  the 
soul  that  is  lodged  in  the  breast  and  the  belly,  and  directs  the 
higher  and  lower  passions,  expires  with  the  body.     Claudian 
is  ^nearer  being  a  consistent  pagan  than  Ausonius  to  being  a 
convinced  Christian  :  the  raciest  epigram  in  Latin  since  Mar- 
tial is  on  a  certain  "(General  Jacob,"  the   "Master  of  the 
Horse,"  who  was  a  devout  client  of  all  manner  of  saints.    "By 
the  ashes  of  Paul,  by  the  shrine  and  the  gray  hairs  of  Peter, 
do  not  mangle  my  verses,  General  Jacob.     So  may  Thomas 
be  your  shield  to  stay  your  heart,  and  Bartholomew  go  forth 
with  you  to  war  ;  so  may  the  aid  of  saints  keep  barbarians 
from  storming  the  Alps;   so  may  Saint  Susanna  grant  you 
strength  like  her  own  ;  so  may  every  savage  who  swam  the 
cold  Danube  in  his  pride  be  drowned  even  as  the  fleet  horses 
of  Pharaoh  and  his  host ;  so  may  the  sword  of  the  avenging 
angel  smite  the  Gothic  bands  ;  so  may  the  blessing  of  Thecla 
^hield  the  arms  of  Rome  ;  so  may  you  triumph  at  the  fall  of 
b  comrade  under  the  table,  and  see  jars  enough  broached  to 
conquer  even  your  thirst ;  so  may  no  foeman's  blood  stain 
j'our  strong  right  hand  :  do  not  mangle  my  verses.  General 
Jacob!"     Apparently  General  Jacob's  potations  had  brought 
on  the  gout,  for  there  is  another  and  very  dull  quatrain  on  a 
gouty  person  who  mangled   the  poet's  verses,  turning  on  a 
series  of  puns  on  the  feet  of  the  critic  and  the  feet  of  the 
verses  criticised. 

The  versification  of  Claudian  is  beautiful,  considering  the 
age,  and  he  is  fond  of  experiments  in  all  kinds  of  metre,  un- 
der the  guidance  of  grammarians  rather  than  of  poets,  so  that 
he  disregards  the  wholesome  tradition  of  stanzas  :  his  choriam- 
bics  on  the  marriage  of  Honorius  are  thirty-seven  in  number, 
his  alcaics  are  forty-one.-  Horace's  choriambics  are  always 
divisible  into  stanzas,  except  in  one  ode  of  the  fourth  book, 
which  has  thirty  lines;  and  no  poet,  even  of  the  silver  age, 


376 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


would  have  dreamed  of  writing  a  whole  poem  in  major  alcaics. 
Claudian  is  eloquent  and  sonorous,  and  obtains  the  greatest 
number  of  pretty  images  possible  out  of  the  universal  admira- 
tion for  the  beauty,  horsemanship,  and  archery  of  the  young 
emperor.  In  the  elegiac  prefaces  to  his  longer  poems  Clau- 
dian succeeds  better:  he  is  fluent  and  neat  and  ingenious;  if 
his  conceits  have  little  charm  or  point,  they  do  not  sin  against 
the  genius  of  the  metre.  But  it  is  only  in  hexameters  that 
Claudian  is  a  poet;  and  he  is  most,  perhaps, a  poet  when  he  is 
most  unreal,  in  the  mythological  pageantry  which  he  uses  to 
dignify  the  ideal  aspect  of  contemporary  politics.  His  appari- 
tions and  interventions  of  deities  are  decidedly  the  most  Ver- 
gilian  part  of  his  writings,  and  though  unreal  they  are  never 
heartless;  he  is  obviously  straining  after  something  which  he 
can  only  apprehend  in  a  figure  ;  when  he  is  combative  and 
declamatory  he  comes  nearer  Lucan  and  Juvenal,  though  he 
never  reaches  the  paradoxical  exaltation  of  Lucan,  and  seldom 
the  sarcastic  eloquence  of  Juvenal,  and  falls  often  into  the 
fault  of  all  late  writers,  of  mistaking  memory  for  inspiration, 
and  trying  to  conjure  with  long  lists  of  celebrated  names. 

Three  years  after  the  fall  of  Stilicho,  while  Claudian  was 
perhaps  still  hoping  to  finish  his  poem  on  "Ceres  and  Proser- 
pine," a  smaller  poet,  Claudius  Rutilius  N>!matianus,  solaced 
himself  in  his  Gallic  retirement  with  the  recollection  of  his 
visit  to  Italy,  where  he  had  been  prefect  of  the  city  and  mar- 
shal of  the  palace.  He  disagrees  with  Claudian  in  most 
things,  except  in  his  dislike  to  Christianity:  he  does  not  sneer 
openly  at  the  saints,  he  does  not  avow  a  preference  for  the  old 
worship,  which  would  have  been  hazardous  under  an  orthodox 
reign,  but  he  criticises  monasticism  unsparingly.  Monks  are 
men  who  flee  the  light,  so  called,  because  it  is  their  choice  to 
live  away  from  witnesses  to  their  deeds;  they  shrink  from  the 
gifts  of  fortune  out  of  fear  of  losses:  who  ever  chose  before  to 
avoid  misery  by  embracing  it?  and  so  on:  they  must  either 
be  runaway  slaves,  who  cannot  cheat  the  fate  that  dooms  them 
to  a  dungeon  of  one  kind  or  other,  or  else,  like  Bellerophon 


NUMA  TIAN. 


377 


when  he  hated  the  human  race,  they  myst  be  suffermg  from 
excess  of  bile.  The  Jews  are  as  bad  as  the  monks  ;  it  is  a  pity 
that  they  were  ever  conquered  by  Titus  or  Pompeius  ;  as  it  is, 
the  conquered  nation  is  weighing  on  its  conquerors ;  all  that 
he  knows  of  them  is  their  addiction  to  circumcision  and  Sab- 
batarianism, and  their  exclusive  laws  of  diet,  all  which  is 
mentioned  because  the  Jewish  farmer  of  a  villa  on  the  Etrus- 
can coast  objected  to  the  poet's  trespassing,  though  he  did  no 
harm.  The  Compitalia  were  being  celebrated  at  the  time 
without  disturbance:  the  learned  poet  imagines  they  were 
keeping  the  festival  of  the  resurrection  of  Osiris. 

In  hts  Roman  patriotism  he  even  goes  beyond  Claudian  : 
the  fact  that  Rome  had  been  occupied  six  days,  that  Italy  had 
been  ravaged  four  vears,  by  Alaric,  only  makes  Rutilius  more 
fervent  in  his  loyalty.     He  is  full  of  the  splendor  of  the  city, 
and  finds  it  hard  to\ear  himself  away  to  restore  his  property 
in  Gaul  which  had  suffered  in  the  disorder  of  the  times.    One 
of  his  friends  was  sent  to  Armorica  to  pacify  the  province, 
which  had  proclaimed  its  independence  of  the  usurper  Con- 
stantius,  and  probably  of  Roman  civilization,  for  it  would  be 
the  duty  of  the  pacificator  to  deliver  the  provincials  from 
slavery  to  their  own  servants.     The  roads  and  forests  of  Etru- 
ria  were  impassable,  as  a  result  of  the  repeated  invasions,  and 
so  the  poet  had  to  travel  by  sea.     At  Pisa  he  found  another 
friend,  who  had  been  driven  from  Toulouse  by  the  capture  of 
the  city,  whether  by  the  usurper  Constantius,  or  by  the  loyal 
Goths  under  Ataulphus,  the  successor  of  Alaric.     With  all  this 
Rutilius  believes  that  Rome  will  rally  and  assert  her  profaned 
majesty,  as  in  the  days  of  Hannibal :  for  himself,  he  constructs 
pretty  little  tirades  about  gold  and  iron,  just  as  if  he  had  been 
a  contemporary  of  Tibullus.     He  is  so  self-possessed  that  he 
does  not  spend  more  than  a  dozen  lines  on  the  turpitude  of 
Stilicho's  proposal  to  quarter  his  barbarian  troops  to  the  south 
of  the  Apennines,  the  providential  bulwark  of  Rome,  and  his 
profane  audacity  in  burning  the  compilation  which  passed  as 
the  Sibylline  Books.     He"  even  cherishes  the  tradition  of  the 
early  empire  ;  he  congratulates  himself  on  his  good  fortune  in 
not  having  had  to  direct. a  single  execution  while  prefect  of 


•n 


I 


I 


378 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


the  citv,  and  modestly  boasts  of  bis  merit  in  havmg  treated 
the  sacred  senate  with  respect  and  consulted  them  whenever 
it  was  possible.  He  philosophizes,  while  passmg  Sardmia  on 
the  ill-omened  house  of  the  Lepidi,  and  concludes  that  of  all 
the  triumvirs  Lepidus  was  the  guiltiest,  because  the  republic 
mi-ht  have  been  saved  after  the  battle  of  Mutina  but  for  his 
intervention  ;  and  it  is  noticeable  that  he  nowhere  displays 
any  enthusiasm  for  the  imperial  family,  which  would  not  have 
been  incompatible  with  his  view  of  the  i.x\\  of  the  Republic; 
for  according  to  Claudian,  Theodosius  taught  Honorius  the 
republican  theory  of  that  event.  The  versification  of  Rutilius 
is  smooth  and  not  incorrect,  but  decidedly  tedious,  in  spite  of 
the  pains  taken  to  keep  a  purely  dactylic  movement  m  the 
early  part  of  the  first  book. 

MEROBAUDIS. 

A  better  writer,  though  he  has  only  reached  us  in  fragments, 
is  Flavins  Merobaudis,  who  was  the  official  laureate  of  Aetius 
and  Valentinian  the  Third,  as  Claudian  had  been  of  Stihcho 
and   Honorius.     Like  Claudian,  he  had  a  bronze  statue  in 
Trajan's  forum  ;  like  Claudian,  he  was  rewarded  by  rank;  and 
as  he  had  served  in  the  army  with  distinction,  he  received 
higher  promotion  than  Claudian,  for  it  appears  from  the  dedi- 
cadon  to  the  panegyric  on  the  third  consulship  of  Aetius  that 
he  was  raised  himself  to  consular  rank  by  the  emperor  of  the 
East,  which  perhaps  accounts  for  his  name  not  being  m  the 
fasti,  for  the  precedent  set  when  Stilicho  refused  to  recognize 
Eutropius  would  naturally  work  both  ways:  it  would  make 
the  Eastern  court  more  chary  of  creating  a  consul  on  the  first 
of  Januarv,  and  perhaps  more  lavish  in  creating  consuls  at 
other  times.    Merobaudis  is  officially  a  Christian  :  in  his  pretty 
hendecasvllabics  on  Aetius's  baby,  he  compliments  the  mother 
on  having  her  boy  baptized  instead  of  dipping  him  in  the  Styx 
like  Thetis;  but  perhaps  he  thought  that  being  initiated  into 
the  mysteries  of  one  worship  was  very  like  being  initiated  into 
the  mysteries  of  another.     It  is  certain  that  in  the  panegyric 
on  Aetius's  third  consulship  the  most  eloquent  passage  is  a 
protest  bolder  than  any  of  Claudian's  against  the  abolition  of 


MEROBAUDIS. 


379 


the  old    rites,  which  were   the   safeguard  of  the  old  honor. 
Some  goddess  of  trouble  has  been  nursing  her  wrath,  all  has 
been   dishonored,  and  so  has  Osiris,  for  whom  the  peoples 
wail;  but  she  is  bent  on  vengeance,  and  will  raise  a  storm 
that  shall  make  famous  havoc  in  the  court.     At  the  word  she 
rides  the  west-wind  to  the  sluggish  pole,  and  pierces  the  chilly 
clouds  of  the  Rhipaean  mount.     Here  cruel  Enyo,  sitting  be- 
neath the  hollow  rock,  had  hidden  a  bier  that  skulked  from 
a^ed  peace.     Her  lamentation  is  that  the  world  has  nothing 
to  lament;  she  groans  in  sorrow  at  gladness;  foul  dust  lies 
thick  upon  her  uncomely  features,  her  raiment  is  stiff  with 
crore  long  dry;  the  hand  clasps  hand  idly  on  her  upturned 
Throat;  the  crest  of  her  helm  droops;  the  orb  of  her  shield  is 
ruddy  no  more  with  ghastly  light,  and  the  point  of  every  lance 
rusts  into  nothingness.     The  goddess  accosts  her  and  bids 
her  put  on  mortal  weeds  and  hide  her  face  under  a  visor,  drive 
the  grim  squadrons  to  the  war,  and  let  the  Tanais  bear  forth 
the  quivers  of  Scythia  to  riot  upon  unknown  shores.     "  Burst 
open  the  doors  oi  brass  and  the  shrines  with  metal  covering 
that  we  have  beheld  throughout  the  Latin  world  (the  temple 
of  Janus,  we  are  to  understand,  was  shut  in  all  men's  sight); 
let  all  rush  together  unto  arms,  let  the  heavy  baldric  glow 
with  gold;  let^he  quiver   where  the  arrows  lie  be  gilded; 
make^'ready  golden  plates  for  bit  and  curb;  let  steel  be  closed 
in  jewels,  let  the  light  of  flickering  gold  gleam  on  the  flashing 
blades  of  swords  (in  time  of  war  soldiers  can  get  gold  hilts 
and  jewelled  sheaths  for  their  swords).     Let  no  walls  avail  to 
keep  out  thv  madness;  let  Rome  and  the  very  emperors  trem- 
ble at  the  iium  of  wrath  and  guilt.     Then  drive  from  earth 
the  dwellers  on  high  and  the  deities  whose  tabernacle  is  with 
men  ;  lay  waste  the  gods  of  Rome ;  let  no  fire  burn  white  over 
the  hearth  in  sign  that  Vesta  accepts  the  offerings  which  feed 
the  flame.     These  be  the  wiles  to  arm  me  that  I  may  go  up 
into  the  wavering  palace  and  drive  away  the  fashions  of  our 
fathers  and  the  heart  of  ancient  days.     Then  also  shall  dis- 
cernment utterly  perish,  that  the  valiant  be  contemned  and 
the  wise  not  had  in  reverence ;  let  Phoebus  be  forgotten,  and 
eloquence  perish  from  Athens;  let  honor  light  on  the  unwor- 


I 


380 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


thy;  let  the  springs  of  the  world  be  swayed  not  by  merit,  but 
by  chance  and  sorry  greed;  let  men's  spirits  boil  with  mad- 
dening rage  for  cruel  gold ;  and  when  all  this  is  come  upon 
thenij'^let  Jove  take  no  heed,  and  let  not  the  most  high  God 

regard  it."^ 

Fragmentary  as  the  poem  is,  we  learn   something  of  the 
achiev'ements  of  the  hero.     Aetius  has  received  the  submis- 
sion of  the  tribes  of  both  banks  of  the  Rhine  (i.  e.,  the  barba- 
rians who  had  been  independent  on  the  east  bank  of  the 
Rhine  were  still  willing  to  confess  themselves  vassals  in  order 
to  secure  their  settlements  on  the  west).     After  twenty-eight 
or  thirty  years  the  enterprise  of  restoring  order  in  Armorica 
had  not  yet  been  given  up,  although  the  settlements  of  the 
Goths  were  on  the  border,  and  the  endeavor  had  been  kept 
up  with  little  success  for  twenty-five  or  thirty  years.    Genseric 
had  established  himself  at  Carthage;  but  Carthage  was  an 
old  rival  of  Rome,  and  it  was  hoped  that,  with  good  manage- 
ment and  an  imperial  marriage,  he  might  be  persuaded  to  be 
loyal.     It  appears  by  the  prose  dedication  of  the  panegyric 
that  the  Goths  had  broken  out  against  the  authority  of  the 
court:  by  the  analogy  of  Claudian  we  may  infer  that  the  poet 
thought   they  had   sufficient   provocation ;  however,  the   out- 
break was  triumphantly  suppressed.     The  author  tells  us  that 
the  only  question  he  asked  when  he  heard  of  it  was,  how 
soon  Aetius  engaged  the  enemy,  and  how  many  of  them  were 
slaughtered. 

His  prose  is  even  further  from  Pliny  the  younger  than  his 
verse  from  Vergil,  but  he  is  certainly  less  enigmatical  and 
cumbrously  allusive  than  Ausonius.  There  are  one  or  two 
sentences  which  savor  of  the  brazen  age— where  he  speaks, 
for  instance,  of  Rome  with  the  prince  forming  him  in  brass  to 
live,  and  boasts  that  the  emperor  nearest  the  rising  sun  has 
raised  him  to  the  nnme  of  highest.  But,  in  the  main,  his 
prose  is  good  and  manly,  and  less  loaded  with  epithet  than 
his  verse;  his  hendecasyllabics  are  musical  and  sonorous,  but 
heavy  and  monotonous.  His  elegiac  poems  are  a  great  Hill- 
ing off  from  Claudian,  or  even  Rutilius.     They  are  so  para- 

»  Mer.  V.  59-97. 


A  VIENUS. 


381 


phrastic,  especially  the  first,  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  ascertain 
his  meaning.  One  of  them  is  on  the  banqueting -room  in 
Valentinian's  palace,  another  on  the  decorations  of  his  gar- 
den: the  only  one  for  a  private  person  is  on  the  garden  of 
Faustus,  one  of  the  Anician  family,  who  still  kept  up  some- 
thing of  the  state  of  happier  times. 

AVIENUS.     rr  i^\f  if^'^J^ 
A  little  earlier,  or  a  little  later,  a  certain  Avienus  experi- 
mented in  Latin  versification  by  some  elegiac  fables  which  he 
addressed  to  a  certain  Theodosius,  who,  it  seems,  was  a  patron 
of  literature.     He  succeeds  better  in  the  favorite  metre  of  ty- 
ros than  in  the  prose  preface  which  explains  the  scope  of  the 
work.     The  verses  are  smooth  and  elegant,  and  the  diction 
and  construction  fairly  correct;  but  the   point  often  suffers 
both  by  amplification  and  indecision.     For  instance,  in  the 
author's  first  fable,  about  the  nurse  who  threatened  her  baby 
with  the  wolf,  he  never  gives  the  point  about  the  folly  of  be- 
lieving a  woman,  because  he  tries  to  explain  that  the  nurse 
was  not  in  earnest  and  had  no  reason  to  be,  and  to  hint  that 
the  wolf  got  beaten  for  hanging  about  the  cottage.     Again,  in 
the  fifteenth,  the  quarrel  between  the  high-flying  crane  and  the 
gorgeous  peacock  is  told  as  if  it  were  only  introduced  to  prove 
the  assertion  in  the  first  couplet,  that  once  upon  a  time  the 
peacock  asked  the  crane  to  dinner.     More  than  once  there 
are  lines  to  which  no  meaning  can  be  attached,  though  they 
are  perfectly  easy  to  construe.     What  does  it  mean  that  the 
husbandman  who  turned  up  a  treasure  when  ploughing,  and 
left  the  plough,  "drove  his  bullocks  to  better  seed?"     Does 
it  mean  that,  instead  of  ploughing  with  them,  he  decided  to 
sacrifice,  them,  as  if  the  sacrifice  would  be  the  seed  of  more 
treasure-trove  ?     Even  apart  from  this,  there  are  all  sorts  of 
chci^illes :  for  instance,  the  tigress  wounded  by  an  arrow  from 
an  unseen  bow  is  detained  a  long  time  by  a  she-fox  who  wishes 
to  know  what  has  happened.     Even  a  couplet  like  this, 
Juppiter  in  toto  quondam  qiiaesiverat  oibe 
Munera  natoium  qui  potiora  daiet, 

is  a  clumsy,  roundabout  way  of  saying  Jupiter  wanted  to  know 


382 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


which  creature  in  the  world  had  the  best  children.  So,  too, 
in  the  fable  of  the  ant  and  cicada,  the  latter  is  described  and 
not  named:  and  the  tortoise,  when  he  wishes  to  fly,  promises 
shells  of  the  pearl-oyster— by  a  periphrasis,  shells  from  the 
red  sands  (i.  e.,  from  the  sands  of  the  Red  Sea),  whose  value 
was  enhanced  by  the  pearl  with  shining  rind.  One  curious 
trick  is  that  the  writer  not  merely  identifies  Phoebus  with  the 
sun,  and  the  sun  with  Titan,  but  identifies  Titan  and  Phoebus 
Apollo.     Perhaps  the  prettiest  of  the  fables  is  the  oak  and 

the  reed : 

Stridula  mox  blando  respondit  canna  susurro, 

Seque  magis  tutam  debilitate  docet. 
Tu  rabidos  inquit  ventos  saevasque  procellas 

Despicis  et  totis  viribus  acta  ruis. 
Ast  ego  surgentes  paulatim  demoror  Austros, 

Et  quamvis  levibus  provida  cedo  Notis, 
In  tua  praeruptus  offendit  robora  nimbus, 

Motibus  aura  meis  ludificata  perit. 

The  last  couplet  is,  of  course,  a  repetition  of  the  two  couplets 
before;  but  the  last  line  is  prettily  turned,  and  the  first  line 
is  a  nice  imitation  of  the  sound  of  wind  in  reeds. 


PAGAN  CULTURE. 


383 


CHAPTER  IV. 
PAGAN   CULTURE. 

Up  to  the  end  of  this  period  the  grammatical  schools  and 
the  aristocracy  of  Rome  kept  up  the  traditions  of  the  old 
pagan  culture. 

FIRMICUS   MATERNUS. 

One  of  its  most  curious  expressions  was  a  work  begun  in 
the  rei-n  of  Constantine,  and  completed  some  twenty  years 
later  under  Constantius,  by  Firmicus  Maternus,  a  Sicilian  of 
rank  who  addressed  himself  to  Sollianus,  a  provincial  gover- 
nor of  high  reputation  who  had  received  the  consular  insignia. 
Maternus  himself  was  a  retired  advocate,  who  had  J^agnani- 
mously  renounced  the  gains  of  a  profession  in  which  he  had 
personallv  found  quarrels  more  plentiful  than  pay,  in  order  to 
devote  himself  to  astrology,  on  which  he  wrote  eight  books, 
which  have  reached  us  in  a  tolerably  complete  condition, 
thou-h  the  mention  of  Alchimia  (iii.  15)  Proves  that  it  must 
have"  been  interpolated  after  science,  and  what  passed  for 
science,  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Arabs. 

He  seems  to  know  nothing  of  Manilius ;  for  he  boasts  in 
winding  up  the  seven  books  which  contain  the  exposition  of 
his  doctrine-the  first  is  occupied  with  a  defence  of  his  sci- 
ence-that  he  had  "delivered  to  men  of  Rome  the  method  of 
a  new  subject."    His  sources  are,  for  the  most  part,  suspicious 
enou-h,  the  "  revelations  of  Mercurius  and  Euichnus  to  .Escu- 
lapius  "  with  "  the  explanations  of  Petosiris  and  Necepso,  and 
the  lessons  of  Abraham,  Orpheus,  and  Critodemus."   Necepso, 
it  seems,  was  in  virtue  of  his  science  one  of  the  most  righteous 
emperors  of  Egypt ;  but  he  .did  not  know  the  secrets  of  the 
"barbarian  sphere,"  which  Maternus  himself  is  able  to  ex- 
pound.    In  other  words,  the  later  apocryphal  literature  was 


^aea.^'-.ia»iBS.5g:  - 


384 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


fuller  than  the  earlier.     His  work  has  I'een  little  read  i„    . 
modern  times,  and  lias  not  been  edited  since  .he  m.dc  le  ot 
le  "xteenth  century,  and  then  the  editor  .as  an  astro  oge, 
Hi.,  stvle  he  tells  us,  is  not  his  strong  point,  and  apparently 
"  ha    no     he  niath;>natical  knowledge  to  make  a  great  cal- 
c!l  to       His  results  are,  of  course,  of  little  .uteres  .     His 
i,  e  ■  is  curious  and  not  unedifying.     He  feels  much  more 
"on'  y  he  solemnizing  effect  of  the  thought  that  our  earth  y 
ife  and  all  its  actions  are  wrought  out  by  the  influence  of  the 
bth    pure  spheres  of  heaven  than  the  temptation  to  throw 
th  °bbme  of  our  misdoing  on  the  stars:  the  knowkdge      a 
we  are  in  the  hands  of  heaven  ought  to  make  us  study  to  con 
^m "urselves  to  heaven.     His  science  which  he  ca  Is  J..«. 
,«<^/to/.,"  divine  learning,"  is  neither  Anfnomian  ^^^^ 
ious  ■  there  had  been  a  time  when,  instead  of  propitiating   he 
^dV,  men  had  sought  to  learn  their  fate  from  te  stars ;  btit 
to  Maternus  the  starry  influences  only  give  reality  and  sub^ 
stance  to  the   traditional  worship :   like  modern  writers,  he 
Lintains  that  piety  is  strengthened  by  accepting  the  results 
of  science.     And  the  priesthood  of  science  are    o  lea     a 
stricter  life  than  the  priesthood  of  the  o  d  officii  -or      1- 
They  are  above  all  things  to  beware  of  making  a  g^'"  o^.  ^'-^ 
profession  or  handing  their  knowledge  on  to  "-",  ab le  re^ 
cipients.     Especially  must  they  be  careful  to  av°'d  private 
consultations,  which  might  be  on  matters  on  which       was 
criminal  to  speculate,  as  public  business  or  the  personal  des- 
ti  y  of  the  Lperor,  though  every  well-instructed  as  i^loger 
ought  to  know  and  teach  that  the  emperor  is  not  subject  to 
the  stars:  they  in  heaven,  he  on  earth,  are  set  to  rule  the 
world  by  the  principal  divinity  ;  they  and  he  are  gods  alike. 

FIRMICUS   MATERNUS.  * 

Another  Firmicus  Maternus,  also  a  Sicilian,  wrote,  probably 
after  Sapor's  unsuccessful  siege  of  Nisibis,  a.d.  346  (the  only 
Persian  defeat  which  fell  in  Constantius's  reign),  an  impas- 
sioned appeal  to  the  emperors  to  suppress  idolatry,  and  to  his 
heathen  contemporaries  to  forsake  "the  error  of  their  profane 
religions  "     His  work  is  only  interesting  for  Us  vehemence, 


PAGAN  CULTURE. 


38s 


and  for  the  numerous  indications  it  contains  of  the  point 
ihdte  Eleusinian  and  other  mysteries  had  reached  in  the 
middle  of  the  fourth  century. 

JULIUS    OBSEQUENS. 

A  little  earlier  or  later,  Julius  Obsequens  compiled  from 
Tivv  ill  the  prodigies  recorded  between  249  and  12  b.c   ob- 
S  inlenlling  to  select  wonders  in  support  of  the  old  faith 
>vhich  had  occurred  in  the  full  daylight  of  history. 

DICTYS    AND    DARES. 

The  same  feeling  found  a  fantastical   expression  in  the 
tran  lat  on  of  the  at^ocryphal  histories  of  the  Trojan  war  by 
Sctvs    he  Cretan,  the  official  historian  of  Idomeneus   and 
Dares  the  Phrygian.     Dares  was  selected  to  give  the   Irojan 
Sd     o   the  stor^  because  he  is  mentioned  both  in  the  Iliad 
and  the  ^neidf  where  he  figures  as  a  braggart,  and  Die  ys 
r  Cretan  is  the  contemporary  Greek,  selected  becau  e  U^ 
Cretans  were  liars.     Neither  of  these  motives  at  al    affects 
Uie   ranslators,  who  take  their  originals  quite  seriously,  espe- 
;e  i  the  translator  and  abbreviator  of  I^-"'.-'- j;-^™" 
the  person  of  Cornelius  Nepos,  and  explains,  .n  a  pi efatoy 
etter  to  Sallust,  the  stir  the  discovery  of  the  work  has  made 
at  Athens,  wher;  Homer  is  finally  discredited,  h-"g  ^'^^ 
been  regarded  with  suspicion  because  be  described  the  gods 
as  engaging  in  single  combat  with  men.     It  is  only  Dares 
:  >o  competes  directly  with  Homer,  for  Dictys  confines  him- 
self to  supplementing  the  Iliad.     The  7'-'^"°";;? '<^;>  J 
rather  in  the  style  of  Sallust ;  the  trans  atoris  o"e  Septim  us 
^vho  dedicates  his  translation   to  Q.  Aradius   Rufinus ,  two 
statesmen  of  the  name  were  in  high  office,  one  in  a.d.  304-3x2, 
the  other  succeeded  to  his  uncle's  position  under  Julian  m 
A  D   x(>v     The  original  was,  according  to  the  preface,  d.s- 
co'^red  in  the  to.4  of  Dictys,  in  Phcenician  characters  in 
consequence  of  an  earthquake  in  the  re.gn  of  Nero,  who  im- 
mediately  ordered   a   translation    into   Greek       Dares   was 
quoted  by  .«lian  ;  the  translator,  having  no  style  in  P^rt'cu  ar 
gives  no  clue  to  his  date ;  he  has  carefully  preserved  all  the 

11.— 17 


386 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


VICTORINUS. 

A  Platonic  philosopher  of  this  period  has  a  reputation 

v.,her  L  exces    of  his  intrinsic  importance,  because  he  once 

1.  r.reat  hnpression  upon  St.  Augustin,  who  heard,  just 

made  a  great  imp  ess  ^Q^version,  how  the  cele- 

S  SuosSeTa^  Itodcian  had  publicly  acknowledged 
Christ  iffs  oTd  age,  and  renounced  his  profession  when  ^    n 

rtiir'rrorti;:  capital  had  f^^f^^:^ 

Romans  who  as  a  matter  °f  <=°"'^«^knew  Gr  eL    H.s  ^r-  sh._ 
.■       ^f  Pnrnhvrv's  "  Introduction  to  Aristotle  s  Categoiies 
n  St  ifrtt  hands  of  Isidore  of  Seville  ;  but  ai^arendy 
^  rr:;utatio„  was  ^^^^^^^  ^^TZIL 
>r::3Sr."cSndes%facertainma.^^^^^^^ 

four  books  on  t.etre  may  possibly  be  S-;'"-  •^'^^  ,  ^^ 
compilation,  and  is^ai     to     e  foun  e       n      ba,  a^write^^  ^^ 

rrstls^llomutitba   bL^^^^^^^^^ 

■-  '^:^^riS:^^^^^  St. 
P°ulS    Jerome  speaks  slightingly  of  both  works  because 
fhe  writer  knew  the  classics  better  than  the  Bible  and  ecc  esi- 
i  i  II  wd'ers     The  work  against  the  Avians  has  reached  - 
with  two  treatises,  one  a  reply  to  an  individual  A   '^"' <;;";^ 
fins  the  other  on  "  the  reality  of  the  Incarnation,    addressee 
t  iu  t  n°a  Manichee.     A  little  tract  on  "The  evening  an 
he  mornin<^  were  one  day"  is  interesting  as  anticipating  an 
lea  of  S    Augustin's,  that  the  evening  figures  the  perception 
of  the  creature^n  itself,  the  morning  figures  the  perception  of 
Ihe  creature  in  God. 


PAGAN  CULTURE. 


387 


DONATUS. 

Donatus,  a  contemporary  of  Victorinus,  confined  himself 
to  cr-immar :  he  had  the  honor  of  being  the  master  of  St. 
Terome,  who  in  his  chronicle  puts  the  heights  of  his  reputation 
!  n  ^=;6       His   grammar   has  reached  us   in  two  forms   a 
shone    which  only  treats  of  the  eight  parts  of  speech,  and  a 
loncrer  in  three  books,  which  formed  tl>e  foundation  of  the 
medieval  study  of  grammar :  he  also  wrote  a  commentary  on 
Terence      We  stiUhave  an  essay  on  comedy  and  tragedy, 
and  a  commentary  on  the  Heautontimorumenos,  whicli  em- 
bodies a  good  deal  of  material  from  him,  the  principal  source 
nf  the  rest  being  Euanthius,  a  contemporary  grammarian  of 
CO  s  am  nople.^  He  also  copied  Suetonius's  Life  of  Terence 
with  some  short  additions.     He  commented  on  Vergil  in  a 
comprehensive  spirit,  though  Ribbeck  thinks  that  the  extracts 
o?  slrvius  and  Priscian  suggest  a  very  unfavorable  view  of 
the  results. 

CHARISIUS   AND   DIOMEDES. 

As  there  was  little  room  for  more  than  one  or  two  cele- 
brated grammarians  at  a  time  in  Rome,  it  is  generally  sup- 
posed that  Charisius  and  Diomedes,  who  by  their  quotations 
cannot  have  flourished  earlier,  belonged  to  a  >^ter  gene.^  .on 
In  substance  they,  especially  Diomedes,  agree  ^vUh     o-  au   , 
.ho  no  doubt  followed   substantially  the  f  =^'"'^  ,^f  "'"^^  ' 
though  he  quotes  less  than  Diomedes  and  ™"*  '^^Z^! 
Charisius,  wLse  five  books  are  valued  as  containing  the  best 
record  now  available  of  the  activity  of  Latin  g'ammanans  as 
far  back  as  Patemon  in  the  days  of  Tibenus      He  has  been 
identified,  by  a  not  improbable  emendation    of  St.  Jerome  s 
chronicle,  with  an  African  who  was  sent  for  to  ^"eceed  Luai^ 
thius  at  Constantinople  in  361.     His  work  is  addressed  to  Is 
son,  who  is  not  a  Roman,  and  is  intended  to  ^'-^ke  h  m  one 
in  heart  and  speech,  if  not  in  race.     There  is  a  good  deal  of 
confusion   in  his   work,  of  which  the  beginning  of  the  first 
book,  the  end  of  the  fourth,  and  most  of  the  fifth  is  lo.t 
because  he  cannot  combine  the  old  grammatical  treatises  on 

1  Charisius  for  Charistus. 


388 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


comparison,  declension,  and  analogy,  and  ihe  hke   ^v.th  the 
new  method  of  basing  grammar  on  the  eight  parts  of  speech. 
Charisius  and  his  sources  were  still  excerpted  .n  Carloving.an 
times.     Diomedes's  tinee  books  are  addressed  to  a  certain 
Athanasius,  and  are  said  to  be  better  arranged  than  Char.- 
sius  with  whom  there  are  many  verbal  coincidences;    hough 
Diomedes  has  sources  of  his  own.     He  used  Valerius  Probus 
or  some  one  who  had  used  him,  and  in  his  third  book  on  metre 
has  preserved  a  good  many  excerpts  from  Suetonius  s     Lives 
of  the  Poets  "     His  knowledge  of  metre  is  so  imperfect  as  to 
provoke  his  editors,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  shorter, 
emptier,  and  earlier  work  of  Donatus  was  thought  more  use- 
ful by  posterity. 

•'   ^  SERVIUS. 

But  at  the  time  it  is  clear  that  the  study  of  grammar  was 

not  declining:  the   point  had    not    '^e^,"/^.'-'^'^^^.,'''\,;^;  1'?^^ 
teachers  wished  to  save  themselves  and  their  pup.  s  tiouble, 
and  to  make  the  routine  of  study  as  short  and  mechanical  as 
possible.     Servius  Honoratus,  whose  commentary  on  \ergil, 
-even  in  the  form  that  has  reached  us  (the  who^e  bears  the 
name  of  Servius,  but  in  the  "  Bucolics  "  and  "  Georgics     he 
is  quoted  by  name),  shows  real  learning  especially  in    he  de- 
partment of  the  religious  antiquities  of  Rome,  flourished  at 
Ihe  end  of  the  fourth  century,  in  the  midst  of  a  circle  of  ac- 
complished nobles,  who  recognized  him  as  their  equal  be- 
cause, young  as  he  was,  he  was  the  most  learned  man  of  the 
dav      More  than  one  or  two  of  the  archetypes  of  our  present 
MSS.  of  the  classics  was  "  read  and  emended  "  by  a  man  of 
rank  "in  the  house  of  Servius:"  it  is  true  that  such  MSS.  do 
not  inspire  us  with  enthusiasm  for  the  emendations  of  the 

fourth  century.  , 

His  criticisms  of  the  commentary  of  Donatus,  on  whose 
"  Art  of  Grammar"  he  wrote  a  commentary,  are  for  the  mos 
part  unfavorable,  and  we  may  suspect  that  he  has  preserved 
the  worst  parts  of  his  predecessor.  Besides  this,  he  wrote  a 
book  called  "Centimeter,"  in  which  he  describes  a  hundred 
metres  with  examples  of  his  own  composition,  often  distorted 
from  classical  passages  in  other  metres,  and  a  holiday  task 


PAGAN  CULTURE. 


;89 


on  the  metres  of  Horace,  which  is  not  worthy  of  his  reputa- 
tmn  thouf^h  it  bears  his  name.  . 

S;  vU^°nowhere  mentions  the  younger  Donatus  (Tiberius 
Chudu     Donatus),  who  wrote  a  Life  of  Vergil  chiefly  from 
S  e  o    us  (who  in  his  time  had  written  cWefly   rom  A.Uom 
,nd  Varro)   and  a  commentary  on  Vergil,  with  a  preface  in 
?he  flmof  a  letter  to  his  son,  Tiberius  Claudius  Max.mus 
Donat  anus,  in  which  he  expresses  a  desire  to  leave  h.m  a 
p'tten  for  his  own  lectures.     The  commentary  is  pure  y  ex- 
Snatorv°  all  the  information  about  the  subject-matter  being 
reseS'for  a  treatise  which  was  never  written,  on  the  per- 
sc^'l  and  other  proper  names,  which  would  have  resembled 
he  woTk  of  Vibius  Sequester  (who,  perhaps,  took  his  mm  de 
l/«r  from    Cicero,  "Pro    Cluent."  iv.  25)  on    the  rivers, 
SM  dn's    re.s,  groves,  marshes,  mountains,  and  nations  men- 
Uodii   the  poets,  in  alphabetical  order.     He  used  Vergil. 
Ovid's  "Metamorphoses"   and  "Fasti,"  Lucan,  Silms,  and 
Statius's  "  Thebaid." 

SYMMACHUS. 

The  names  ofSymmachus  and  Macrobius  carry  us  into  the 
circlt  wire  culturl  still  continued  to  be  the  chief  in^r^t  o 
life      0    Aurelius   Symmachus  was  the  son  and  fathei   ol 
a  conSl;  his  father  was  celebrated  for  his  eloquence  a^rd 
learning  and  was  the  leader  of  the  senate  in  his  time.     H  s 
5     ipal  literary  work  was  one  or  two  t-some    etters    o 
lis  famous  son,  enclosing  dull  epigrams  m  ^'x  hexam    e- 
apiece  on  distinguished  men  of  the  day,  the  on  y  me.it  aimed 
a   being  to  pack  their  titles  and  the  like  into  t'-.^P^^"  ;  ^'^« 
his  son:  he  was  the  head  of  the  college  of  pontiffs,  Pontifex 
Major,  as  the  emperor  since  the  days  of  Jovian  declined  the 
title  of  Pontifex  Maximus. 

The  son  was  beyond  dispute  the  first  orator  of  his  day 
perhaps  because  he  was  the  most  eloquent  '"ember  o  the 
ienatirian  order.  The  fragments  of  his  speeches,  which  a. e 
tolerably  extensive,  hardly  show  any  super.onty  to  the  pane- 
gvrists  of  the  day:  it  is  true  that  the  ia.gest  ofthe  f.agme  ts 
tre  very  early,  being  addressed  to  the  elder  Valentinian,  who 


39° 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


PAGAN  CULTURE. 


39' 


appointed  Symmachus  corrector,  something  between  a  judge 
and  a  police  magistrate,  of  Lucania  and  Bruttium  in  365,  when 
he  cannot  have  been  out  of  his  teens ;  for  in  360  Libanius 
speaks  of  him  as  a  promising  boy.  .  a  .    1        1 

Perhaps  one  may  notice  an  effort  to  be  less  inflated  and 
Ion-winded  than  the  schoolmen  ;  but  the  only  result  is  that 
he  fs  artificial  without  being  spirited  :  the  only  speech  which 
has  an  interest  on  historical  grounds  is  that  in  which  he 
thanks  Valentinian  for  restoring  the  debates  of  the  forum, 
which  it  seems  Constantius  or   Julian   had   suppressed   in 
favor  of  written  pleadings,  which  were  certainly  likely  in  that 
aae  to  be  more  business-like,  but  were  not  so  satisfactory 
to  the  parties.     If  a  cause  was  decided  on  written  pleadings 
the  loser  had  no  guarantee  that  the  pleadings  on  his  side  had 
been  read  ;  if  the  speakers  on  both  sides  were  heard  in  open 
court,  the  loser  knew  his  advocate  had  been  heard,  and  what 
the  public  thought  of  him.     The  fragments  of  speech  in  the 
senate  are  meagre,  which  is  to  be  regretted,  because  they  be- 
long to  his  riper  years:  the  only  one  of  any  substance  de- 
scribes the  fashion  of  appointing  consuls  in  his  time.      I  he 
nomination  rested  with  the  emperor,  the  senate  had  the  right 
of  requesting  the  nomination  of  any  particular  candidate  : 
there  was,  of  course,  great  room  for  ingenuity  in  praising  this 
insincere  arrangement,  which  had  the  advantage  that  it  en- 
abled  the  senate  to  secure  the  promotion  of  its  worthiest 
members-at  the  price  of  always  demanding  the  promotion 
of  any  courtier  when  the  master  thought  his  turn  had  come. 

There  were  other  speeches  published  which  have  not 
reached  us :  one  would  have  been  interesting,  in  which  the 
orator  won  a  victory  that  must  have  been  very  easy  over  a 
proposal  to  revive  the  censorship,  which  had  been  in  abeyance 
since  it  was  revived  in  the  middle  of  the  third  century  for 
Valerian.  We  should  have  learned  whether  the  proposal  to 
follow  this  unlucky  precedent  was  prompted  by  a  passion  for 
antique  simplicity,  or  by  a  desire  to  revive  the  religious  so- 
lemnities which  would  have  been  necessary  to  wind  up  the 
survey.  It  is  possible  that  it  was  part  of  the  proposal  that 
Symmachus  was  to  have  been  censor ;  we  might  infer  this 


with  certainty  from  the  title  repudiata  censura,  if  we  had  found 
die  passage  where  the  speech  is  mentioned  in  a  letter  of  the 

^°"m  celebrated  memoir  addressed  to  the  younger  Valentin- 
ian in  support  of  the  request  for  the  restoration  of  the  altar 
of  Victory  in  the  senate-house,  does  more  credit  to  the  repu- 
tation of  its  author.     There  is  genuine  dignity  and  pathos  in 
the  pleading  of  the  ancient  city  to  be  allowed  to  walk  in  the 
ancient  ways,  and  the  familiar  commonplaces  of  tolerance  are 
well  put,  and  with  greater  sincerity  than  they  are  a  ways  put 
by  the  losing  side;  for  Symmachus  had  no  feeling  that  in  the 
ideal  state  of  things  every  Roman  should  be  compelled  to 
worship  the  Roman  gods.     He  would  have  been  perfectly  sat- 
isfied with  the  public  establishment  of  all  the  old  ceremonies; 
he  would  have  been  content  if  Valentinian  the  Younger  had 
left  what  Valentinian  the  Elder  had  left.     He  shows  great 
tact  in  the  way  he  appeals  to  the  example  of  such  a  bigoted 
believer  as  Constantius,  who  had  not  been  able,  on  his  visi 
to  Rome,  to  resist  the  genius  of  the  place  altogether:  he  had 
made  protests  and  suppressed  some  things,  but  he  had  sanc- 
tioned enough,  especially  the  endowments  of  the  vestals  and 
other  religious  dignitaries,  to  establish  the  principle  for  which 
Symmachus  contended.     The  weak  point  of  the  argument  ,s 
the  insinuation  that  the  prosperity  and  virtue  of  the  old  d.ays 
were  due  to  the  old  rites.     Symmachus  was  not  appealing  to 
an  impartial  critic,  who  might  have  thought  this  feeling  the 
most  respectable  part  of  the  case,  but  to  a  Christian  emperor. 
Symmachus,  as  was  to  be  expected,  lost  his  case  ;  but  he 
kept  his  position,  which  was  not  even  affected  by  his  over- 
ready  recognition  of  the  pagan  rhetorician  whom  Arbogastes 
setup  as  emperor  after  the  murder  of  Valentinian:  he  contin- 
ued to  be  employed  as  prefect  of  the  city  under  both  Iheodo- 
sius  and  Honorius  ;  under  the  latter  he  had  to  keep  the  peace 
durin<T  the  contested  election  for  the  papacy  in  a.d.  420.     His 
official  correspondence  is  decidedly  creditable :  it  is  indepen- 
dent and  business-like,  and  superior  to  the  younger  Phny  s, 
who  has  always  too  much  the  air  of  taking  Trajan's  opinion 
because  he  cannot  make  up  his  own  mind  without  help.    Sym- 


.:t 


2  (^  2  ^'^  ^^^  LITER  A  TURE. 

machus  has  the  advantage  of  writing  when  official  relations 
were  better  settled,  and,  though  he  is  more  self-reliant,  he  is  also 
more  courtly,  never  speaking  of  the  emperor  without  an  hono- 
rific periphrasis ;  in  fact,  he  pushes  his  devotion  to  the  verge 
of  independence,  for  he  is  decidedly  fond  of  reminding  Theo- 
dosius  of  his  deity.  Next  to  the  official  letters  to  the  emperor 
we  may  put  the  letters  to  the  official  representatives  of  the  old 
worship,  whom  he  was  anxious  to  impress  with  a  sense  of  their 
responsibilities.  When  a  vestal  compromised  herself,  he  was 
consistently  zealous  that  she  should  be  called  to  account. 
His  letters  in  general  are  trifling,  and  it  is  fair  to  remember 
that  he  is  not  responsible  for  their  publication,  for  the  collec- 
tion includes  fragments.  He  tells  us  himself  that  his  secreta- 
ries, he  heard,  kept  copies  ;  and  no  doubt  his  son  published 
what  was  in  their  hands  after  his  death.  When  alive  he  asked 
a  friend  who  kept  his  letters  to  keep  them  to  himself. 

They  are  simply  the  stock-in-trade  of  a  polite  letter-writer 
who  has  hardly  anything  to  say.     This,  to  be  sure,  is  very 
much  the  character  of  Pliny's  letters  too;  but  Pliny  has  two 
resources  which  Symmachus  has  not— he  has  a  strong  taste 
and  talent  for  describing  the  beauties   of  cultivated  nature, 
and  the  background  of  Domitian's  tyranny  gives  a  meaning 
to  all  his  anecdotes  of  the  celebrities,  such  as  they  were,  of 
the  day,  and  any  current  gossip,  if  flavored  with  some  hint  of 
the  improvement  in  afl"airs.     Symmachus  gives  little  news, 
and  never  talks  politics;  he  confines  himself  to  giving  intro- 
ductions and  paying  compliments,  grumbling  a  little  about 
pressure  in  hard  times,  which  fell  heavily  in  a  declining  soci- 
ety upon  the  richest,  when  revenue  was  largely  paid  in  kind: 
it  is  the  extension  of  credit  and  the  multiplication  of  public 
securities  which  enable  rich  men  now  to  tide  over  periods  of 
depression  without  personal  discomfort.     A  topic  which  recurs 
still  oftener  is  his  health:   he  suffered,  like  Fronto,  from  the 
gout  in  his  hands  and  feet,  although  he  personally  was  tem- 
perate;  when  he  was  driven  from  Baice  by  a  crowd  of  excur- 
sionists, he   complains  that  they  break   in  upon   his  "sober 
solitude."     In  the  same  spirit  he  likes  to  recognize  sanctitas 
evervwhere:  it  is  true  that  with  him  this  is  something  a  good 


PAGAN  CULTURE. 


393 


deal  short  of  "  holiness  "—it  is  the  union  of  purity  and  dignity 
which  springs  from  an  implicit  consciousness  of  higher  pow- 
ers. Although  he  was  the  official  representative  of  paganism, 
Symmachus  himself  has  none  of  the  ardent  personal  devo- 
tion to  separate  deities  which  we  find  in  a  Julian  or  a  Proclus. 

PR/ETEXTATUS. 

:  Something  of  this  personal  piety  we  do  find  in  another 
member  of  Symmachus's  circle,  Vettius  Agorus  Praetextatus, 
whose  personal  position  was  perhaps  even  higher  than  his, 
though  he  was  only  consul-designate  when  he  died,  in  a.d.  385. 
We  learn  from  his  epitaph  that  he  was  pontiff  of  Vesta,  pon- 
lifl"  of  the  Sun,  that  he  was  one  of  the  fifteen  keepers  of  the 
Sibylline  books,  a  member  of  the  guild  of  Hercules;  he  was 
consecrated  to  Liber,  and  at  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  he  was 
hierophant  and  sacristan.     He  had  received  the  baptism  of 
bulls'  blood,  which  was  the  highest  sacrament  in  the  religion 
of  Mithras,  and  was  probably  a  transfigured  symbol  of  the 
spring  rains;  and  all  these  religious  dignities  come  before  his 
temporal  honors.     An  epitaph  in  verse,  placed  on  his  tomb 
by  the  order  of  his  wife,  seems  to  prove  that  he  was  a  really 
learned  man  in  both  Greek  and  Latin,  diligent  in  translating 
Greek  books  and  amending  Latin  ones.     Macrobius  tells  us 
that  he  was  the  one  man  who  understood  the  secret  nature  of 
the  gods,  and  was  able  to  express  it  in  speech.     We  know 
from  Boethius  that  he  translated  both  the  earlier  and  the  later 
^'Analytics,"  not  directly  from  Aristotle,  but  from  Themistius, 
who,  like  many  Neo-Platonists,  endeavored  to  reconcile  Plato 
and  Aristotle  by  mystifying  Aristotle:  it  is  thought  that  he 
may  also  be  the  author  of  a  little  tract  on  the  "Ten  Catego- 
ries" which  bears  the  name  of  St.  Augustin. 

MACROBIUS. 

Praetextatus's  learning  and  character  and  influence  were 
very  inadequately  measured  by  his  authorship:  he  is  the  cen- 
tre of  the  society  whose  discussion  of  Vergil  furnishes  the 
framework  to  the  "  Saturnalia  "  of  Macrobius  Ambrosius  The- 
odosius,  who  is  generally  supposed  to  have  been  praetorian 

H.— 17* 


394 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


prefect  in  Spain  a.d.  399,  proconsul  of  Africa  410,  and  lord 
high  chamberlain  a.d.  422.     The  dates  of  his  two  chief  works 
cannot  be  ascertained  precisely,  but  they  cannot  be  very  early. 
The  "  Saturnalia"  is  addressed  to  his  son,  as  if  he  were  wind- 
ing up   his   literary   activity:    he   apologizes  for  introducing 
speakers  who  were  not  ripe  for  such  conversation  at  the  time 
of  Pr^textatus's  death.     He  was  not  a  Roman  by  birth,  but 
his  culture  is  chiefly  Latin.     His  object  was  to  put  together 
all  the  results  of  his  reading  in  an  orderly  and  attractive  form  : 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  acknowledged  and  unacknowledged 
quotation,  but  it  does  not  seem  as  if  the  author's  reading  was 
really  very  wide :  his  chief  sources  are  Gellius  and  Servius 
(whose  commentaries  were  hardly  published  when  Praetexta- 
tus  died),  and  Seneca  and  Plutarch.     The  seven  books  profess 
to  be  a  record  of  a  discussion  of  Vergil,  held  at  the  house  of 
Pr£etextatus  during  the  three  days  of  the  Saturnalia,  before 
and  after  dinner,  while  the  actual  table-talk  does  not  keep  so 
closely  to  the  subject.     The  general  tone  is  a  mythical,  pie- 
tistic  antiquarianism,  with  a  strong  feeling  for  plain  living  and 
high  thinking.     The  speakers  still  assume  the  unbroken  ex- 
istence of  the  national  worship,  though  it  is  probable  that  an 
official  of  the  court  of  Arcadius  or  Honorius  must  have  been 
required  to  conform. 

The  commentary  on  the  "  Dream  of  Scipio,"  also  addressed 
to  his  son,  is  a  principal  source  of  our  knowledge  of  the  out- 
line of  Cicero's  "  Republic  "  and  its  relation  to  Plato's,  though 
the  principal  object  of  the  writer  is  to  make  the  illustration 
of  the  finest  passage  of  the  work  a  sort  of  introduction  to  a 
course  of  Platonic  philosophy  and  science. 

The  style  of  Macrobius  has  little  of  the  elegance  of  Sym- 
machus,  who,  though  affected,  is  hardly  ever  cumbrous,  and 
vindicates  fairly  enough  his  claim  to  coin  new  words,  although 
he  does  not  emancipate  himself  completely  from  the  tradition 
that  the  language  of  Cicero  was  the  standard  which  it  was  de- 
sirable to  follow  exactly. 


ST  HILARY. 


395 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  FA  THERS  OF  THE  PERIOD. 

The  heathen  and  the  Christian  culture  of  this  period  cul- 
minated and  collapsed  together  :  the  fall  of  Rome  practically 
put  an  end  to  both.  The  greatest  work  of  the  period  was  in- 
spired by  the  calamity  which  crushed  the  spirits  of  all  who 
grew  up  to  manhood  after  it.  As  might  be  expected,  the 
collapse  was  more  total  upon  the  pagan  side  :  the  fifth  cent- 
ury has  no  pagan  prose  writer  to  show  on  the  level  of  Leo  or 
Salvian,  but  even  they  represent  an  immense  falling-off  from 
St.  Ambrose,  St.  Jerome,  and  St.  Augustin. 

ST.  HILARY. 

The  beginning  of  the  great  theological  movement  of  the 
second  half  of  the  fourth  century,  like  the  beginning  of  the 
great  rhetorical  movement  of  the  first  half,  fell  in  Gaul,  and 
there  is  a  certain  connection  between  the  two.  It  is  the  elo- 
quence of  Gaul  which  St.  Hilary  of  Poitiers  endeavors  as  a 
matter  of  duty  to  consecrate  to  the  exposition  of  the  mystery 
of  the  Trinity.  St.  Hilary  was  born  between  a.d.  310  and  320, 
and  converted  himself  to  Christianity  by  the  consideration 
that  only  revelation  could  give  certainty,  and  only  creation 
could  explain  the  world.  His  position  and  his  talents  made 
him  bishop  of  his  native  city  soon  after  his  conversion,  and 
his  personal  interest  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos  made  him 
the  chief  of  the  defenders  of  the  Nicene  Creed  when  the  prop- 
aganda of  Constantius  reached  Gaul,  where  it  would  proba- 
bly have  succeeded,  as  it  did  among  the  barbarians,  but  for 
the  energetic  resistance  of  St.  Hilary.  This  resistance  led  to 
his  banishment  to  Asia  Minor,  where  he  composed  a  treatise 
on  the  faith,  in  twelve  books,  the  number  of  which,  perhaps 


39^ 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


as  much  as  the  character  of  their  eloquence,  led  St.  Jerome  to 
compare  them  to  the  "  Institutiones  Oratoriae  "  of  Qumctihan 
The  stvle  is  unattractive  and  involved,  and  the  new  words  and 
phrase's  which  have  to  be  coined  to  express  new  ideas  do  not 
harmonize  with  the  semi-classical  tone  which  the  writer  aims 
at  and  sometimes   attains.     The  work  marks  an  epoch  in 
Christian  theology,  as  the  doctrine  that  the  Incarnate  Lord 
"emptied  himself"  is  applied  for  the  first  time  to  meet  the 
stron-  points  of  the  Arian  argument  from  Scripture,  and  the 
Unity  (which  earlier  writers  had  rested  chiefly  on  the  doctrme 
that  the  Father  is  the  fountain  of  Godhead)  is  defended  from 
the  doctrine  that  the  Son  is  in  the  Father  and  the  Father  in 
the  Son,  each  in  the  Spirit  and  the  Spirit  in  each.      1  his  was 
not   the   only   work    of  his   exile  :    he   composed   pamphlets 
a-ainst  the  endless  synods  in  which  the  semi-Arians  elabo- 
rated the  endless  variety  of  their  creeds  ;  he  composed  a  sec- 
ond memoir  to  the  emperor  (the  first  was  written  before  his 
banishment)  in  defence  of  his  cause  and  person,  and  when 
this  failed  he  wrote  an  attack  upon  the  emperor  as  Antichrist, 
which  was  published  after  his  death,  and  is  one  of  the  most 
vi-orous  pieces  of  invective  composed  in  Latin  since  the  days 
of^acitus:  it  represents  a  new  side  of  the  emperor's  charac- 
ter—his diligence  and  ingenuity  in  cajoling  individuals.     On 
his  return  he  wrote  against  the  bishop  of  Milan,  who  also 
favored  the  Arian   party,  and  composed  his  mystical   com- 
mentary on  the  Psalms,  which  was  founded  upon  that  which 
passed' under  the  name  of  Origen.     The  commentary,  now 
lost  upon  the  book  of  Job  was  written  in  the  same  spirit  as 
was' the  earlier  work  on  St.  Matthew,  where  the  double  sense 
is  carried  through  with  unusual  originality  and  consistency: 
everything  recorded  is  a  prophecy  of  something  in  the  future, 
and  the  prophetic  sense  is  more  important  than  the  historical. 
It  is  also  attested  that  St.  Hilary  wrote  hymns  ;  but  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  any  wiiich  have  reached  us  under  his 
name  are  perfectly  genuine:  the  oldest-looking  of  them,  the 
well-known  morning  hymn  "  Lucis  Largitor  splendide,   offends 
n-ainst  the  rules  of  Latin  prosody  in  a  way  not  to  be  expected 
from  an  author  whose  literary  ambition  stood  so  high :  it  is 


6-7:  AMBROSE. 


397 


not  merely  that  the  conventional  quantity  of  vowels  is  not  un- 
derstood, but  that  syllables  which  must  be  long  because  they 
contain  two  consonants  are  treated  as  short. 

ST.  AMBROSE. 

The  activity  of  St.  Hilary  was  continued  in  all  directions 
by  St.  Ambrose,  who  was  apparently  of  Roman  family,  though 
born  in  Gaul,  where  his  father  was  praitorian  prefect.     After 
completing  his  education  at  Rome,  his  success  as  a  pleader 
was  so  brilliant  that  he  was  appointed  first  assessor  to  the 
praetorian  prefect,  and  then  consular  of  Liguria  and  ^Emilia. 
In  this  capacity  he  had  to  keep  the  peace  during  the  election 
of  a  bishop'  at  Milan  in  374,  which  was  hotly  disputed  be- 
tween the  Catliolics  and  the  Arianizers,  and  both  parties  united 
in  pressing  the  office  upon  him  ;  and,  although  he  was  only  a 
catechumen,  he  had  to  accept.     As  bishop  he  did  much  to 
continue  the  work  of  St.  Hilary  in  all  directions,  but  with 
better  success:  if  he  opposed  the  desire  of  Justlna,  the  em- 
press regent,  to  have  one  of  the  churches  at  Milan  assigned 
to  the  Arians,  he  was  at  the  same  time  the  protector  of  the 
young  Valentinian  :  if  his  polemic  against  Arianism  was  less 
profoTind  than   Hilary's,  it  influenced  the  opinion  of  Italy, 
while  it  was  rather  the  attitude  than  the  argument  of  Hilary 
that  decided  the  faith  of  Gaul.     In   hymnology,  too,  it  was 
Ambrose  rather  than  Hilary  who  gave  a  definite  shape  to  the 
new  impulse  of  worship;  it  was  Ambrose  rather  than  Hilary 
who  naturalized   the   mystical   exegesis   of  the  Alexandrian 
school  in  the  AVest.    Above  all,  it  was  Ambrose  who  familiar- 
ized the  West  with  the  romance  of  chastity. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  of  his  temperament  is  its 
cheerfulness  and  serenity :  there  is  very  little  struggle  in  his 
strength.  When  the  dispute  about  the  Church  was  at  its 
height  he  shut  himself  up  in  the  building  with  the  faithful  and 
introduced  a  new  style  of  chanting  from  the  East :  he  never 
passes  into  the  strained  gloomy  attitude  of  warning  and  de- 

^  The  tendency  of  episcopal  elections  to  degenerate  into  faction  fights, 
which  had  shown  itself  in  the  third  century,  had  more  to  do  than  is  com- 
monly remembered  with  the  outbreak  of  the  Tenth  Persecution. 


398 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


nunciation  which  we  are  familiar  with  in  the  later  conflicts 
between  Church  and  State.  The  famous  penance  of  1  heodo- 
sius,  who  was  excluded  from  the  services  of  the  Church  till  he 
had  shown  repentance  for  a  massacre  with  which  he  had 
avenged  a  tumult  in  the  circus  at  Thessalonica,  is  not  a  tri- 
umph over  the  emperor  or  the  empire  :  it  is  simply  an  asser- 
tion of  ecclesiastical  discipline.  This  personal  calm  and 
brightness  of  assured  belief  does  much  to  explain  his  reputa- 
tion for  eloquence,  which  is  abundantly  attested  by  all  con- 
temporaries. A  landscape  is  always  beautiful  in  sunlight.  It 
is  worth  noticing  that,  of  the  different  Latin  words  for  elo- 
quence, the  longest-lived,  which  come  from  eloqiii,  are  almost 
exclusively  applied  to  him,  because  discrtiis  and  the  like  were 
still  in  not  unfrequent  use;  but  they  point  to  argumentative 
ingenuity,  while  St.  Ambrose's  strength  lies  in  simple  power 
of'^expression.  It  has  been  said  that  his  controversial  works 
degenerate  into  sermons,  out  of  which  they  probably  grew. 

The  earliest  work  of  St.  Ambrose  which  has  reached  us  was 
written  in  the  first  year  after  his  election  at  Milan :  it  is  on 
"Paradise,"  and  a  very  large  proportion  of  his  mystical  ex- 
pository works  are  on  Genesis.  It  is  obvious  that  he  began 
at  the  beginning  without  waiting  to  choose. 

He  followed  Philo,  who  had  set  the  example  of  allegorizing 
the  Bible  as  the  Stoics  had  allegorized  Greek  mythology,  and 
he  seems  to  follow  him  at  first  hand.  On  the  whole,  the  ab- 
straction is  carried  further,  for  Philo  is  often  satisfied  with 
working  up  to  the  Law,  while  St.  Ambrose  does  not  rest  in 
the  letter  anywhere.  He  does  not  always  appropriate  Philo's 
allegories  without  straining :  the  Fountain  in  Paradise  is  the 
Good,  according  to  Philo,  and  the  four  heads  into  which  it  is 
parted  are  the  four  cardinal  virtues.  St.  Ambrose  keeps  the 
cardinal  virtues,  but  the  fountain  is  Christ. 

The  exposition  of  Genesis  comprises  Cain  and  Abel,  which 
is  very  closely  dependent  upon  Philo,  a  treatise  on  Noah  and 
the  Ark  (which  was  a  figure  of  the  human  body),  added  later 
to  complete  the  series,  and  a  number  of  books  on  the  separate 
patriarches.  Abraham  is  treated  twice  over,  once  in  a  lecture 
or  lectures  addressed  to  catechumens  as  an  example  of  devotio, 


ST.  AMBROSE. 


399 


and  acrain  mystically  as  a  type  of  the  emancipation  of  the  soul, 
whiclf  leaves  its  own  familiar  world  of  sense,  and  wanders 
throu-h  the  unknown  wilderness,  till  at  last  it  receives  the 
earnest  of  the  possession  of  the  promised  land  of  spiritual 
truth.  Isaac  the  willing  sacrifice  is  treated  as  the  spouse  of 
the  soul,  who  travails  in  birth  with  this  world  and  the  world 
to  come!  Jacob  is  treated  as  the  type  of  the  blessed  life  of 
the  stranger  and  pilgrim ;  although  within  seventeen  years  of 
his  death  he  said  that  the  days  of  his  pilgrimage  had  been 
few  and  evil.  Joseph,  the  last  of  the  series,  is  an  example  of 
chastity,  or  rather  of  modesty. 

Jacob,  in  fact,  is  the  true  wise  man  adapted  to  the  purposes 
of  Christian  edification,  and  the  Stoic  point  of  view  reappears 
elsewhere.  In  the  martyrdom  of  the  aged  Eleazar,'  and  the 
seven  brethren  whom  St.  Ambrose  calls  the  seven  Maccabees, 
far  more  stress  is  laid  upon  their  courage  than  their  devotion  : 
even  the  distinction  between  suicide  and  martyrdom  is  not 
yet  familiar:  the  mother'  and  her  seven  daughters  who  ran 
hand  in  hand  into  a  stream  and  were  drowned  because  their 
chastity  was  in  peril  in  time  of  persecution  are  martyrs  like 
St.  Agnes,  for  whose  beautiful  legend  St.  Ambrose  is  the  oldest 

authority. 

In  the  same  spirit  he  compares  the  story  of  Damon  and 
Pythias  to  the  devotion  of  a  soldier  who  changed  clothes  with 
a  maiden  to  save  her  from  a  worse  fate  than  death.  Of  course 
he  was  put  to  death,  and  she  returned  to  die  with  him. 

The  treatise  on  the  "  Good  of  Death  "  is  perhaps  rather 
Platonic  than  Stoic:  the  enthusiasm  is  rather  for  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  body  and  the  blessed  life  to  come  than  for  the 
triumph  over  the  pains  of  death,  though  this  element  is^not 
absent.  There  is  the  same  eclecticism  in  the  treatise  "  De 
Officiis  Ministrorum,"  which  is  modelled  upon  Cicero's  treatise 
"  De  Ofiiciis,"  which  in  its  turn  was  a  compound  of  a  work  of 
the  Stoic  PancEtius,  and  one  of  the  Peripatetic  Posidonius. 
The  arrangement  of  the  original  is  so  overlaid  with  special 
discussions  that  we  have"  to  turn  back  to  Cicero,  whose  own 
plan  is  not  very  luminous,  to  make  out  the  scheme  of  the  work. 

De  Vita  Beata,"  II.  x.  43,  4.4-     '  **  De  Virg."  III.  vii.  34, 35  ;  cf.  ib.  H.  x. 


1  <• 


400 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Both  works  designedly  stop  short  of  the  highest  ground, 
and  decline  to  deduce  all  duties  from  the  idea  of  Stoical  or 
Christian  perfection  ;  according  to  which  the  sage  or  saint 
always  acts  absolutely  aright,  fulfilling  his  own  nature  and  his 
special  part  in  the  order  of  all;  instead  of  this  both  Cicero 
and  St.  Ambrose  take  two  external  standards,  the  honestum 
and  the  utile,  and  examine  what  conformity  to  these  requires, 
and  how  we  are  to  be  guided  when  they  appear  to  come  into 
conflict. 

In  this  way  it  is  possible  to  give  a  fuller  treatment  to  sub- 
jects which  form  a  large  part  of  practical  conduct,  though 
they  have  a  very  subordinate  importance  for  the  perfect,  such 
as  keeping  one's  temper  and  respect  for  others,  although  the 
substance  of  the  first  book  is  still  the  cardinal  virtues.     The 
examples  from  ancient  history  are  replaced  for  the  most  part 
by  examples  from  Jewish  history :  for  instance,  the  vengeance 
on  the  Midianites  is  justified  as  Cicero  had  justified  the  ven- 
geance on  Carthage  and  Numantia,  though  St.  Ambrose  natu- 
rally disagrees  with  Cicero  as  to  requiting  injustice  by  injury. 
Of  course,  too,  St.  Ambrose  refuses  to  treat  virtue  as  its  own 
end  :  it  is  a  means  to  blessedness,  on  which  there  is  a  separate 
discussion  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  book.     When  the 
discussion  upon  utility  begins  we  find  less  disagreement  with 
Cicero  than  might  have  been  expected.     As  "glory"  stands 
at  the  head  of  the  "  useful "  goods  for  Cicero,  so  St.  Ambrose 
sets  himself  to  inquire  how  we  may  win  the  love,  confidence, 
and  admiration  of  men  :  it  is,  of  course,  of  set  purpose  that 
both  practically  exclude  riches  from  the  valuable  means  of 
influencing  others  or  promoting   the  owner's  real  good,  al- 
though no  such  positions  existed  then  as  are  filled  now  by 
large  and  popular  land-owners  or  manufacturers.    The  ideal  of 
St.  Ambrose  is  a  popular,  cultivated,  respected  priest  or  bishop, 
whose  personal  position  is  almost  independent  of  his  place  in 
the  hierarchy,  who  is  quite  inditTerent  to  promotion,  and  em- 
ploys all  the  funds  at  his  disposal  in  relieving  the  distress  of 
the  time.     He  is  decidedly  severe  on  avarice  and  ambition. 

It  is  characteristic  that  this  work  was  singled  out  for  special 
praise  by  St.  Augustin,  while  St.  Jerome  dwells  on  the  three 


57:  AMBROSE, 


401 


books  on  maidenhood  and  the  book  on  widows.    Secular  feel- 
ing in  Italy  ran  strongly  against  ecclesiastical  on  the  question 
of 'celibacy,  and  an  immense  amount  of  property  was  in  the 
hands  of  women  which  could  only  come  into  the  hands  of 
men  by  marriage.     And  the  feeling  that  this  was  proper  was 
so  strong  as  to  obliterate  the  last  trace  of  the  old  Roman  feel- 
ing of  the  impropriety  of  a  widow's  marrying  again.     On  the 
other  hand,  the  religious  sanction  which  the  Church  had  given 
from  the  first  to  virginity  met  the  aspirations  of  an  increasing 
number  of  women  with  whom  the  sort  of  shrinking  from  mar- 
riage which  we  find  in  the  amoebaean  epithalamium  in  Catullus 
was  coming  to  be  more  than  a  passing  mood.     St.  Ambrose, 
who  had  been  brought  up  by  his  sister,  St.  Marcellina,  herself 
a  consecrated  virgin,  threw  himself  with  enthusiasm  upon  this 
feeling,  and  systematically  took  the  part  of  maidens  who  re- 
fused to  marry  the  partners  whom  their  parents  recommended. 
One  of  his  first  acts  was  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  all  the 
virgins  of  his  diocese,  and  before  he  had  been  bishop  three 
vears  he  had  written  for  their  instruction,  or  rather  in  their 
praise— for,  as  he  says  himself,  he  teaches  rather  by  example 
than  by  precept,  and  has  learned  from  their  conduct  all  that 
he  recommends  to  others.    It  is  noticeable  that  the  legendary 
lives  of  the  Virgin  Mary  and  of  St.Thecla  are  referred  to  as 
equally  certain   and  equally   authoritative.      St.  Mary  is  the 
pattern  of  how  virgins  should  live;  St.  Thecla,  of  how  they 
should  be  ready  to  die.    A  caressing  tone  runs  through  ahnost 
all  his  writings  on  this  subject :  he  is  inclined  to  humor  his 
pupils  by  dwelling  at  great  length  upon  their  privileges,  before 
he  insists  on  their  duties,  which  he  is  aware  are  stern  enough, 
though  he  objects  to  excessive  fasting.      One  of  the  most 
curious. works  of  the  series  is  upon  the  case  of  a  virgin  who 
had  ''fallen:"  the  writer  is  anxious  to  explain  that  it  was  not 
his  fiiult,  that  he  had  taken  every  care  of  her,  and  seems  to 
feel  as  a  personal  unkindness  her  obstinacy  in  declining  to 
resume  the  vocation  for  which  she  found  herself  unfit. 

This  is  decidedly  the  most  original  part  of  the  writings  of 
St.  Ambrose  :  in  a  large  group  he  leans  decidedly  upon  St. 
Basil :  the  largest  and  most  important  work  of  this  kind  is 


4©  2 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURK. 


the  "  Hexaemeron,"  a  treatise  on  the  work  of  creation,  in 
which  natural  history,  so  far  as  understood,  was  moralized. 
There  is  nothing  strictly  mystical  in  the  work :  the  old  Ro- 
man indifference  to  exact  science  which  we  find  in  Lucretius 
and  Seneca  reappears  in  a  more  sharply  accentuated  form  ; 
just  as  they  give  incompatible  explanations  as  alternatives 
which  are  quite  indifferent  so  long  as  they  purge  the  mind 
from  superstition  or  fear.     St.  Ambrose  proclaims  his  indif- 
ference to    the  question  whether  the  earth  rests  upon  the 
waters  (according  to  the  Jewish  cosmology),  or  is  poised  in 
the  centre  as  the  heaviest  body  (according  to  the  accepted 
Greek  physics).  Neither  view  concerns  eternity  (Seneca  would 
have  said  neither  concerns  the  blessed  life),  the  only  impor- 
tant thing  is  to  know  that  it  is  established  by  the  power  of 
God.     One  can  hardly  call  this  a  triumph  of  faith  over  knowl- 
edge ;    a    point   had    been   reached    at   which    many   minds 
found  a  concrete  first  cause  more  intellectually  satisfactory 
than  a  series  of  abstract  unverified  hypotheses  about  second 
causes.     Naturally  the  new  conception  of  omnipotence  was 
applied  unsparingly  :  for  instance,  the  paradox  of  the  "  waters 
above  the  firmament"  is  pressed  to  the  utmost,  and  the  as- 
sumption of  a  solid  sphere  to  mitigate  the  difficulty  is  dis- 
carded :  and  we  hear  nothing  of  the  other  way  of  parrying 
the  difficulty  by  giving  a  mystical  sense  to  the  waters  as  sym- 
bols of  pure  angelic  intelligences  or  the  like.     The  source  of 
the  work  is  St.  Basil,  whose  source  was  Origen,  who  has  also 
been  used  independently,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  some  use 
was  made  of  the  "  Prata  "  of  Suetonius.     St.  Basil  supplies 
the  substance  of  three  other  moralizing  works,  Elias  on  fast- 
ing, Naboth  the  Jezreelite,  and  Tobias.     One  learns  from  the 
treatise  on   Naboth  that   the  encroachments  of  large  land- 
holders upon  small  went  on  as  vigorously  as  in  the  days  of 
Juvenal,  and  from  the  treatise  on  Tobias  that  usury  was  felt 
as  a  terrible  evil,  probably  because  an  increasing  proportion 
of  borrowers  were  compelled  to  borrow  by  downright  distress. 
There  is  the  same  recognition  of  a  gloomy  background  to 
life  in  the  four  books  on  the  complaints  of  Job  and  David,  in 
which  the  old  theme  of  the  disproportion  between  fortune 


ST.  AMBROSE. 


li 


403 


and  desert  is  discussed  with  reference  to  a  future  life,  though 
there  is  still  a  relic  of  the  old  Stoical  arguments  about  virtue 
being  best  tested  in  affliction,  and  the  prosperity  which  is  due 
to  ability  and  prudence  apart  from  virtue. 

The  most  important  of  the  strictly  dogmatic  works  are  the 
five  books  "  De  Verbo,"  addressed  to  Gratian,  the  pious  em- 
peror who  fell  a  victim  to  his  taste  for  barbarian  guards  and 
field-sports,  and  they  are  what  might  be  expected  of  an  argu- 
ment addressed  to  one  who  did  not  need  convincing. 

It  is  curious  that  we  have  no  funeral  oration  on  his  death 
as  we  have  on  that  of  Valentinian  II.  and  Theodosius  :  the 
second  of  these  is  little  more  than  a  panegyric  on  a  devout 
and  orthodox  and  successful  emperor;  the  first  has  more 
interest,  as  Valentinian  had  come  to  cling  to  the  prelate  who 
had  successfully  resisted  his  government  and  supported  his 
title.  Another  pathetic  circumstance  was  that  the  young  em- 
peror, who  was  anxious  to  be  baptized,  had  sent  for  Ambrose 
to  admit  him  to  the  Church  and  to  mediate  between  him  and 
Arbogastes,  the  Frank  commander  of  his  bodyguard.  Before 
Ambrose  could  arrive  Arbogastes  had  settled  the  dispute  by 
killing  the  emperor,  and  Ambrose  could  only  express  his  re- 
grets and  compare  the  baptism  of  desire  which  Valentinian 
and  Gratian  had  received  with  the  baptism  of  blood  which 
availed  to  martyrs  who  had  missed  the  baptism  of  water. 
Both  are  inferior  to  the  pathetic  books  on  the  "departure  of 
his  brother  Satyriis,"  the  first  of  which  was  delivered  at  the 
burial  while  the  body  lay  with  open  face  at  the  foot  of  the 
pulpit:  the  second,  which  is  a  sermon  on  the  Resurrection, 
was  delivered  eight  days  afterwards.  The  first  contains 
several  curious  traits  of  the  manners  of  the  time  :  the  family 
had  property  in  Africa,  of  which  the  proceeds  were  embezzled 
by  the  manager.  St.  Ambrose  and  St.  Marcellina  wished  to 
leave  him  in  peace  and  to  abide  at  peace  themselves,  while 
Satyrus,  who  did  not  care  more  than  they  did  about  the 
money,  could  not  reconcile  it  to  his  conscience  to  connive  at 
fraud.  He  succeeded  in  compelling  restitution  ;  but  on  his 
way  back  he  was  shipwrecked  and  lost  the  money  :  he  at- 
tributed his  own  preservation  to  having  purchased  the  host 


y 


\\ 


404 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


from  a  Christian  fellow-passenger  (Satyrus  himself  was  still  a 
catechumen).  As  soon  as  he  was  in  safety  he  was  baptized, 
and  died,  to  his  brother's  great  distress,  just  after  his  return 

to  Milan. 

Considering  the  depth  of  personal  affection  in  this  work,  it 
is  noteworthy  that  there  are  so  few  confidential  letters  ;  the 
chief  are  to  his  sister  Marcellina  :  of  these  the  most  impor- 
tant is  that  on  the  discovery  of  the  bodies  of  St.Gervasius  and 
St.  Protasius,  which  is  the  first  chapter  of  as  long  a  history  as 
the  penance  of  Theodosius.     As  there  is  a  prophecy  of  many 
future  miracles   in   the  butcher  who  said  he  recovered  his 
sight  by  touching  the  bones  of  the  martyrs,  to  the  great  edifi- 
cation of  the  Catholics  who  knew  that  he  was  honestly  blind, 
and  to  the  scandal  of  the  Arians  who  asserted  that  he  was 
counterfeiting,  there  is  a  survival  of  old  imaginative  conven- 
tions in  St.  Ambrose's  assumption  that  the  martyrs  who  suf- 
fered less  than  a  hundred  years  before  he  wrote  were  of  a 
stature  to  shame  the  men  of  his  degenerate  day.     The  most 
interesting  of  the  other  letters  are  either  little  treatises  like  the 
41st,  in  wliich  the  writer  explains  that  Paradise  ought  to  be 
understood  of  the  state  in  which  the  soul  had  the  intuitive 
vision  of  archetypal  ideas  ;  or  state  papers  like  the  17th  and 
i8th  on  the  relation  of  Symmachus,  or  the  40th  addressed  to 
Theodosius  on  the  synagogue  of  Callinicum.     The  bishop  of 
the  place  had  instigated  the  people  to  destroy  it,  and  Theodo- 
sius insisted  that  the  bishop  should  restore  the  synagogue  out 
of  the  church  funds.     St.  Ambrose  encloses  a  sermon  in  which, 
without  discussing  the  question  whether  a  bishop  is  justified 
in  procuring  the  destruction  of  a  synagogue,  it  is  victoriously 
maintained  that  to  apply  church  funds  to  the  restoration  of 
a  synagogue  would  be   horrible  sacrilege.     Modern  readers 
will  sympathize  more  readily  with  the  51st  letter  on  the  mas- 
sacre at  Thessalonica,  though  there,  too,  the  strong  side  of  the 
emperor's  case  is  ignored.:  a  very  large  mob  was  guilty,  it 
was  difficult  or  impossible  to  ascertain  who  had  been  foremost 
in  the  onslaught  on  the  imperial  officers  who  were  butchered; 
under  the  circumstances  Theodosius  had  filled  the  circus  with 
another  mob  (composed  in  great  part  of  the  same  persons), 
and  massacred  the  whole. 


ST.  AMBROSE, 


405 


The  majority  of  the  letters  bear  simply  upon  current  epis- 
copal business  :  we  may  mention  also  two  confidential  letters, 
48,  49,  to  Sabinus,  a  brother  bishop,  to  whom  he  communi- 
cated his  unpublished  works  for  criticism.  The  commen- 
taries on  St.  Luke  are  almost  entirely  dependent  upon  Ori- 
gen,  and  are  noticeable  chiefly  as  showing  that  the  author 
accepts  the  Alexandrian  tendency  to  get  rid  of  the  difficulty 
of  apparently  irreconcilable  narratives  by  taking  each  as  the 
symbol  of  spiritual  truths  between  which  there  is  no  dis- 
crei)ancy. 

The  hymns  of  St.  Ambrose  are  at  once  among  the  most 
important  and  the  most  doubtful  of  his  works  :  three  are 
attested  by  St.  Augustin,  which  begin  *'  Deus  Creator  omnium," 
"Sterne  rerum  conditor,"  "Jam  surgit  hora  tertia ;"  a  fourth, 
"  Veni  redemptor  gentium,"  is  attested  by  St.  Caelestin  in  430, 
and  also  in  a  sermon  which  may  not  improbably  be  by  St. 
Augustin.  It  is  tolerably  certain  that  he  wrote  much  more, 
probably  as  largely  as  St.  Ephraim,  whom  he  appears  to  have 
imitated  ;  for  the  churches  of  the  Eastern  parts  probably  point 
to  Syria.  Bede,  three  centuries  later,  knew  of  a  large  number 
of  Ambrosian  hymns,  and  the  oldest  MSS.  of  St.  Ambrose  give 
a  large  and  fluctuating  number  of  hymns  ;  but  only  twelve  at 
the  utmost  satisfy  the  metrical  standard  of  the  four  authentic 
hymns.  In  these  we  have  four  stanzas  of  four  iambic  dimeters, 
each  perfectly  regular  in  metre,  except  that  a  short  syllable  is 
lengthened  in  arsi;  they  conform,  too,  to  the  rule  laid  down 
for  "Ambrosian  hymns"  by  Bede,  that  the  sense  must  close 
with  a  line,  in  order  that  the  choirs  may  answer  one  another 
without  a  break.  The  first  three  are  for  the  first  three  hours 
of  prayer,  the  fourth  is  for  Christmas  Eve,  and  is  probably  a 
sample  of  the  numerous  dogmatic  hymns  which  were  the  chief 
means  of  training  the  people  of  Milan  to  a  zeal  for  orthodoxy. 
They  all  have  the  character  of  deep  spontaneous  feeling,  flow- 
ing in  a  clear,  rhythmical  current,  and  show  a  more  genuine 
literary  feeling  than  the  prose  works,  in  which  the  tendency  to 
popularize,  for  practical  purposes,  rather  o\'erpowers  the  au- 
thor's real  interest  in  the  beauties  of  nature  and  declamatory 
pathos. 


4o6 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


ST.  JEROME. 

St.  Jerome  has  infinitely  more  of  the  genuine  spirit  of  a 
man  of  letters  than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  except  Auso- 
nius,  and  he  has  infinitely  more  literary  power  than  any,  except 
his  younger  contemporary  St.  Augustin,  who  in  most  of  his 
works  is'^deliberately  indifferent  to  style.  What  makes  this 
more  interesting  is  his  extraordinary  ascetical  and  polemical 
fervor,  which  at  one  time  made  him  renounce  the  study  of 
secular  literature  altogether,  and  ended  by  leading  him  to  con- 
centrate his  literary  interest  increasingly  within  the  sphere  of 

biblical  scholarship. 

In  another  way  he  is  singular.     He  was  born  in  Stridon,  in 
Pannonia;  Latin  was  his  mother-tongue,  but  both  his  names 
(Eusebius  Hieronymus)  are  Greek,  and  one  is  tempted  to 
suppose  that  his  parents  were  Latinized  Greeks,  such  as  are 
still  to  be  found  among  the  aristocracy  of  Roumania.     His 
education  was  entirely  Latin,  and  it  continued  very  long.    He 
was  born,  according  to  the  Chronicle  of  Prosper,  in  a.d.  331, 
and  he  did  not  retire  to  the  wilderness  of  Chalcis  till  374,  and 
this  may  be  said  to  mark  the  date  of  his  final  conversion  and 
of  his  literary  activity.    We  hear  of  his  studying  at  Rome  under 
the  celebrated  Donatus,  and  then  going  for  two  years  to  Treves, 
where  he  perhaps  felt  himself  more  at  ease  than  at  Rome,  for 
Treves  was  in  those  days  a  capital  where  a  foreigner  from  the 
frontier  would  not  be  oppressed  by  the  traditions  of  superior 
culture.     His  youth  at  Rome  was  stormy,  to  judge  by  his  own 
letters  to  St.  Eustochium  :  he  threw  himself  vigorously  into  all 
the  dissipations  of  the  city  while  still  a  laborious  student ;  for 
he  acquired  his  library  by  the  arduous  process  of  copying  it. 
At  Treves  he  commenced  his  clerical  studies  by  copying  two 
works  of  St.  Hilary  of  Poitiers  on  the  Psalter  and  the  Synods 
(which    the    Semi-Arians    had   multiplied);   from   Treves  he 
went  to  Aquileia,  the  frontier  city  of  Italy,  and  there  fell  into 
a  circle  of  young  men,  of  whom  Rufinus  was  the  most  distin- 
guished, who  wished  to  anticipate  on  earth  what  they  imagined 
of  the  bliss  of  disembodied  spirits.     So  far  as  material  occu- 
pation seemed  necessary  they  found  it  in  the  study  of  Greek 


ST.  JEROME. 


407 


theology,  which,  especially  in  the  biblical  and  historical  depart- 
ments, was  built  upon  the  labors  of  Origen  ;  and  at  one  time 
St.  Jerome  was  exceedingly  intimate  with  Rufinus,  who  seems 
to  have  been  three  or  four  years  younger  than  himself,  but  al- 
ready had  settled  down  to  a  regular  course  of  self-discipline. 
From  Aquileia  St.  Jerome  sailed  to  Syria,  intending  to  visit  the 
holy  places  and  the  eminent  ascetics  of  the  East]*  something 
had  arisen  to  make  it  necessary  for  him  to  leave  Aquileia,  and 
it  is  natural  to  think  of  some  scandal,  or  perhaps  the  first  of 
his  many  quarrels  ;  at  any  rate,  he  was  rapidly  disgusted  with 
his  former  life.     The  climate  of  Syria  did  not  suit  him  or  his 
companion;  the  latter  died  suddenly;  he  himself  was  long 
prostrated  by  a  severe  intermittent  fever.  ■  In  his  intervals  of 
ease  he  found  the  Latin  classics  much  more  refreshing  read- 
ing than  the  existing  Latin  versions  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
consequently  one  night  (.?  when  unusually  feverish)  he  had  a 
dream,  in  which  his  spirit  was  brought  up  for  judgment.     He 
appealed  for  mercy  upon  his  sins,  on  the  ground  that  he  was 
a  Christian,  at  any  rate;   and  was  told  he  lied  — he  was  a 
Ciceronian,  not  a  Christian ;  and  was  finally  dismissed  to  do 
penance  after  being  severely  scourged.     He  renounced  classi- 
cal  studies  for  years,  and  shortly  after  retired  from  Antioch  to 
the  wilderness  of  Chalcis,  whence  he  wrote  some  curious  letters 
to  his  friends  at  Aquileia,  in  wiiich  he  deplores  his  inferiority 
to  his  companions,  who  have  conquered  their  temptations,  and 
expresses  his  own  unhappy  state  by  the  help  of  biblical  meta- 
phors.     It  might  fairly  be  said  that  his  retreat  at  Chalcis 
marks  an  era  in  the  progress  of  asceticism.     St.  Chrysostom, 
who  not  so  many  years  before  had  been  a  sojourner  in  the 
same  wilderness,  wrote  a  tract  to  prove  that  the  monks  were 
tie  true  philosophers,  and  their  life  the  true  philosophy;  and 
this  was  still   the   dominant  view,  though   many  ascetics   in 
^^Sypt  had  already  arrived  at  the  conviction  that  penitence 
not  to  say  remorse,  was  the  mainspring  of  asceticism.    But  the 
cloctrine,as  a  doctrine, -Monachus  non  docentis  sed  plan-en- 
t.s  habet  officium"  ("a  monk's  business  is  to  be  a  mounter, 
not  a  teacher  "),  was  new  in  the  mouth  of  St.  Jerome.     It  goes 
Dej'ond  the  pessimism  of  Tertullian  or  St.  Cyprian.    With  them 


4o8 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


the  object  of  austerity  is  to  preserve  the  ascetic  from  the  evil 
that  is  in  the  world  ;  with  St.  Jerome  it  is  to  give  effect  to  the 
ascetic's  loathing  of  the  evil  that  is  in  himself. 

One  of  his  austerities  had  very  important  results :  he  took 
up  Hebrew  as  a  hard  and  disagreeable  study,  under  the  guid- 
ance of  a  Jew,  who  he  averred  had  been  baptized,  though, 
naturallv,  St.  Jerome's  enemies  declined  to  believe  that  a  Jew 
could  be  a  Christian.  His  sojourn  in  the  wilderness  lasted 
live  years ;  in  the  course  of  it  he  was  involved  in  the  ecclesi- 
astical disputes  of  Antioch,  where  two  rival  prelates  of  unim- 
peachable orthodoxy  contested  the  succession.  He  submitted 
his  perplexities  to  St.  Damasus,  in  terms  which  would  have 
satisfied  either  a  mediaeval  or  a  modern  pope,  and  secured 
him  an  honorable  recognition  on  his  return  to  Rome. 

In  the  course  of  his  retreat  he  wrote  two  of  his  most  brill- 
iant works— a  letter  to  Heliodorus,  and  the  "  Life  of  Paul," 
the  first  hermit.     He  had  hoped  that  Heliodorus  would  have 
<rone  with  him  into  the  wilderness,  and  Heliodorus  had  stipu- 
fated  that  St.  Jerome  should  write  him  a  letter  of  invitation 
and  the  promise  was  fulfilled.     Throughout  one  is  reminded 
of  Seneca.    *'  Afi"atim  dives  est  qui  cum  Christo  pauper  est"  is 
an  epigram  exactly  in  Seneca's  style.     The  work  deserved  the 
success  which  it  attained:  a  lady  of  fashion,  Fabiola,  learned 
it  by  heart,  and  repeated  it  long  after  to  its  author  at  Beth- 
lehem. 

He  was  driven  back  to  the  world  because  his  controversy 
with  the  partisans  of  Lucifer  (who  had  fallen  into  schism 
through  his  zeal  against  the  Semi-Arians)  had  made  him  ene- 
mies in  the  desert,  and  after  a  short  intercourse  with  St. 
Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  then  bishop  of  Constantinople,  he  re- 
turn^'ed  to  Rome  A.D.362,  where  long  ago  he  had  been  baptized. 
Here  he  had  the  most  brilliant  moment  of  his  life :  he  was 
taken  up  at  once  by  the  reigning  pope,  who  made  him  his 
secretary,  and  by  a  society  of  noble  ladies  who  had  just  entered 
on  a  life  of  asceticism,  and  were  fascinated  by  his  eloquence, 
his  austerity,  and  his  tenderness.     He  had  his  own  favorites 
in  the  circle  :  he  attached  himself  especially  to  Paula,  a  noble 
widow,  who  had  five  daughters  all  more  or  less  in  sympathy 


ST.  JEROME. 


409 


with  her  tendencies.  The  feeling  against  second  marriages 
had  quite  died  out  in  Roman  society :  a  rich  widow  was  ex- 
pected to  marry  again  to  please  her  family,  or,  if  she  were  too 
old  for  this,  to  please  herself;  and  the  refusal  of  Eustochium, 
Paula's  daughter,  to  marry  or  to  be  painted  and  dressed  up 
according  to  her  rank,  was  nothing  short  of  a  revolution. 
There  were  many  who  found  his  intimacy  scandalous;  and  he 
was  of  opinion  that  such  intimacies  were  scandalous,  unless 
protected  by  the  greatest  austerity  on  both  sides.  He  had  a 
bad  opinion  of  the  Roman  clergy,  who  seem,  for  the  most  part, 
to  have  taken  up  the  profession  as  they  would  have  taken  up 
oratory  or  literature  before  the  basilicas  had  been  turned  into 
churches.  Naturally  enough  the  most  fervent  thought  he  ought 
to  be  pope,  and  as  naturally,  when  the  time  came  for  a  new 
election,  Rome  was  too  hot  to  hold  him.  For  one  thing,  it  was 
universally  believed  that  he  had  killed  Blaisilla,  a  daughter  of 
Paula,  who  was  a  widow  like  her  mother,  but  young  enough  to 
oscillate  between  feverish  amusement  and  feverish  austerities  ; 
under  St.  Jerome's  influence  the  latter  impulse  was  victorious, 
and  either  the  conflict  or  the  victory  was  fatal.  We  know  the 
story  from  himself:  he  wrote  a  letter  to  console  the  mother 
and  to  perpetuate  the  memory  of  the  daughter.  It  is  curious- 
ly arrogant  and  shameless  and  tender ;  his  enemies,  no  doubt, 
said  that  he  was  canonizing  his  victim.  It  is  impossible  to 
doubt  that  he  loved  both  the  mother  and  the  daughter,  and 
that  he  felt  for  the  mother's  pain  in  the  separation ;  but  he 
was  entirely  without  the  natural  feeling  of  pity  for  a  charm- 
ing woman  dying  with  a  great  deal  of  suffering  at  two-and- 
twenty. 

There  is  the  same  contrast  in  the  letter  to  Eustochium  on 
the  preservation  of  virginity  :  the  writer  has  the  utmost  re- 
spect, nay  reverence,  for  his  correspondent,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  want  of  common  human  feeling  makes  the  letter 
read  like  an  insult.  The  truth  is,  the  letter  is  at  once  a 
treatise  and  a  satire  :  Eustochium  is  warned  against  much 
that  other  virgins  were  likely  to  do,  both  in  the  way  of  dress 
and  other  imprudences;  the  author  spares  her  nothing,  not 
even  the  detail  of  his  own  temptation  in  the  wilderness,  his 

'  II.— 18 


4IO 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


own  repugnance  to  Scripture,  and  his  hankering  after  for- 
bidden fruit.  He  probably  thought  that  she  might  be  in 
dan^^er  of  having  her  good-will  abused  by  the  fashionable 
clerks  whom  he  satirizes,  and  her  austerities  were  probably 
severe  enough  to  make  advice  necessary  against  over-acting 
her  part,  behaving  as  if  she  were  too  weak  to  speak  above 
her  breath,  or  to  stand  upright  without  support.  Perhaps 
we  mi'^ht  trace  a  criticism  of  Melania,  another  celebrated 
ascetic  (to  whom  St.  Jerome  did  not  attach  himself),  in  the 
warning  against  being  ostentatiously  shabby  in  dress. 

Before   leaving  Rome   he   had  written  against   Helvidius, 
the  first  of  the  reactionary  writers  who  set  themselves  against 
the  romantic  asceticism  of  the  day :  he  denied  the  perpetual 
virginity  of  St.  Mary  in  order  to  depreciate  virginity  in  gen- 
eral ;  and  St.  Jerome  in  reply  deals  much  more  in  rebuke 
than  in  argument ;  so  far  as  he  does  discuss,  he  discusses  the 
merits  of  virginity  and  the  authority  of  tradition,  and  is  con- 
tent to  parry  the  argument  from   Scripture.     He  treats  his 
opponent  with  more  respect  than  in  his  subsequent  polemic 
against  Vigilantius,  a   Spaniard,  who    protested   against   the 
cultus  of  martyrs  and  the  whole  system  of  symbolical  wor- 
ship.    Here  the  author  rails  at  Vigilantius  for  his  ignorance 
of  letters  sacred  and  profane,  puns  upon  his  name,'  and,  after 
all,  extenuates  rather  than  justifies  the  practices  complained 
of.     Throughout  the  fourth  century  it  is  obvious  that  theology 
came  very  short  of  devotion  on  such  subjects.     Another  cu- 
rious point  is  that  he  always  assumes  that  Vigilantius  is  a 
personal  enemy,  probably  because  his  personal  enemies  were 
disposed  to  take  up  as  much  of  his  case  as  they  could,  and 
the   opinion    of  pagans    was    still    important  enough   to    be 
courted  by  lax  Christians.     A  yet  more   formidable  adver- 
sary who   presented    himself  much    later   was    Jovinian,  of 
whom  it  would  be  interesting  to  know  more.     He  had  been 
through  monasticism,  and  come  out  the  other  side :  he  had 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  purely  spiritual  perfection  is  in- 
dependent of  austerities,  which  he  enforced  by  the  paradox 
that  all  who  were  in  a  state  of  grace  were  equal.     This  of 
'  Implying  that  he  was  no  watcher,  but  a  sleei)er. 


ST.  JEROME. 


4H 


course  reminds  St.  Jerome  of  Stoicism,  and  the  doctrine  that 
every  baptized  person  is  brought  into  a  state  of  sinless  per- 
fection is  obviously  heretical ;  besides,  the  pompous  self- 
complacency  of  a  man  who  had  finally  got  through  his  spir- 
itual struggles  was  a  fine  field  for  sarcasm,  and  of  course 
Jovinian  was  open  to  the  charge  of  inconsistency,  as  he  had 
once  been  a  great  ascetic. 

But  the  most  famous  and  interesting  of  all  his  contro- 
versies was  with  his  old  friend  Rufmus  of  Aquileia.  Rufinus 
had  settled  on  Olivet,  where  he  wrote  for  his  monks  a  charm- 
ing work  in  thirty-four  chapters  on  what  he  had  seen  in  his 
journey  with  Melania  among  the  solitaries  of  the  Egyptian 
wilderness,  when  Jerome  settled  at  Bethlehem,  and  after  a 
time  they  found  quarrels  spring  up  between  their  respective 
monasteries,  and  each  suspected  the  head  of  the  other.  Still, 
these  were  passing  storms,  and  the  friendship  still  lasted  in 
the  eyes  of  the  world  when  the  patriarch  of  Alexandria 
tiiought  it  convenient  to  denounce  the  memory  of  Origen  and 
excommunicate  his  survivin":  adherents. 

St.  Jerome,  like  everybody  else,  had  up  to  this  treated 
Origen  as  a  great  theologian  who  could  not  be  followed  in 
everything  :  he  had  translated  his  homilies  on  the  Ephesians, 
leaving  out  what  he  thought  objectionable  ;  he  admired  the 
work  of  Didymus  on  the  Holy  Spirit  so  much  that  he  re- 
translated it ;  St.  Ambrose's  translation  was,  he  thought,  too 
flowery.  Unluckily,  John  the  Bishop  of  Jerusalem  was  de- 
termined to  screen  Origen  and  his  adherents,  and  even  his 
doctrine  so  far  as  he  could,  and  Rufinus  was  on  the  best  of 
terms  with  John.  Rufinus  translated  the  principal  specula- 
tive work  of  Origen  on  the  same  principle  as  St.  Jerome  had 
translated  the  homilies,  leaving  out  all  the  doubtful  phrases 
about  the  Trinity,  on  the  ground  that  they  were  probably 
mterpolated  (it  was  a  habit  with  Origen,  who  wrote  much 
more  than  he  could  possibly  remember,  to  complain  of  the 
interpolation  of  his  works),  and  quoted  St.  Jerome  in  his 
preface  as  a  precedent. .  The  stroke  was  malicious,  for  the 
translator  softened  none  of  the  distinctive  doctrine  of  Origen, 
t(ie  pre-existence  of  souls,  the  restoration  of  the  lost,  the  ab- 


412 


LA  TIN  LITERATURE. 


sorption  of  all  things  in  the  Most  High.  Still,  it  does  not 
seem  that  Rufinus  cared  so  much  to  compromise  an  old 
friend  as  to  screen  himself;  he  could  not  be  expected  to 
foresee  that  his  friend  would  suddenly  take  the  line  that  he 
always  knew  that  Origen  was  a  damnable  heretic,  and  had 
always  detested  his  heresy  while  utilizing  his  learning  and 
admirincf  his  industry. 

St.  Jerome  burst  out  into  the  most  pathetic  and  passionate 
declamation  at  the  wrong  done  him  in  being  represented  as 
a  fautor  of  heresy,  and  obviously  believed  his  own  case :  he 
wrote  letters  to  Pammachius  and  others  ;  he  acted  as  Latin 
secretary  to  Theophilus  and  St.  Epiphanius,  who  was  unaf- 
fectedly zealous  against  Origen's  ''blasphemies;"  he  even 
executed  an  exact  translation  of  the  "  De  Principiis,"  that 
every  one  might  see  how  detestable  it  was.  Of  course  Ru- 
finus replied,  but  he  was  a  great  deal  too  discreet  to  publish  : 
his  own  position  was  very  precarious ;  he  had  paid  a  flying 
visit  to  Rome  on  his  way  back  from  the  East,  and  had  been 
well  received  by  one  pope,  but  another  summoned  him  to 
give  an  account  of  his  doctrines,  and  he  did  not  venture  to 
go.  His  replies  to  St.  Jerome  had  to  be  circulated  in  con- 
fidence, but  they  were  not  the  less  effective  or  annoying.  He 
could  prove  that  his  theological  education  had  been  more 
prolonged,  more  regular,  and  that  his  conduct  had  been  more 
consistent  and  invariably  decorous :  he  had  not  opened  a 
grammar-school  like  St.  Jerome  at  Bethlehem,  where  boys 
were  taught  Vergil  and  even  Terence ;  and  he  had  never  had 
a  vision  of  being  scourged  as  a  Ciceronian  ;  he  had  never 
been  taught  by  a  Jew ;  he  had  never  reviled  the  Roman 
clergy ;  he  had  never  been  disrespectful  to  St.  Ambrose. 
St.  Jerome  could  only  reiterate  distinctions  between  Origen's 
position  as  a  commentator  and  his  position  as  an  heresiarch, 
and  retort  upon  the  paradoxical  nature  of  Rufinus's  regard 
for  his  relations;  he  could  leave  them  for  twenty  years  to 
practise  asceticism  in  the  East;  he  could  not  leave  them 
when  once  he  was  safe  back  at  Aquileia  for  the  few  weeks 
that  would  have  been  necessary  to  explain  himself  to  the 
pope.     He  is  very  sarcastic  upon  the  notion  of  calling  a  man 


ST.  JEROME. 


413 


to  account  for  a  dream,  and  explains  his  later  and  maturer 
theory  plausibly.  He  has  also  the  great  advantage  of  being 
thoroughly  in  earnest  and  unreserved :  he  rides  on  the  top  of 
the  wave,  whereas  Rufinus  was  soon  reduced  to  evasion,  not 
to  say  tergiversation.  The  one  point  in  controversy  which  to 
the  last  he  asserts  to  be  perfectly  open  is  the  pre-existence  of 
souls  :  upon  everything  else  he  is  forced  to  condemn,  or  seem 
to  condemn,  whatever  had  been  imputed  to  Origen  as  heresy, 
only  reserving  the  question  whether  it  was  to  be  found  in  his 
authentic  writings.  Rufinus's  style  is  decidedly  heavy  and 
clumsy,  and  it  is  therefore  the  more  noticeable  that  he  is  in 
his  way  a  purist,  and  that  St.  Jerome,  who  writes  a  corrupt 
language  admirably  without  contributing  to  its  corruption, 
rallies  him  upon  his  periphrases. 

Rufinus  escaped  better  than  most  other  adversaries  of  St. 
Jerome:  he  lived  tranquilly  at  Aquileia  under  the  protection 
of  his  bishop,  occupying  himself  with  translations^  from  the 
Greek,  a  text-book  on  the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  mildly  mystical 
interpretations  of  Scripture,  till  he  was  frightened  away  by 
the  barbarians  to  Sicily,  where  he  died  in  peace,  leaving  few, 
if  any,  to  share  St.  Jerome's  exultation  that  "  Grunnius,"as  he 
called  him,  was  buried  under  ^tna  like  a  new  Enceladus. 

The  controversy  led  to  another  without  literary  interest. 
Pelagius,  a  rather  self-complacent  British  monk,  who  was 
strongly  impressed  by  Origen's  doctrine  of  responsibility, 
blundered  into  heresy,  having  presumed  to  criticise  a  famous 
sayingof  St.  Augustin,"Da  quod  jubes  etjube  quod  vis."  Like 
other  Origenists,  he  made  his  last  stand  in  Palestine,  and  some 

^  The  most  important  of  these  were  the  Clementine  recognitions,  an 
Lbionite  work  on  the  missionary  journeys  of  St.  Peter  and  the  adventures 
of  St.  Clement  (which  only  survives  in  the  expurgated  translation  of  Ru- 
finus, who  seems  to  have  thought  the  original  a  very  edifying  work,  which 
in  some  passages  was  perplexing  and  perhaps  unintelligible),  and  the  ec- 
clesiastical history  of  Eusebius,  which  he  carried  down  from  a.d.  324  to 
395.  There  is  the  same  tendency  to  omit  what  might  shock  contemporary 
orthodoxy,  and  compared  with  Eusebius  he  is  uncritical.  He  omits  docu- 
ments and  inserts  miracles,  and  in  the  two  later  books,  which  are  entirely 
his  own,  he  sacrifices  the  connection  and  proportion  of  events,  which  Euse- 
bius preserves  very  well  considering  his  materials. 


414 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


of  his  adherents  were  bold  enough  to  sack  St.  Jerome's  mon- 
asteries, and  therefore  St.  Jerome  wrote  against  Pelagianism 
with  a  sense  of  personal  injury.  His  dialogue  on  the  subject 
is  tame:  his  preface  to  the  prophet  Jeremiah  is  eloquent  and 
passionate  in  its  exposition  of  human  dependence,  and  has 
much  of  the  tumultuous  dignity  which  belongs  to  some  of  the 
best  works  of  vigorous  old  age. 

The  preface  to  the  "Lamentations"  is  remarkable  for  a 
splendid  and  unexpected  expression  of  awe-struck  sympathy 
with  Rome,  which  had  just  been  taken  by  Alaric.  St.  Jerome 
had  never  shown  any  loyalty  to  the  empire  or  the  emperors 
(because  he  was  born  on  the  frontier  which  was  most  weakly 
held  .^),  but  the  first  humiliating  blow,  felt  so  much  more  keenly 
than  the  heavier  blows  which  were  to  fall,  made  him  tremble 
as  if  the  world  were  coming  to  an  end  with  Rome. 

His  commentaries  in  general  are  tantalizing  to  a  modern 
reader  ;  they  are  very  hurried  ;  they  date  from  the  time  when 
he  was  physically  unable  to  write,  and  had  to  employ  an  aman- 
uensis. He  was  ashamed  of  the  necessity,  which  he  thought 
fatal  to  concentration  of  style,  and,  when  he  could  not  defend 
a  statement,  fell  back  upon  the  fact  that  he  told  the  aman- 
uensis to  put  down  the  first  thing  that  came  into  his  head 
rather  than  let  him  come  to  a  standstill.  He  is  most  at  ease 
in  the  region  of  exhortation,  though  the  antiquarian  and  his- 
torical interest  is  more  prominent  than  in  any  other  ancient 
Latin  writer,  and  such  notes  as  he  gives  are  intended  to  be 
real  explanations,  not  merely  to  enable  the  reader  to  get  over 
what  would  otherwise  be  puzzling.  It  is  true  that  erudition  is 
pressed  into  the  service  of  mysticism  :  the  meaning  of  the 
Hebrew  proper  names  is  valued  for  its  own  sake,  and  no  little 
pains  are  taken  to  give  the  different  interpretations  correctly, 
but  every  variant  is  equally  good  to  be  spiritualized. 

Many  of  the  letters  turn  upon  the  same  kind  of  topics. 
Side  by  side  with  a  letter  to  Afreruchia  on  the  raiment  of  the 
high -priest,  we  have  one  to  Fabiola,  the  learned  lady  who 
knew  the  letter  to  Heliodorus  by  heart,  on  the  forty-two  sta- 
tions of  Israel  in  the  wilderness,  each  being  allegorized  as  a 
station  of  the  pilgrim   wandering  in  the  wilderness  of  this 


ST.  JEROME. 


415 


world.  Another  letter  to  the  s  ime  lady  is  more  personal: 
she  had  divorced  her  husband  on  tolerably  good  grounds  and 
married  her  intendant,  knowing  apparently  that  what  the  law 
sanctioned  and  society  condoned  was  rather  at  variance  with 
ecclesiastical  discipline,  but  hoping  that  St.  Jerome  would 
rule  that  the  second  marriage,  if  irregular,  was  valid.  She 
made  a  feint  of  consulting  him  on  account  of  a  friend,  but  the 
feint  was  detected,  and  she  received  an  emphatic  though  not 
unsympathetic  rebuke  for  her  constructive  apostasy,  for  it  was 
clearly  heathenish  in  such  a  matter  to  appeal  to  the  secular 
law.  But  there  is  hardly  more  ethical  indignation  and  a  good 
deal  less  sarcasm  than  in  a  letter  to  another  w'idow  who  re- 
quired to  be  deterred  from  a  second  marriage.  Here  the 
writer  throws  all  his  strength  into  the  contention  that  a  widow 
who  marries  again  only  does  so  for  one  reason,  whatever  she 
may  say  or  try  to  believe — that  her  servants  will  not  obey  her 
without  a  master;  that  her  estates  require  a  manager;  that 
she  cannot  transact  business  with  the  government  or  in  the 
law  courts  without  a  husband  to  stand  by  her ;  or,  most 
ridiculous  of  all,  that  her  children  require  a  father;  or,  if  she 
is  childless,  she  cannot  leave  her  heritage  to  strangers. 

The  fact  is  that  human  prudence  always  repels  him  except 
in  one  direction :  he  is  aware  that  austerities  can  be  carried 
so  far  as  to  affect  the  mind  ;  he  had  carried  his  own  austeri- 
ties so  far  that  for  the  last  years  of  his  life  he  could  not  kneel 
without  raising  himself  by  a  cord  ;  but  Rufinus  thought  it 
possible  to  taunt  him  with  not  being  strict  enough  in  life  to 
please  Melania,  and  he  warned  Nepotianus  against  the  mel- 
ancholy which  requires  medical  rather  than  spiritual  skill  for 
its  cure.  But  there  runs  through  all  his  writing  a  contempt 
for  economy,  and  he  praises  Paula  for  leaving  nothing  but 
heavy  debts  when  she  died ;  the  one  provision  for  the  future 
which  he  contemplates  is  to  feed  the  poor  and  teach  the 
young ;  and  in  this  he  seems  to  have  no  sense  of  paradox  : 
the  alternative  to  alms-giving  is  simply  selfish  dissipation,  or 
an  equally  selfish  scramble  for  the  largest  share  of  a  total  of 
enjoyment  which  appeared  to  be  rapidly  vanishing.  Reck- 
lessness was  general ;  even  consecrated  virgins  were  invited 


4i6 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


to  enjoy  themselves  by  their  gossips,  on  the  ground  that  they 
had  no  children  to  save  for. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  departments  of  St.  Jerome's 
work  was  his  panegyrical  letters  on  departed  friends,  and 
naturally  that  on  St.  Paula,  the  most  intimate,  is  the  best. 
The  letter  is  full  of  tender  contrasts  between  her  rank  and  her 
humility,  her  blessedness  and  his  loss,  her  false  glory  in  the 
world,  her  true  glory  in  Egypt  and  Bethlehem,  for  he  has  a 
naive  pride  in  the  readiness  of  the  most  celebrated  ascetics  to 
admit  a  lady  who  had  made  greater  sacrifices  than  most  of 
them  to  the  intimacy  of  their  cells.  No  such  stupid  story  is 
told  of  her  as  Rufinus  tells  of  Melania,  who  presented  a  mag- 
nificent service  of  plate  to  a  famous  monk,  and,  when  he  sent 
it  away  to  be  sold  for  the  poor,  had  the  bad  taste  to  tell  him 
the  weight.  The  letter  on  the  death  of  St.  Eustochium  is  less 
impressive  ;  her  character  was  less  impulsive,  and  her  biogra- 
pher was  older:  he  could  not  rally  from  the  shock,  and  tells  us 
little  except  the  firmness  with  which  she  adhered  to  her  voca- 
tion, her  implicit  obedience  to  her  mother,  and  her  gentle  strict- 
ness with  her  nuns,  whom  she  never  hesitated  to  starve  into  a 
safe  and  peaceable  frame  of  mind. 

Of  the  formal  biographies,  the  longest  and  most  entertain- 
ing is  that  of  St.  Hilarion,  who  fled  from  his  admirers  from 
Palestine  to  Sicily  and  Cyprus,  and  was  tracked  everywhere 
by  his  miracles ;  it  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  difference 
between  the  real  life  of  ascetics  and  the  impression  they 
made  in  the  world.  Another  pretty  story  is  that  of  Malchus, 
a  monk  who  was  carried  away  by  the  Saracens  and  compelled 
to  accept  a  wife  ;  he  persuaded  her  to  live  with  him  as  a 
sister,  and  at  last  was  able  to  return  with  her  to  the  Roman 
dominions,  where  they  died  in  peace. 

His  historical  works  are  not  very  characteristic.  As  Ru- 
finus translated  and  continued  the  ecclesiastical  history  of 
Eusebius,  St.  Jerome  translated,  enlarged,  and  continued  his 
chronicle  from  the  twentieth  year  of  Constantine  to  the  death 
of  Valentinian.  Of  the  two  it  may  be  thought  that  St.  Je- 
rome's work  is  the  more  meagre  and  capricious :  *  except  that 
1  For  instance,  the  entry  for  one  year  is  that  a  particular  grammarian 


ST.  JEROME. 


417 


the  notes  upon  Roman  writers  are  taken  from  Suetonius  its 
sources  have  not  yet  been  ascertained.  More  interesting  is 
the  imitation  of  Suetonius,  a  series  of  biographical  notes  on 
all  the  writers  of  whom  an  instructed  Christian  did  not  like 
to  be  quite  ignorant,  composed  in  a.d.  392  at  the  request  of  a 
certain  Dexter,  the  praetorian  prefect,  who  frankly  explained 
he  wanted  something  very  short.  Even  for  this  work  he  is 
very  dependent  on  Eusebius,  who,  at  the  end  of  each  period 
in  his  Church  history,  enumerates  the  principal  writers,  and 
St.  Jerome  complains  he  very  often  had  to  copy  him  because 
he  could  find  no  historical  or  biographical  materials  elsewhere. 
Out  of  135  authors  named,  from  St.  Peter  to  himself,  only  one, 
Juvencus  (who  turned  the  Bible  history  into  rough  and  sound- 
ing hexameters),  is  a  writer  in  verse.  Commodian,  an  earlier 
and  more  original,  if  also  a  more  incompetent,  writer,  is  not 
mentioned,  nor  is  Athenagoras,the  most  eloquent  of  the  Apolo- 
gists. Again,  it  seems  very  much  an  accident  whether  St. 
Jerome  gives  a  list  of  any  author's  writings  or  not,  though  as 
he  approaches  his  own  time  we  get  an  occasional  critical 
hint :  he  tells  us  that  he  had  never  seen  a  work  on  the  Canti- 
cles attributed  to  St.  Hilary.  Oddly  enough,  St.  Anthony  ap- 
pears after  his  biographer  St.  Athanasius,  and  his  appear- 
ance at  all  proves  that  the  general  title  "  De  Viris  Illustribus  " 
is  more  accurate  than  the  special  one  "  De  Scriptoribus  Ec- 
clesiasticis."  Philo  and  Seneca  come  in,  because  Philo's 
vi'ork  (if  it  be  Philo's)  on  the  "  Therapeutoe  "  was  taken  for  a 
description  of  the  early  Christians,  and  the  apocryphal  cor- 
respondence between  St.  Paul  and  Seneca  was  fully  accredited 
when  St.  Jerome  wrote.  Neither  insertion  is  particularly  un- 
critical, for  the  Essenes  have  been  identified  with  the  Chris- 
tians as  a  matter  of  deliberate  theory,  and  the  first  expression 
of  a  recognition  that  Seneca  had  a  good  deal  in  common  with 
St.  Paul  would  be  a  tradition  that  St.  Paul  had  converted 
Seneca. 

But,  after  all,  the  most  characteristic  work  of  St.  Jerome  are 

had  a  high  reputation  at  Rome ;  for  another,  that  the  clergy  of  Aquileia 
were  regarded  as  a  choir  of  angels,  for  the  chronicle  was  written  befpre 
the  quarrel  with  Rufinus. 

.  n.— 18* 


4i8 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


his  letters,  which  strike  every  note  from  invective  to  the  ten- 
derness of  grandfather.  In  a  letter  to  Lx^a,  a  daughter-in- 
law  of  St.  Paula,  he  offers  to  undertake  the  education  of  her 
infant  daughter,  and  obviously  looks  forward  to  nursing  her, 
though  he  puts  the  offer  on  the  ground  that,  as  she  is  to  be 
brought  up  for  the  cloister,  she  will  be  safer  with  her  grand- 
mother and  her  aunt  than  at  home  :  it  is  characteristic  that 
he  does  not  feel  that  he  is  asking  the  mother  for  a  heavy 
sacrifice.  There  are  letters  of  all  degrees  of  intimacy,  two 
among  the  most  elaborate  to  ladies  of  Gaul,  who  only  knew 
him  by  his  reputation,  and  were  encouraged  thereby  to  send 
him  all  their  scriptural  difficulties.  'I'here  are  lengthy 
though  not  numerous  letters  to  St.  Augustin,  who  had  taken 
alarm  at  the  new  translation  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  nar- 
rowly escaped  having  a  quarrel  fastened  upon  him ;  for  St. 
Jerome  was  jealous  of  his  hard-won  reputation,  and  the  letters 
in  which  St.  Augustin  corrected  him  were  seen  by  others  be- 
fore they  reached  St.  Jerome,  who  not  unnaturally  inferred 
that  a  younger  man  was  trying  to  rise  upon  his  ruins.  It  is 
impossible  to  speak  adequately  of  the  laborious  work  of 
translating  the  Bible  single-handed :  first  he  revised  the  New 
Testament,  and  brought  it  into  closer  conformity  to  the 
Greek,  while  to  a  certain  extent  he  improved  the  Latinity; 
the  Old  Testament  he  translated  directly  from  the  Hebrew, 
after  revising  the  Psalms,  or  rather  translating  them  from  the 
Septuagint,  using  his  knowledge  of  the  Hebrew  to  explain 
the  Greek.  This  version  of  the  Psalms  still  keeps  its  place 
in  the  Breviary  :  the  Vulgate  is  a  revision  of  the  other  trans- 
lation, which  was  some  centuries  in  finally  displacing  its  pred- 
ecessors. 

ST.  AUGUSTIN. 

During  the  twenty  years  between  his  visit  to  Rome  and  his 
quarrel  with  Rufinus  St.  Jerome  had  been  the  literary  dictator 
of  Christendom.  For  some  five-and-twenty  years  afterwards 
this  authority  passed  into  the  hands  of  St.  Augustin,  the 
bishop  of  Hippo,  then  the  second  city  of  Africa. 

His  youth  had  been  stormier  than  St.  Jerome's,  for,  as  his 
father  was  a  heathen  till  late  in  life,  his  baptism  had  been  de- 


ST.  AUGUSTIN. 


419 


\ 


ferred,  and  the  conflict  between  his  animal  and  ideal  nature 
exposed  him  to  the  fascination  of  Manichaeism,  a  crude  form 
of  mystical  materialism,  which  professed  to  rest  entirely  on 
reason  and  to  dispense  with  authority.  During  the  greater 
part  of  the  period  between  his  manhood  and  his  baptism  he 
was  a  teacher  of  rhetoric,  first  at  Carthage  and  then  at  Rome, 
and  was  decidedly  successful  in  his  profession,  in  spite  of  his 
persistent  spiritual  distractions,  which  became  more  absorb- 
ing as  he  approached  his  mother's  faith.  While  waiting  for 
baptism  he  began  to  write  on  all  the  subjects  on  which  he  had 
lectured,  but  in  most  he  did  not  get  beyond  the  beginning, 
and  lost  his  notes,  though  he  believed  that  they  were  still 
preserved  in  other  hands.  The  work  on  grammar  was  fin- 
ished ;  that  on  music  was  completed  after  his  baptism.  We 
have  extracts  from  the  first,  probably  made  by  a  Benedictine 
monk  with  an  eye  to  the  practical.  We  have  the  whole  of  the 
second,  and  we  have  the  elements  of  rhetoric  and  dialectic — 
nothing  more  was  written.  From  the  elements  of  rhetoric 
we  derive  much  of  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient  text-book  of 
Hermagoras.  But  the  main  purpose  of  the  author  is  to 
spiritualize  secular  knowledge,  to  show  how  each  of  the  seven 
liberal  arts  leads  up  to  the  highest  beauty  and  the  highest 
good  \  and  the  exposition  and  the  edification  do  not  harmo- 
nize well.  The  work  on  music  is  very  long,  and  there  is  little 
to  be  learned  from  it.  All  the  works  of  this  series,  except  the 
dialectic,  are  in  the  form  of  dialogues  between  a  master  and 
a  pupil. 

Something  like  the  same  form  is  adopted  in  a  more  happily 
inspired  work,  "  Contra  Academicos,"  which  is  an  imitation 
of  Cicero's  "Academics,"  as  St.  Ambrose's  treatise  on  the 
"  Duties  of  Clerks "  is  an  imitation  of  Cicero's  treatise  on 
"  Duties."  But  the  work  of  St.  Augustin  is  fresher  and  more 
original :  it  is  in  great  measure  the  record  of  actual  conversa- 
tions held  when  he  was  staying  with  his  son  and  brother, 
with  his  mother  and  an  old  pupil,  at  Cassiciacum,  an  estate 
of  the  pupil's  father,  near  Milan.  The  dialogues  have  a  good 
deal  of  naive  scenery:  for  instance,  St.  Augustin's  mother 
emds  one  of  them  by  calling  the  company  to  dinner.     In  an- 


420 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


ST.  AUGUSTIX. 


421 


Other  Augustin  rallies  the  pupil  on  his  inattention,  because 
all  the  morning  he  has  been  able  to  make  Latin  verses  at 
leisure,  while  Augustin  and  his  brother  have  been  hard  at 
work  on  business  letters.  The  main  subject  is  the  difficulties 
of  certainty,  and  the  need  of  faith  to  meet  them,  while  inci- 
dentally the  irony  of  Socrates  and  the  "  suspense  "  of  the 
New  Academy  are  vindicated  as  a  protest  against  crude  sen- 
sationalism. Other  works  of  the  same  period  are  "  De  Vita 
Beata,"  "  De  Ordine  "  (a  rather  confused  series  of  discon- 
nected questions),  two  works  on  the  Immortality  and  Imma- 
teriality of  the  Soul  (the  last  sets  out  from  the  question  of  its 
quantity),  and  two  books  of  "Soliloquies,"  in  which  Augustin 
converses  with  Reason,  on  topics  treated  with  more  passion 
and  insight  in  the  "Confessions."  An  earlier  work  on 
"  Beauty  and  Fitness  "  is  only  known  from  the  "  Retracta- 
tion "  and  the  "Confessions"  (IV.  xiii.):  it  laid  down  and 
illustrated  the  distinction  which  is  elaborately  confused  in  the 
Greater  Hippias. 

In  A.D.  388  he  settled  in  Africa,  and  occupied  himself  with 
literary  work,  commenting  on  Genesis,  and  refuting  the  Mani- 
chees,  while  maintaining  himself  by  monastic  work  upon  a 
small  farm  which  he  had  dedicated  to  the  poor:  after  three 
years  of  this  life  he  visited  Hippo,  where  he  was  ordained 
presbyter  in  392,  and  coadjutor  bishop  with  the  right  of  suc- 
cession in  395.  In  the  interval  he  wrote  the  celebrated 
"  Confessions." 

There  is  something  like  justification  for  Macaulay's  odd 
criticism  of  the  "Confessions:"  they  are  not  written  in  the 
style  of  a  field  preacher,  but  there  is  an  extraordinary  efi"u- 
siveness  and  absence  of  self-control  which  are  strange  in 
Latin  literature ;  there  is  a  redundancy  of  suggestion,  partly 
due  to  the  author's  rhetorical  training,  and  yet  unlike  formal 
rhetoric  \  because,  though  the  materials  are  accumulated  with 
a  profusion  that  savors  of  rhetorical  fertility,  they  are  not 
arranged  w^ith  a  rhetorician's  eye  to  efiect.  The  author  mul- 
tiplies questions  in  a  way  that  can  only  be  explained  by  the 
sincere  exuberant  curiosity  of  a  generation  which  has  ex- 
hausted its  possibilities  of  actual  science.     Augustin  himself 


was  not  one  of  the  few  who  had  still  mastered  the  encyclo- 
pcedia  of  the  day  :  he  does  not  show  any  knowledge  of  the 
miscellaneous  information  about  plants  and  animals  and 
minerals  that  formed  a  sort  of  appendage  to  medicine,  nor 
was  he  interested  in  geography,  and  so  easily  took  over  the 
conceit  that  between  the  tropics  the  earth  was  uninhabitable, 
and  that  any  men  who  lived  at  the  antipodes  could  not  have 
the  same  ancestors  as  the  inhabitants  of  the  northern  temper- 
ate zone. 

When  he  has  to  mention  the  passage  from  infancy  to  child- 
hood he  is  exercised  by  the  word  "pass."'  "Did  not  I  in 
my  journey  hitherward  come  to  childhood,  or  rather  child- 
hood came  of  itself  to  me,  and  took  the  jDlace  of  infancy? 
And  infancy  did  not  pass,  for  whither  did  it  go  away  ?  and 
yet  it  was  no  more.  For  I  was  not  an  infant  without  voice, 
but  a  child  that  could  speak."  And  then  he  goes  on  to  no- 
tice how  unlike  the  process  by  which  he  learned  to  speak 
was  the  process  by  which  he  learned  everything  else.  He  is 
not  struck  by  anything  mysterious  in  the  fact  that  children 
learn  to  speak  by  calling  for  what  they  want,  and  imitating 
their  elders  without  being  taught.  He  is  much  more  puzzled 
by  the  consideration  that  the  naughtiness  of  babies  is  so  like 
the  naughtiness  of  their  elders,  and  yet  they  are  never  scolded 
for  it.  Again,  he  is  puzzled  at  his  reluctance  to  learn  his 
lessons,  and  the  laughter  of  his  elders  when  he  was  whipped, 
after  praying  to  be  delivered  from  the  consequences  of  his 
neglect  to  learn  them.  He  naively  wonders  whether  there 
are  any  saints  so  perfect  as  to  laugh  at  the  natural  fear  of  the 
torments  of  criminals  or  martyrs  as  adults  laugh  at  children's 
fear  of  the  rod.  He  is  puzzled  again  at  his  elders'  anxiety 
that  he  should  learn  to  be  a  rhetorician  :  the  play  for  which  he 
neglected  his  lessons  was  innocent  by  comparison,  while  the 
graver  play  of  the  rhetorician  was  mischievous  as  tending  to 
vainglory  ;  yet  it  was  wrong  to  neglect  the  preparation  for  the 
guiltier  play.  He  is  also  astonished  at  his  reluctance  to  at- 
tend to  anything  except  to  poetry  and  to  learn  Greek,  though 
Homer  is  a  most  delightful  vanity.     As  he  advanced  in  life 

»  "Conf"  I.viii.  (13). 


422 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


he  found  more  matter  of  astonishment  in  his  joining  in  an  ex- 
pedition to  rob  a  pear-tree,  tliough  neither  he  nor  his  com- 
panions wanted  the  pears,  and  in  fact  threw  them  to  the  pi^-s 
after  just  tasting  them.     He  analyzes  the  absence  of  tempta- 
tion in  order  to  aggravate  his  guilt  through  several  chapters 
with  an  emphasis  rather  disproportionate  to  the  brief  but 
bitter  record  of  his  short  lapse  into  debauchery.     This  was 
followed  by  a  genuine  love-affair,'  of  which  we  are  told  little 
except  the  eagerness  with  which  he  prepared  for  it,  "  being  in 
love  with  loving  before  yet  he  loved,"  and  the  inconveniences 
of  love   which  is  not  meant  to  end  in   marriage.     He  was 
faithful  for  nine  years  to  his  mistress,  and  when  they  parted 
she   was   faithful    to    his    memory.     He   reproaches   himself 
keenly  for  having  taken  another  mistress  while  waiting  till 
his  mother  could  find  a  suitable  wife  ;  it  did  not  occur  to  her 
or  to  him  that,  if  he  were  to  marry,  the  mother  of  his  son  was 
the  proper  person.     There  is  the  same  curious  combination 
of  delicacy  and  brutality  in  his  lamentations  over  a  school 
friend  who  died  suddenly ;  life  seemed  unendurable  after  his 
loss,  and  yet  he  says  honestly  he  would  rather  have  lost  his 
friend  than  died  himself,  and  doubts  if  even  the  chance  of 
saving  his  friend's  life  would  have  moved  him  to  give  up  his 
own.     So,  too,  after  the  exquisite  description  of  his  mother's 
holy  death,  after  the  description  of  his  laborious  self-control, 
and  the  late  tears  which  brought  relief,  he  not  only  apolo- 
gizes for  those  tears,  but  boasts  of  the  tears  which  accom- 
panied his  anxious  prayers  for  the  repose  of  her  soul  when  he 
wrote. 

Other  curious  traits  are  to  be  found  in  his  intercourse  with 
St.  Ambrose,  who  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  scanty  leisure  in 
reading  to  himself  Any  one  might  enter  unannounced,  but 
few  interrupted.'  Augustin  expresses  great  surprise  that  in 
reading  to  himself  St.  Ambrose  never  read  aloud,  and  sucfirests 
two  different  theories  to  account  for  such  singular  behavior  : 
he  may  have  been  afraid  of  being  interrupted  to  explain  diffi- 
culties, or  he  may  (which  appears  a  simpler  and  more  creditable 
hypothesis)  have  been  simply  anxious  to  save  his  voice,  which 
'  *'Conf."IV.ii.  (2).  Mb.  VI.  iii.  (3). 


ST  AUGUSTIN, 


423 


was  always  liable  to  be  hoarse.  It  is  curious  to  find  that  his 
mystical  interpretation  of  Scripture  was  the  principal  source  of 
his  influence  with  St.  Augustin,  whose  difficulties  as  to  the  con- 
duct of  Old  Testament  saints  were  removed  when  his  attention 
was  called  from  the  moral  anomalies  of  their  actions  to  the  tran- 
scendental meanings  which  it  was  possible  to  extract  from 
them.  His  faith  in  Manichaeism  had  been  already  shaken  by 
the  discovery  that  its  astronomy  did  not  agree  with  Greek 
science,  the  science  of  Ptolemy.  He  was  aware  that  many 
orthodox  Christians  held  the  same  erroneous  views  of  physi- 
cal matters,  and  if  they  made  their  error  a  part  of  their  belief 
they  were  to  blame  ;  but,  as  their  bad  astronomy  was  really 
separable  from  their  true  belief,  it  did  not  discredit  their 
creed.  So,  too,  he  rules  that  it  is  safer  to  hold  that  any  pas- 
sage of  Scripture  means  anything  and  everything  which  is  true, 
sii"-irested  by  the  words  to  any  orthodox  believer;  and  though 
he  half  endeavors  to  establish  the  bold  proposition  that  the 
original  author  had  present  to  his  mind  every  sense  for  which 
his  authority  was  hereafter  to  be  rightly  adduced,  he  falls  back 
upon  a  belief  that,  if  he  only  had  one  sense  in  his  mind,  that 
no  doubt  was  the  highest. 

The  book  contains  the  most  impressive,  if  not  the  earliest 
or  the  fullest,  statement  of  some  of  the  leading  speculative 
ideas  of  the  author,  especially  the  most  original,  that  in  the 
highest  subjects  we  always  have  to  begin  by  believing  an  au- 
thority which  somehow  is  able  to  impress  us  without  convinc- 
ing us,  and  that  understanding  in  the  natural  course  of  things 
comes  afterwards.  This  differs  from  the  ordinary  antithesis 
of  faith  and  reason,  because  it  does  not  divide  the  two  spheres  ; 
it  is  not  that  human  reason  is  from  the  first  adequate  to 
some  religious  truths  and  inadequate  to  others  till  the  last,  but 
that  submission  to  the  traditions  of  an  institution  is  rewarded 
by  growing  insight  into  its  large  and  coherent  system  of  ideas. 
Another  important  notion  is  the  essential  goodness  of  every- 
thing so  far  as  it  has  a  substantial  existence,  and  that  evil  only 
arises  from  the  perversity  of  the  creature's  will.  This  leads 
naturally  to  the  conception  of  good  coming  out  of  evil.  As 
he  puts  it,  God  uses  evil  well.     The  dissertations  on  time  and 


424 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


eternity  and  memory  (in  books  xi.-xiii.)  are  extremely  ingen- 
ious, and  the  latter  contributed  largely  to  mediceval  psycholo- 
gy; but  the  ingenuity  runs  to  waste — the  writer  plainly  prefers 
the  unintelligible  aspects  of  every  subject,  and  likes  to  start 
questions  rather  than  answer  them. 

The  disquisitions  are  a  natural  appendix  to  the  "Confes- 
sions," for  he  wishes  to  give  the  measure  of  his  attainments  in 
the  pursuit  of  truth,  as  in  the  tenth  book  he  had  summed  up  his 
attainments  in  the  pursuit  of  virtue.  This  part  of  the  work  is 
exceedingly  naive  and  interesting:  we  learn,  for  instance,  that 
he  reproached  himself  keenly  for  not  completely  conquering 
the  carnal  curiosity  which  led  his  contemporaries  to  the  cir- 
cus :  he  never  went  there  nor  wished  to  go ;  but  when  he  met 
a  hare  with  the  dogs  after  her  when  he  was  out  riding,  he 
found  that  he  could  not  help  looking  how  the  chase  went,  if 
he  did  not  actually  turn  out  of  his  way  for  the  purpose.  In 
the  same  spirit  he  debates  whether  church  music  tends  to  ed- 
ification or  not:  sometimes  he  finds  that  the  music  helps  him 
to  feel  the  words,  sometimes  the  pleasure  of  the  sound  distracts 
his  attention  from  the  sense. 

Perhaps  the  most  influential  of  his  minor  writings  was  the 
"De  Doctrina  Christiana,"  though  its  form  is  quite  accidental 
and  unworthy.  A  Donatist  grammarian,  Tychonius,  had  writ- 
ten a  book  on  the  difficulties  of  Scripture  which  professed 
more  than  it  promised,  for  its  title  was  "  On  All  the  Difficulties 
of  Holy  Scripture."  It  was  addressed  to  the  large  class  of 
believers  who  wished  to  read  the  Bible  and  know  something 
more  of  their  religion  than  was  contained  in  the  baptismal 
formula.  Tychonius  thought  enough  was  done  when  he  had 
enabled  this  class  to  read  the  unfamiliar  literature  of  the  Old 
and  New  I^aw  as  currently  as  their  own  classics.  St.  Augus- 
tin's  work  has  essentially  the  same  object,  but  he  intends  to 
be,  and  is,  more  thorough  in  treatment.  He  begins  by  divid- 
ing the  preliminary  knowledge  which  a  reader  of  the  Bible 
needs  into  a  knowledge  of  signs  and  things,  and  subdivides 
the  knowledge  of  things  into  a  knowledge  of  ends  and  means, 
or  rather  of  things  to  be  enjoyed  for  themselves  and  things  to 
be  used  with  a  purpose  beyond  themselves.     This  distinction 


ST.  AUGUSTIN. 


425 


afterwards  suggested  the  framework  of  Peter  Lombard's  work 
on  the  Sentences,  which  is  an  introduction  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  fathers  for  purposes  of  debate,  as  the  "  De  Doctrina  Chris- 
tiana" is  an  introduction  to  the  Bible  for  purposes  of  in- 
quiry. 

The  work  looks  like  a  fusion  of  some  hand-book  on  the 
Creed  with  a  hand-book  of  a  very  elementary  character  to  the 
Bible.  The  first  three  books,  upon  the  whole,  are  devoted  to 
the  knowledge  of  things,  the  last  of  the  four  is  a  discussion  of 
the  proper  style  of  Christian  preaching;  the  author  condemns 
the  free  employment  of  rhetorical  ornaments,  and  wishes,  as  a 
general  rule,  that  preachers  should  restrict  themselves  to  a 
musical  arrangement  of  words  :  his  own  style  depends  increas- 
ingly upon  the  effect  of  verbal  suggestions  and  antitheses,  so 
that  the  architecture  of  phrases  becomes  superfluous.  He  is 
more  indulgent  to  the  study  of  heathen  authors  and  heathen 
science  generally.  The  commentaries  on  Genesis  suffer  in 
another  way  from  the  author's  over-fertility :  they  are  neither 
of  them  finished.  The  commentaries  on  the  Psalms  and  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John  were  delivered  as  sermons  at  Hippo:  the 
strain  of  ingenuity  is  less,  and  when  the  author  is  ingenious 
he  is  often  profound,  as  in  the  well-known  passage  where  he 
raises  the  difficulty  that  John  was  the  beloved  disciple,  while 
Peter  loved  the  Master  best,  only  to  turn  it  by  making  Peter 
a  figure  of  the  life  which  now  is,  and  John  a  figure  of  the  life 
of  the  world  to  come,  which  is  to  tarry  till  the  second  advent. 

The  controversial  works  form  a  very  large  portion  of  his 
writings:  those  against  the  Arians,  who  still  annoyed  the 
faithful,  are  perhaps  the  least  interesting ;  those  against  the 
Manichees  the  most,  although  the  latter  are  to  a  considerable 
extent,  resumed  in  the  "Confessions."  The  part  which  is 
freshest  is  the  discussion  of  the  moral  character  of  the  Mani- 
chees :  the  worst  charges  of  child-murder  or  debauchery  are 
neither  affirmed  nor  denied,  but  there  is  a  sharp  criticism  of 
their  idleness,  vagabondage,  and  gluttony  ;  the  last  proceeded 
directly  from  their  creed,  as  every  one  of  the  Perfect  who  ate 
a  vegetable  whose  life  he  had  not  destroyed  was  supposed  to 
liberate  the  divine  element  imprisoned  therein.     The  contro- 


426 


LATIIV  LITERATURE. 


versy  with  the  Pelagians  is  interesting  chiefly  for  the  concep- 
tion of  freedom  :  according  to  St.  Augustin  the  self-possession 
and  self-control  which  are  lost  by  sin  are  restored  by  grace; 
the  question  whether  the  will  decides  freely  between  different 
alternatives,  which  was  prominent  in  the  controversy  with  the 
Manichees,  retires  into  the  background,  while  the  purely  physi- 
ological theory  of  hereditary  corruption  is  a  return  towards 
Manichceism  which  may  be  compared  to  Wesley's  return  tow- 
ards High  Anglicanism  in  his  old  age ;  though  to  the  last 
the  distinction  that  evil  lay  in  the  will,  not  in  the  nature,  is  re- 
asserted with  emphasis. 

The  controversy  with  the  Donatists  is  remarkable  for  hav- 
ing produced  a  doggerel  alphabetical  psalm,  on  the  necessary 
mixture  of  good  and  evil  in  the  visible  church,  in  accentual 
trochaic  tetrameters  which  seem  to  rhyme  a  little,  and  for  the 
first  weighty  assertion  that  force  might  be  used  in  aid  of 
orthodox  Christianity.  This  question  had  hardly  been  raised 
in  the  suppression  of  paganism  :  the  closing  of  the  temples  had 
been  a  measure  of  police,  and  private  sacrifices  had  always 
been  viewed  with  jealousy  by  the  state,  and  any  nobles  or  lit- 
erati who  cherished  the  old  belief  were  free  to  believe  in  the 
gods,  and  to  worship  them,  and  risked  little  or  nothing  by 
offerings  of  wine  and  incense  at  the  family  shrine.  The  Don- 
atists raised  the  question  directly  :  their  propaganda  was  a 
perpetual  breach  of  the  peace,  and  St.  Augustin  was  led  by 
experience  to  alter  his  original  opinion,  and  admit  that  it 
might  be  a  good  thing  to  repress  the  outrages  of  fanatics,  and 
even  to  put  some  pressure  upon  them  to  give  a  fair  hearing  to 
the  Catholic  case.  Even  then  he  maintained  emphatically 
that  capital  punishment  was  out  of  the  question;  no  bishop 
could  denounce  a  Donatist  unless  assured  that  the  heretic's 
life  should  be  safe.  It  is  noticeable  that  thouiih  in  contro- 
versy  with  the  Donatists  he  leans  more  upon  Scripture  and 
less  on  Church  authority,  the  seat  of  which  was  the  matter  in 
dispute,  than  in  the  controversy  with  the  Manichees,  the  au- 
thor's own  belief  is  fixed  by  the  maxim,  "  Securus  judical 
orbis  terrarum." 

The  work  on  the  Trinity  in  sixteen  books  was  written  at 


ST.  AUGUSTIN. 


427 


intervals  during  many  years :  it  marks  the  completion  of  the 
movement,  which  began  with  the  Council  of  Nice,  towards 
transforming  the  orthodox  representation  of  the  doctrine  from 
the  shape  which  could  be  caricatured  as  tri theism  into  the 
shape  which  could  be  caricatured  as  Sabellianism.  The  author 
himself  shrinks  from  such  conceptions  as  Person  and  Substance 
and  Hypostasis,  regarding  them  as  at  the  best  necessary  evils ; 
his  own  inclination  is  to  explain  the  matter  so  far  as  possible 
by  psychological  analogies,  and  to  make  the  notion  of  being 
in  man  correspond  to  the  Father,  while  thought,  reason,  con- 
sciousness represent  the  Son,  and  the  will,  which  presupposes 
both  being  and  thought,  corresponds  to  the  Spirit,  who  is  the 
love  wherewith  God  loves  himself  and  the  world,  as  the 
Son  is  the  wisdom  wherewith  God  knows  himself  One  of 
the  most  interesting  and  important  of  St.  Augustin's  ideas  is 
the  constant  identification  of  choice  with  love,  which  is  decid- 
edly beyond  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  Eros,  and  had  an  abiding 
influence  upon  the  sentimental  and  speculative  culture  of  the 
middle  ages,  and  still  colors  much  refined  asceticism. 

The  correspondence  of  St.  Augustin  is  mainly  diplomatic, 
bearing  on  the  business  of  a  bishop  who  was  practically  the 
leader  of  the  African  Church  :  for  instance,  every  decision  of 
an  African  synod  required  to  be  accompanied  by  a  letter  of 
St.  Augustin.  Some  space,  too,  is  occupied  by  letters  of  excul- 
pation:* one  of  the  most  curious  is  that  in  which  he  explains 
how  he  had  allowed  his  people  to  force  him  to  ordain  a  son 
of  Melania  presbyter  rather  against  the  will  of  the  young  man 
and  his  wife,  who  lived  with  him  as  a  sister,  because,  once  or- 
dained as  presbyter  of  the  town,  the  canons  would  prevent  his 
leaving  it  and  carrying  his  alms  elsewhere.  The  letter  shows 
a  strange  want  of  perception  of  the  shabbiness  of  the  whole 
transaction.  In  the  correspondence  with  St.  Jerome  about 
the  dispute  between  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  at  Antioch,  which 
resolved  itself  into  a  debate  on  the  limits  of  permissible  dis- 
simulation, St.  Augustin  shows  to  more  advantage,  as  he  up- 
held the  stricter  view;  andeven  in  the  correspondence  on  the 
translation  of  the  Old  Testament  he  hardly  comes  off  second- 

'  **  Ep."  cxxvi. 


428 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


best,  for  though  his  thesis,  that  an  ecclesiastical  translation 
ought  to  be  based  on  the  consecrated  authority  of  the  Septua- 
gint,  was  hardly  tenable  against  St.  Jerome's  appeal  to.  the 
"  Hebrew  verity,"  an  unlucky  mistake  about  "Jonah's  gourd  " 
almost  turned  the  tables.  St.  Jerome  had  found  out  that  the 
plant  in  question  was  not  a  gourd,  and  as  the  Palma  Chrisli, 
or  castor-oil  plant,  of  which  the  Hebrew  writer  was  speaking, 
was  unknown  in  Italy,  he  fell  back  rather  capriciously  upon 
Aquila,  who  had  gone  by  the  similarity  of  sound  between 
Kiaaoc,  and  "ciceion."  Consequently  St.  Jerome  translated 
"ivy"  instead  of  "gourd,"  and  would  not  see  that  the  mat- 
ter was  of  consequence,  even  when  informed  that  the  Jews  of 
Africa  followed  the  older  and  more  plausible  mistake  em- 
bodied in  the  Septuagint  and  most  modern  translations. 

Like  St.  Jerome,  though  not  to  the  same  extent,  St.  Augus- 
tin  had  to  answer  the  queries  of  correspondents  who  brought 
to  him  all  the  theological  questions  that  their  reading  or  re- 
flection had  suggested.  The  questions  themselves  are  suffi- 
ciently naive,  such  as  a  Sunday-school  teacher  has  to  meet, 
or  more  commonly  to  silence,  but  the  treatment  of  them  is 
different  and  freer.  The  author  never  is  in  a  hurry  to  admit 
that  a  question  is  insoluble  :  if  no  text  or  fragment  of  ecclesi- 
astical tradition  occurs  to  him  which  may  throw  light  upon 
the  question,  he  says  he  does  not  know  ;  but  he  never  lays 
down  that  it  is  "an  unrevealed  mystery  beyond  the  power  of 
human  thought."  Even  when  he  is  most  despondent  of  ever 
seeing  the  way  to  an  answer,  he  always  reserves  the  possi- 
bility that  some  one  else  may  be  wiser  or  better  instructed. 

His  great  work,  the  "City  of  God,"  was  written  in  reply  to 
the  attacks  of  the  Pagans,  who  held  that  the  sack  of  Rome  in 
A.D.  410  was  a  punishment  for  the  suppression  of  the  national 
worship,  to  which  Rome  owed  her  greatness.  It  is  to  be  re- 
membered that  at  Rome  itself  much  of  the  old  worship  had 
still  been  kept  up  by  the  influence  of  the  aristocracy,  who  were 
still  able  to  fill  up  the  old  priesthoods  and  to  maintain  the 
Altar  of  Victory  till  after  the  conversion  of  St.  Augustin.  The 
Pagans  had  much  more  recent  grievances  than  the  conversion 
of  Constantine.    The  main  scheme  of  the  book  is  impressive  : 


ST.  AUGUSTIN. 


429 


the  first  five  books  prove  that  Paganism  is  not  a  condition  of 
temporal  prosperity,  the  next  five  that,  supposing  temporal 
affairs  to  be  subject  to  vicissitudes  on  which  piety  has  no  in- 
fluence, it  is  useless  to  maintain  that  polytheism  had  the 
promise  of  the  world  to  come.  The  next  twelve  books  are 
constructive  :  the  first  four  deal  with  the  origin  of  the  City  of 
God  and  the  City  of  Earth;  the  next  four  deal  with  the  his- 
tory of  the  two  cities;  and  the  last  four  deal  with  their  ends. 
But  the  execution  is  unworthy  of  the  conception  :  the  author 
was  nearly  sixty  when  he  began,  and  he  was  over  seventy 
when  he  finished,  for  large  treatises  were  interrupted  both  by 
his  duties  as  bishop  and  the  demands  of  current  controversy. 
We  expect  a  philosophy  of  history,  and  at  first  it  seems  as  if 
we  were  to  have  it :  the  Stoical  distinctions  between  the  pru- 
dential and  practical  conditions  of  success,  and  the  moral 
conditions  of  spiritual  worth,  is  used  vigorously  and  with  a 
great  deal  of  perspicacity  ;  for  instance,  the  self-complacency 
of  the  Stoics  is  consistently  treated  as  another  form  of  the 
self-indulgence  which  they  condemned  :  much  is  said,  and 
well,  of  the  value  of  secular  virtues  in  clearing  the  way  for  the 
establishment  of  true  religion,  and  in  furnishing  elements  to 
enrich  religious  ideals.  But  from  the  first  secondary  questions 
come  in.  The  first  book  is  taken  up  with  taunting  the  Pagans 
for  their  ingratitude,  as  Alaric  had  respected  the  churches,  so 
that  such  Pagans  as  escaped  owed  their  escape  to  Christianity, 
and  with  discussing  the  very  sore  question  whether  a  Chris- 
tian woman  was  justified  under  any  circumstances  in  killing 
herself  to  avoid  dishonor.  The  fact  that  Christian  women, 
and  among  them  consecrated  virgins,  had  been  dishonored, 
was  one  of  the  most  telling  arguments  of  the  Pagans.  There 
is  more  point  in  the  contrast  between  the  standard  of  the 
moralists  and  statesmen  of  the  republic  and  the  actual  pros- 
perity of  the  golden  days  of  the  empire  which  the  Pagans  re- 
gretted, with  endless  splendor  and  luxury  and  servility,  with 
no  loyalty  or  discipline  or  dignity.  The  Romans  themselves 
held  that  their  true  2:reatness  had  been  founded  on  the  ancient 
discipline,  which  luxury  had  undermined,  and  the  gods  had 
done  nothing  to  uphold.     The  gods,  if  they  could  be  thought 


430 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


to  meddle  at  all,  would  seem  to  meddle  in  the  interests  of 
evil:  Marius  was  very  "pious,"  very  wicked,  and  very  pros- 
perous ;  Regulus  was  righteous  and  unfortunate.  Yet  this 
inference  will  not  hold.  Metellus,  a  most  virtuous  man,  was 
prosperous,  and  saw  his  five  sons  consulars,  and  Catilina  was 
as  miserable  as  he  was  wicked.  If  the  false  gods  have  any 
power,  it  is  only  lent  them  in  order  to  enforce  a  qualified  be- 
lief in  the  value  of  earthly  good.  St.  Augustin  is  not  sceptical 
as  to  their  power  being  actually  exerted ;  he  quotes  all  the 
prophecies  of  Sulla's  success  as  if  they  were  entirely  trust- 
worthy. Of  course  the  familiar  arguments  about  the  immo- 
ralities of  the  gods,  and  the  display  of  these  at  the  theatrical 
shows  held  to  propitiate  them,  recur  to  prove  that  the  gods 
could  not  have  promoted  the  virtue  or  the  true  prosperity  of 
Rome.  The  belief  of  Cicero  and  Polybius,  that  the  religious 
temper  of  the  ancient  Romans  was  the  foundation  of  their 
prosperity,  is  never  discussed,  though  the  value  of  the  relative 
good  faith  and  honesty  which,  according  to  Cicero  and  Polyb- 
ius, flowed  from  that  temper  is  amply  recognized. 

The  argument  in  the  fifth  book  against  the  different  forms 
of  fatalism,  astrological  and  logical,  is  well  sustained,  and  it 
would  be  impossible  anywhere  to  find  a  less  incoherent  state- 
ment of  the  doctrine  that  the  issues  of  human  affL\irs  are  fore- 
seen and  controlled  by  Providence,  while  human  choice  is  not 
only  an  effective  agent,  but  subject  to  responsibility  in  the 
strict  sense.  The  next  five  books  are  divided  between  a  criti- 
cism of  current  theology,  as  divided  by  Varro  into  civil,  poeti- 
cal, and  physical,  and  a  criticism  of  the  theology  of  the  New 
Platonists,  with  especial  reference  to  the  doctrine  of  demons 
of  intermediate  nature,  who  manage  the  intercourse  between 
gods  and  men,  and  are  responsible  for  all  imperfections  of  the 
spiritual  order.  According  to  others,  some  demons  were  good 
on  the  whole,  others  evil.  To  both  views  St.  Augustin  opposes 
the  doctrine  of  one  God  and  one  Mediator,  and  good  and  evil 
angels.  There  is  a  splendid  passage  on  the  spirituality  and 
sublimity  of  the  Supreme  God  as  set  forth  by  Platonism,'  and 
a  very  trenchant  criticism  of  magic,  based  upon  Porphyry,'  who 

»  "De  Civ.  Dei,"  I.  vi.  =  \\y  x.  ix.  sqq. 


ST  AUGUSTIN. 


431 


himself  is  sharply  handled'  for  failing  to  see  that  the  admis- 
sion how  few  have  leave  to  attain  perfect  purity  of  heart 
throuf^h  perfect  intelligence  is  a  confession  that  salvation  is  a 
matter  of  grace,  much  more  freely  accessible  under  the  Chris- 
tian dispensation  than  it  could  be  thought  to  be  under  the 
Platonic. 

The  whole  discussion  is  interesting  and  powerful,  but  it  has 
little  to  do  with  the  original  scheme  of  exhibiting  the  contrast 
between  Christianity  and  Paganism  as  a  contrast  between  the 
two  cities  and  their  citizens  :  there  are,  besides,  all  manner  of 
little  digressions,  as,  for  instance,  on  the  difference  between 
the  Christian  reverence  for  martyrs  and  the  Platonic  rever- 
ence for  demons.  The  next  four  books  are  really  a  discussion 
on  the  creation  and  fall  of  angels  and  men;  and,  as  the  au- 
thor was  full  of  original  views  on  the  subject,  he  pursues  it 
into  all  manner  of  side  issues,  such  as  these :  Whether  the 
blessedness  in  which  the  fallen  angels  were  created  excluded 
anticipation  of  the  possibility  of  their  fall  ?  Whether  there  is 
anything  in  the  knowledge  of  angels  which  corresponds  to 
morning  and  evening?  This  last  question  found  its  way  into 
the  library  of  Pantagruel,  so  it  may  be  well  to  say  a  few  more 
words  upon  it.  St.  Augustin  found  it  easiest  to  conceive  crea- 
tion as  one  eternal  act,  and  therefore  was  disposed  to  under- 
stand the  six  days  of  Genesis  as  the  successive  stages  by 
which  the  realization  of  the  divine  fiat  was  manifested  to  an- 
gelic intelligences.  From  this  point  of  view  it  was  a  congenial 
and  luminous  theory,  that  at  each  stage  it  was  evening  when 
the  angels  contemplated  the  creature  revealed  by  God,  and 
morning  when  they  contemplated  God  manifested  in  the 
creature,  the  work  of  his  hands.  The  discussion  remains 
throughout  on  this  level  of  dignity  and  suggestiveness,  though 
it  is  somewhat  disconnected,  or  rather  the  connection  is  sub- 
jective  :  one  question  grows  out  of  another,  but  the  matter  as 
an  objective  whole  is  not  orderly  presented  to  the  reader,  and 
can  scarcely  have  been  present  to  the  mind  of  the  writer. 

In  the  next  four  books  .there  is  a  great  falling  off:  the  sub- 
stance of  them  is  a  comparative  chronology  of  sacred  and  pro- 

»  "  De  Civ.  Dei,"  X.  xxxii. 


432 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


fane  history,  to  which  all  the  fathers  attached  what  we  may 
think  disproportionate  importance,  because  it  showed,  as  St. 
Justin  observed,  that  Hebrew  culture  was  older  than  Greek. 
And,  as  if  this  were  not  enough,  there  are  dissertations  on  the 
acres  of  the   antediluvian   patriarchs,  and  the  polygamy  of 
Abraham,  Jacob,  and  David.     There  is  more  interest  in  the 
question  how  far  the  conquest  of  Canaan  or  the  peaceable 
reign  of  Solomon  could  be  taken  as  a  fulfilment  of  the  prom- 
ises, though  little  original  is  said  of  Messianic  prophecy.    The 
last  four  books  have  even  more  completely  the  character  of  a 
collection  of  questions  :  the  two  chief  subjects  are  the  resur- 
rection and  the  everlasting  punishment  of  the  wicked,  which 
was  practically  as  great  a  difficulty  then  as  now.      On  the 
former  we  have  such  puzzles  as.  What  will  become  of  embryos 
and  idiots?     What  age  will  infants  or  decrepit  dotards  be  in 
the  resurrection  ?    Does  the  well-known  passage  about  "com- 
ing to  a  perfect  man"  imply  that  in  the  resurrection  all  the 
redeemed  will  be  of  exactly  the  same  age  and  stature  as  the 
Kedeemer?     If  such  questions  are  to  be  started,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  they  are  treated  with  discretion,  and  the  last  is 
answered  in  the  negative.     The  criticism  of  Origen's  theory, 
that  all  spirits  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest  pass  repeatedly 
through  all  stages  of  existence,  departing  from  God  only  to 
return,  and  returning  only  to  depart,  is  absolutely  crushing. 
According  to  this,  all  spirits  pass  eternity  "  inter  falsas  beati- 
tudines  et  veras  miserias,"  since  no  blessedness  could  be  real 
which  was  certainly  sooner  or  later  to  be  followed  by  a  fall. 
The  author  does  not  succeed  so  well  with  the  popular  objec- 
tions which  turned  upon  the  feeling  that  it  was  too  terrible  to 
be  true,  that  if  God  had  said  so  he  would  be  better  than  his 
word,  a  comfortable  belief  which  rested  itself  on  a  verse  of  a 
psalm— "Quam  multa  multitudo  misericordiae  tuoe,  quam  ab- 
scondisti  timentibus  te."    If  the  devils  had  sinned  beyond  re- 
pentance, at  least  all  men  would  be  saved,  or,  if  not  all  men,  at 
least  all  Christians  ;  or,  if  not  all  Christians,  all  who  remained 
to  the  end  of  their  lives  in  communion  with  the  Church;  or, 
if  not  all  Catholics,  at  least  those  who  had  given  alms.    Upon 
this  last  point  St.  Augustin  is  compelled  to  compromise :  he 


ST.AUGUSTIN, 


433 


admits  that  there  is  a  class  of  Christians  not  good  enough  to 
be  saved  for  what  they  are  in  themselves,  and  not  too  bad  to 
be  saved  by  the  intercessions  which  their  alms  have  purchased 
for  them.  All  the  other  views  are  rejected,  and  we  can  hardly 
sav  refuted,  for  when  the  author  has  shown  the  defects  of  the 
exegesis  pressed  into  their  support,  he  is  content  to  exclaim 
at  the  presumption  of  men  who  would  be  more  merciful  than 

God. 

The  chapter  on  the  Beatific  Vision  is  pale  after  the  rapt- 
urous colloquy  with  St.  Monica,  recorded  in  the  ninth  book 
of  the  "Confessions:"  the  author  had  outlived  the  passion  of 
his  eloquence,  though  not  his  hopes.  The  peroration,  with 
its  recurring  catchwords  and  assonances,  is  certainly  lofty  and 

musical : 

"  Ibi  vacabimus  et  videbimus  :  videbimus  et  amabimus,  ama- 
bimus  et  laudabimus.  Ecce  quod  erit  in  fine  sine  fine?  Nam 
quis  alius  noster  est  finis,  nisi  pervenire  ad  regnum  cujus 
nullus  est  finis  ?"  The  key-note  is  taken  from  a  text  quoted 
some  way  further  back :  "  Ibi  perficietur  *  vacate,  et  videte 
quoniam  ego  sum  Deus'" — "Be  still,  and  know  that  I  am 

God." 

Quite  incidentally  we  have  a  remarkable  argument  about 
miracles.  After  affirming  the  great  paradox  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  body,  St.  Augustin  is  led  to  reflect  on  the  wonder- 
ful means  by  which  belief  in  this  wonder  came  about,  and  this 
again  leads  to  a  contrast  between  the  states  of  mind  in  which 
the  apotheosis  of  Romulus  and  the  Godhead  of  Christ  were 
accepted.  It  was  the  Romans'  love  to  their  founder  which 
made  them  believe  him  a  god  ;  it  was  the  Christian  belief  in 
Christ's  Godhead  which  led  Christendom  to  love  Christ.  And 
as  the  belief  in  this  wonder  was  independent,  it  must  have 
been  due  to  divine  power  rather  than  persuasion.  Then 
comes  the  question  how  it  is  that  the  same  divine  power  is  not 
continuously  exerted.  And  here  we  have  a  twofold  answer  : 
(i)  It  is  quite  true  that  miracles  were  necessary  to  found  such 
a  belief,  but  their  repetition  is  not  necessary  to  sustain  it. 
The  author  does  not  take  up  the  position  of  eighteenth-cen- 
tury apologists:  that  belief  always  rests  upon  historical  proof 

•   II.— 19 


434 


LATIN  LITERATURE 


that  miracles  happened  long  ago.     Rather  he  maintains  that 
the  truth  of  the  belief  is  proved  by  its  power,  and  its  power  is 
a  proof  of  its  miraculous  origin.     (2)  In  fact  miracles  are  as 
frequent  and  as  remarkable  as  ever,  but  they  make  less  im- 
pression, which  St.  Augustin  thinks  the  fault  of  those  who 
benefit  by  them,  to  be  corrected  by  ecclesiastical  diligence,  ot 
which  he  himself  is  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  illustrious 
examples.     The  miracles  he  records  are  of  the  kind  familiar 
in  processes  of  canonization— especially  those  which  occurred 
in  connection  with  the  "memorials"  to  St.  Stephen  recently 
introduced  into  Africa,  in  consequence  of  the  supposed  dis- 
covery of  his  relics,  and  those  of  Gamaliel  (who,  according  to 
the  "  revelation,"  had  buried  him),  in  Palestine.    St.  Augustin 
himself  vouches  for  one  very  curious  story,  which  he  tells  at 
great  length,  of  a  pious  elderly  gentleman  who  was  operated 
on  for  fistula  :  the  doctors  left  one  wound  to  heal  itself,  and 
the  patient  fretted  over  this,  feeling  sure  that  another  opera- 
tion would  be  necessary,  and  that  it  would   kill  him  ;  after 
some  considerable  delay,  as  the  wound  did  not  heal,  they  ad- 
mitted that  the  operation  would  be  necessary,  and  the  patient 
determined  to  call  in  another  surgeon  to  perform  it.    He,  with 
proper  professional  feeling,  did  not  like  to  interfere  with  a  case 
in  the  hands  of  competent  professional  brethren.    No  doubt  a 
new  operation  would  be  necessary,  but  the  previous  opera- 
tions had   been  admirably  performed.      The  operation  was 
fixed  for  the  next  day  ;  the  patient  waited  in  an  agony  of 
prayer;  when  the  time  for  the  operation   came  the  doctors 
pronounced  it  unnecessary,  as  the  wound  was  replaced  by  a 
very  firm  scar.     The  only  point  in  this  story  which  at  first 
sight  seems  questionable  is  the  interval  between  the  second 
opinion  and  the  day  fixed  for  the  operation,  for  St.  Augustin 
is  writing  between  thirty  and  forty  years  after  the  facts.     On 
the  other  hand,  we  know  only  what  the  patient—evidently  not 
a  very  reasonable  patient— told  his  spiritual  counsellor  that 
the  doctors  had  said  :  we  do  not  know  how  far  the  doctors 
among  themselves  said  the  same  as  they  were  reported  to  say 
by  the  patient— a  very  religious  man,  who  at  the  time  was  en- 
tertaining St.  Augustin  and  Alypius,  who  had  given  up  their 


ST.  AUGUSTIN. 


435 


property  to  the  poor  and  were  living  on  charity  themselves 
until  they  were  ordained. 

One  characteristic  work  remains  to  be  noticed,  the  "Re- 
tractations," in  which  the  author  about  three  years  before  his 
death  went  over  all  that  he  had  hitherto  published,  in  order 
to  correct  the  bad  effect  of  any  inadvertences  which  might 
have  escaped  him  in  works  many  of  which  were  circulated 
without  the  author's  sanction.  Plis  anxiety  descended  to 
minutijE  :  he  thought  the  conjecture  in  the  "Confessions,"  that 
his  fear  of  death  when  his  friend,  who  was  one  soul  with  him, 
died,  might  iiave  come  of  an  unwillingness  that  his  friend 
should  die  altogether,  savored  more  of  the  lightness  of  dec- 
lamation than  of  the  gravity  of  confession.  He  also  holds 
that  he  was  over-bold  in  pronouncing  that  the  waters  above 
the  firmament  were  spiritual  and  the  waters  below  the  firma- 
ment material,  as  the  passage  is  exceedingly  mysterious.  In 
the  tenth  book  of  the  "  City  of  God  "  he  ought  to  have  re- 
membered that  the  flame  from  heaven  which  ran  between  the 
victims  in  Abraham's  sacrifice  appeared  in  a  vision,  and  conse- 
quently was  not  strictly  miraculous.  In  the  seventeenth  book 
he  ought  not  to  have  denied  that  Samuel  was  of  the  sons  of 
Aaron,  because  his  father  was  not  a  priest ;  whereas  the  father 
of  Samuel  was  a  son  of  Aaron  in  the  same  sense  as  all  Israel- 
ites were  sons  of  Israel. 


PART  X. 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   DECLINE. 


The  fifth  century  is  a  period,  upon  the  whole,  of  decline,  but 
at  the  beginning  of  it  we  meet  two  or  three  not  unworthy  sur- 
vivors of  better  days.     The  earliest  of  these  is  Maropius  Pon- 
tus  Anicius  Paulinus,  whose   popular  reputation  reached  its 
height  after  he  was  made  bishop  of  Nola  in  409,  where  he  dis- 
tin<-uished  himself  by  his  devotion  to  the  local  martyr  St.  Felix, 
who  he  hoped  might  love  him  a  little  as  a  master  loves  his 
dog.     Paulinus  originally  belonged  to  the  circle  of  the  rhet- 
oricians of  Bordeaux  ;  he  composed  a  panegyric  on  Theodo- 
sius,  dwelling  especially  upon  his  piety.     Fragments  of  this 
have  been  edited  ;  but  such  of  his  works  as  have  reached  us 
are  chiefly  letters  and  poems.     Most  of  his  poems  date  from 
the  period  of  his  retirement,  which  seems  to  have  been  deter- 
mined partly  by  the  fact  that  his  marriage  was  long  childless 
and  that  his  only  child  died  prematurely,  partly  by  the  fact 
that  he  was  vexed  by  an  accusation  of  fratricide,  which  drove 
him  from  Spain,  the  country  where  his  wife's  property  lay,  as 
his  own  restlessness  had  driven  him  from  Gaul.     He  made  a 
great  impression  upon  his  contemporaries,  as  the  first  man  of 
rnnk  and  breeding  who  had  given  up  his  secular  position  in 
the  West  for  voluntary  poverty,  though  he  retained  enough 
control  over  the  property  which  had  been  his  to  build  and 
decorate  a  basilica.     His  poems  are  chiefly  remarkable  for 
their  difl'use  amiability  of  ifeeling,  and  for  the  tendency,  which 
was  not  uncommon,  to  slay  the  slain  polytheist. 

A  really  clever  lady,  Faltonia  Proba,  who  had  written  upon 

Constantius's  victory  over  Magnentius,  afterwards  amused  hei- 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  DECLINE. 


437 


self  and  her  children  by  constructing  a  cento  from  Vergil  to 
tell  the  story  of  the  creation,  the  fall,  and  the  deluge  and  the 
o-ospel  history:  such  things  have  no  merit  for  any  public  but 
that  which  knows  the  original  by  heart. 

A  more  interesting  writer  was  Sulpicius  Severus,  who  was 
born  about  eleven  years  after  St.  Augustin;  like  Paulinus,  he 
belonged  to  the  school  of  Bordeaux  ;  like  Paulinus,  he  made 
a  rich  marriage  \  and  when  he  lost  his  wife  early  he  retired, 
like  Paulinus,  from   the  world.     His  principal  works  are  a 
short  chronicle  carried  down  to  the  consulship  of  Stilicho  in 
A,D.  400,  and  two  treatises  on  the  "  Life  of  St.  ALartin,"  one  in 
the  form  of  a  history,  the  other  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue  in 
two  parts.     The  chronicle  is  very  carefully  and  well  written: 
the  author's  object  is  to  convince  the  educated  classes  that  the 
Old  Testament  history  is  trustworthy  by  a  free  use  of  syn- 
chronisms, and  to  conquer  their  prejudices  against  the  style 
of  the  Hebrew  records  by  as  many  reminiscences  of  the  Ro- 
man  classics   as   possible  :    for  instance,  the  destruction   of 
Jerusalem  is  taken  from  Tacitus ;  but  even  where  he  has  no 
better  source  than    Eusebius   (be   is   not  given   to   name   his 
authorities)   his   style   is   more   than   creditable.     His   style 
shows  to  equal  advantage,  in  spite  of  his  protests  that  he  had 
fori^otten  all  his  rhetorical  skill,  in  the  "Life  of  St.  Martin" 
and  the  two  supplementary  dialogues.     Both  are  remarkable 
for  the  resolute  acceptance  of  many  miracles  which  are  not 
all  of  a  character  to  convince  posterity ;  and  it  is  worth  in- 
quiring how  the  judgment  of  an  intelligent  and  cultivated 
man  who  had  been  intimate  with  his  hero  came  to  differ  so 
far  from  our  own.     For  one  thing,  Sulpicius  was  fascinated  by 
St.  Martin's  love  of  poverty.     Sulpicius  was  by  birth  and  edu- 
cation a  gentleman,  which  in  the  judgment  of  several  contem- 
porary bishops  St.  Martin  was  not.     People  on  different  social 
levels  either  idealize  or  depreciate  each  other.     Then  it  is 
clear  from  the  operation  on  the  eyes  of  Paulinus  that  St.  Mar- 
tin had  great  gifts  of  healing  as  a  skilful  empiric,  and  ascribed 
his  gifis  to  the  Giver ;  moreover,  he  operated  upon  the  natives 
of  the  country  parts  of  Gaul  who  had  never  been  operated 
upon  before,  and  they  naturally  treated  such  cures  as  miracu- 


438 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


lous,  and  spread  exaggerated  stories  of  all  kinds  about  the 
saint,  which  was  the  easier  as  his  austerities  had  led  to  visions 
which  seemed  in  that  day  the  greatest  of  all  wonders/  unless 
they  seemed  proofs  of  unsoundness  of  mind.  It  was  natural 
that  believers  should  begin  by  accepting  every  wonder  upon 
about  the  same  evidence  as  they  accepted  any  other  fact  of 
which  they  heard.  And  in  the  second  dialogue  the  author 
evidently  thinks  he  has  done  enough  to  silence  scepticism 
when  he  gives  in  the  vaguest  form  the  names,  often  very  ob- 
scure, and  the  addresses,  often  very  remote,  of  the  persons 
upon  whom  the  miracles  were  wrought.  Besides,  the  works 
of  Wesley  show  what  curious  results  even  a  keen  investigator 
may  reach  by  taking  the  same  evidence  on  such  subjects  as 
everybody  would  take  upon  common  subjects.  It  is  to  be 
noticed,  also,  that  the  wonders  which  Sulpicius  gives  upon  his 
own  knowledge  in  the  life  are  less  grotesque  than  those  which 
he  gives  upon  the  authority  of  a  certain  monk  of  Celtic  nation- 
ality in  the  dialogues.  They  are  held  in  the  presence  of  Severus, 
who  calls  upon  the  monk  to  tell  what  he  knows  to  an  Oriental 
visitor,  by  way  of  proving  that  St.  Martin  in  his  own  person  sur- 
passed all  the  achievements  of  the  Oriental  ascetics  together. 
He  believed  in  his  own  miraculous  powers,  for  he  felt  that  they 
were  impaired  after  he  had  been  induced  to  communicate  with 
two  bishops,  at  whose  instigation  Maximus,  then  emperor  be- 
yond the  Alps,  had  put  Priscillian  and  some  of  his  followers 
to  death.  There  is  also  a  very  lively  narrative  of  the  devotion 
of  Maximus's  wife,  who  insisted  upon  being  permitted  to  serve 
the  saint  at  table. 

Sulpicius  Severus  was  reduced  to  silence  by  the  Pelagian 
controversy,  in  which  he  took  the  side  which  could  not  pre- 
vail, thouiih  Gennadius  does  not  inform  us  which  form  of  the 
heresy  he  was  disposed  to  advocate,  whether  he  wished  to 
protest  against  the  doctrine  of  original  sin,  or  whether  he 
wished  to  maintain  the  efficacy  of  the  human  will.  A  very  dis- 
creet writer,  who  inclined  to  the  same  side,  made  a  reputation 
out  of  his  discretion,  which  has  been  very  much  exaggerated 
by  recent  writers.    Vincent  of  Lerins  was  a  monk  of  the  mon- 

*  St.  Augustin's  caution  was  exceptional. 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  DECLINE. 


439 


astery  of  Lerins  (an  island  off  the  harbor  of  Marseilles):  be- 
ing an  ingenious  person,  he  was  exercised  by  the  problem 
what  a  man  who  travelled  and  came  in  contact  with  all  the 
different  theological  views  which  were  or  had  been  current  in 
the  Roman  Empire  ought  to  think  of  them.  He  elaborated, 
purely  as  a  matter  of  private  speculation,  the  maxim  that  the 
one  safe  way  was  to  hold  fast  to  that  which  had  been  taught 
always,  everywhere,  and  by  all.  In  his  mind  this  was  not  a 
negative  but  a  positive  canon  :  he  does  not  question  every  cur- 
rent doctrine,  but  only  those  which  seem  to  come  into  colli- 
sion with  his  rule ;  and  no  questionable  doctrine  is  to  be  ad- 
mitted unless  it  satisfies  it;  which  the  author  evidently  felt 
that  the  doctrines  of  predestination,  original  corruption,  and  in- 
ability for  good  works,  which  he  supposed  St.  Augustin  to  hold, 
did  not.  He  is  inclined  to  make  capital  out  of  the  perplexity 
which  a  pious  person  might  have  experienced  while  the  Arian, 
or  rather  semi -Arian,  controversy  was  at  its  height,  and 
out  of  the  scandal  which  had  arisen  out  of  the  posthumous 
controversy  then  raging  about  the  views  of  Origen,  to  discredit 
what  he  supposes  to  be  the  private  speculation  either  of  St. 
Augustin  or  of  those  who  misquoted  him.  He  nowhere  im- 
plies that  he  is  republishing  an  ancient  rule  for  the  guidance 
of  contemporaries  :  on  the  contrary,  he  is  anxious  to  maintain 
that  the  rule  to  which  his  own  meditations  have  led  him  does 
not  hamper  the  progress  of  orthodox  theology ;  though  his  own 
instincts  lie  in  the  direction  of  a  rather  rigid  conservatism. 
His  favorite  metaphor  is  that  the  theology  of  a  later  age  ought 
to  compare  with  the  theology  of  an  earlier  year,  as  the  stature 
of  a  grown  man  compares  with  the  stature  of  a  boy :  everything 
in  the  later  stage  is  anticipated  in  the  earlier  stage,  only  upon 
a  smaller  scale.  His  work  became  celebrated  in  the  contro- 
versies of  the  Reformation,  and  in  those  of  our  own  day,  rather 
beyond  its  intrinsic  importance. 

A  more  considerable  writer  was  Cassian,  who  entered  a 
monastery  at  Bethlehem,  and  apparently  about  a.d.  390  left 
It  to  travel  for  ten  years  among  the  monasteries  of  Egypt; 
thence  he  went  to  Constantinople  and  was  ordained  deacon  by 
St.  Chrysostom.     When  St.  Chrysostom  was  banished  he  went 


440 


LATIN-  LITERATURE. 


to  Rome  to  advocate  his  cause,  and  about  ten  years  later  he 
founded  two  monasteries  at  Marseilles,  one  for  men  and  one 
for  women,  and  settled  there  and  began  to  write,  being  then 
probably  between  forty  and  fifty.     His  first  work  treats  briefly, 
in  four  books,  of  the  elementary  rules  of  monastic  life  ;  we 
learn,  among  other  things,  that  the  rule  in  Egypt  was  that  the 
religious  should  meet  for  psalmody  at  night,  while  in  Syria  the 
rule  was  that  they  should  meet  at  fixed  times  in  the  day:  in 
Cassian's  houses  both  practices  were  combined,  and  this  is 
the  earliest  mention  of  the  "  Seven  Canonical  Hours."     The 
rest  of  the  treatise  is  taken  up  with  remedies  of  the  eight  cap- 
ital vices,  which  are  the  original  form  of  the  seven  deadly  sins. 
The  number  eight  is  made  up  by  counting  despondency,  tris- 
tiiia,  and  acedia,  listlessness,  separately.     As  industry  is  the 
great  remedy  for  both,  they  were  combined  under  the  name  of 
sloth  by  later  moralists.     Another  curious  trait  in  the  book  is 
the  way  in  which  implicit  obedience  is  idealized.     The  reason 
is  obvious :  it  was  only  the  minority  of  monks  who  were  will- 
ing to  live  under  any  rule  at  all;  the  majority,  in  a  spirit  of 
enthusiasm  or  of  spleen,  withdrew  themselves  from  the  disci- 
pline of  civil  life,  and  refused  to  submit  to  any  other;  they 
were  simply  selfish  old  bachelors,  and  the  chief  difference  was 
that  the  weaker  were   simply  self-indulgent  and   disorderly 
loafers,  while  the  stronger  developed  into  misers. 

This  was  followed  by  a  very  interesting  book  entitled 
''Collationes  Patrum,"  in  wiiich  the  author  dresses  up  his 
recollections  of  his  intercourse  with  the  most  famous  ascetics 
of  Egypt.  One  notices  throughout  a  curious  tone  of  elaborate 
courtesy,  both  in  the  homage  of  Cassian  to  the  ascetics  and  in 
their  patronage  of  him  and  his  companions,  which  contrasts 
oddly  with  his  own  sincere  self-distrust:  he  seems  to  have 
had  the  natural  anxiety  of  an  able  man  to  make  himself  felt, 
and  to  have  been  distressed  because  this  anxiety  was  not 
compatible  with  his  idea  of  humility.  The  colloquies  are 
twenty-four  in  number.  In  the  thirteenth  the  author  ex- 
pounds his  differences  with  St.  Augustin :  the  particular 
point  at  which  he  differed  from  him  was  upon  human  respon- 
sibility, which  he  endeavored  to  save  by  a  rather  mechanical 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  DECLINE. 


441 


distinction  which  corresponded  to  nothing  in  experience. 
He  held  that  throughout  their  Christian  life  men  needed  help 
and  received  it,  but  that  their  first  conversion  and  their  final 
perseverance  were  their  own  acts.  His  opinion  was  after- 
wards condemned,  but  his  personal  position,  and  even  his 
posthumous  reputation,  were  not  seriously  damaged,  especially 
as  his  last  work  was  a  refutation  in  seven  books  of  the  Nes- 
torian  heresy.  A  more  thoroughgoing  and  a  keener-sighted 
opponent  of  the  great  African  doctor  was  Julian,  whose  opin- 
ions cost  him  the  bishopric  of  Eclanum  in  Campania.  We 
have  still  six  books  of  a  work  to  which  St.  Augustin  replied 
paragraph  by  paragraph,  not  always  victoriously.  There  is  no 
perceptible  divergence  on  the  doctrine  of  grace ;  Julian  re- 
serves all  his  strength  for  an  attack  on  what  he  considers  a 
materialist  and  Manichaian  theory  of  hereditary  corruption. 

The  disciples  of  St.  Augustin  were  as  inferior  to  their  mas- 
ter as  the  defenders  of  Pelagius  were  superior  to  that  amiable 
but  empty  heretic.  The  principal  of  them  was  Orosius,  a 
Spanish  presbyter,  who  wrote  a  universal  history  in  seven 
books,  much  esteemed  in  the  middle  ages,  with  the  object  of 
meeting  the  impression  which  was  general  after  Alaric's  occu- 
pation of  Rome,  that  Christianity  had  brought  ruin  to  the 
vrorld.  Consequently  his  work  dwells  rather  disproportion- 
ately on  the  calamities  of  the  Pagan  world,  and  the  narrative 
is  complicated  with  an  arbitrary  theory  of  the  four  empires. 
Rome  is  to  be  the  heir  of  Babylon,  and  the  expulsion  of  the 
Tarquins  is  made  to  coincide  with  the  capture  of  Babylon  by 
Cyrus,  so  that  the  death  of  Babylon  coincides  with  the  entry 
of  Rome  on  her  first  youth  ;  but  as  Rome  was  not  ready  to  en- 
ter on  her  heritage,  Macedonia  in  the  east  and  Carthage  in  the 
west  were  appointed  her  tutors.  This  has  the  disadvantage 
of  leaving  out  the  Persian  empire  altogether,  though  it  is  the  in- 
tention of  the  author  to  make  up  the  four  empires  of  Daniel. 

Prosper  of  Aquitaine  contributed  more  energetically  to  the 
Pelagian  controversy;  he  composed  a  dull  poem  in  hexame- 
ters against  the  ingratitude  of  the  monks  of  Southern  Gaul, 
who  were  more  conscious  of  the  efforts  they  made  than  of  the 
assistance  they  received  ;  he  also  wrote  a  chronological  work, 

H.— 19* 


442 


LATIN  LITERATURE, 


which  with  some   accretions  enjoyed  great  authority  in  the 
middle  ages. 

Fulgentius,  bishop  of  Ruspe,  wrote  upon  most  of  St.  Angus- 
tin's  topics,  with  an  amount  of  heavy  earnestness  that  almost 
warrants  a  hope  that  he  was  not  the  grammarian  who  wrote 
upon  mythology,  and  invented  quotations  from  authors  he 
had  not  read,  who  had  not  always  existed. 

Another  African  w^riter  who  apparently  belongs  to  this 
period  is  Martianus  Capella,  who  amused  himself  one  winter 
on  holidays  in  stringing  together  his  hand-books  of  the  seven 
liberal  arts,  in  a  framework  of  tiresome  luxuriance  borrowed 
from  Apuleius.  The  subject  is  the  wedding  of  Mercurius 
and  Philologia,  and  all  the  parade  of  mythology  and  fine  writ- 
ing is  intended  to  exhibit  the  ideal  aspect  of  the  business  by 
which  the  author  got  his  bread  :  his  profession  had  its  shabby 
side;  but,  after  all,  it  might  be  symbolized  by  the  marriage  of 
a  god  and  a  goddess. 

At  Rome  there  was  still  a  great  ecclesiastical  writer  in  St. 
Leo,  who  was  bishop  of  Rome  from  a.d.  440  to  461.  His 
works  consist  of  letters  and  serm.ons :  of  the  former  the 
most  important  is  the  well-known  treatise  on  the  Incarnation, 
which  is  addressed  to  St.  Flavianus,  then  bishop  of  Constan- 
tinople;  the  sermons  are  remarkable  as  the  earliest  which 
were  preached  to  a  Roman  audience.  Until  the  fifth  century 
the  Roman  clergy  had  been  confined  strictly  to  an  unusually 
narrow  share  in  the  ritual;  for  they  had  not  been  allowed  to 
celebrate  the  eucharist,  but  had  communicated  at  the  bishop's 
eucharist.  The  sermons  are  very  vigorous  and  (considering 
the  age)  pure  in  style,  but  their  substance  is  curiously  rudi- 
mentary. 

A  later  Roman  man  of  letters  was  Vettius  Agorius,  who 
was  a  grandson  of  the  celebrated  pontiff  and  prefect  of  the 
city.  He  distinguished  himself  as  an  editor  of  ancient  books; 
not  a  few  of  our  MSS.  are  copies  of  those  which  he  issued 
\vith  his  own  corrections  under  the  countenance  of  Felix,  the 
orator  (/.  e.,  the  ofticial  professor  of  rhetoric)  of  the  city  of 
Rome  :  the  emendator  shows  little  taste  or  judgment. 

There  was  a  considerable  activity  in  versifying  the  Bible. 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  DECLINE, 


443 


Claudius  Marius  Victor,  a  rhetorician  of  Marseilles,  who  died 
under  Valentinian  IH.,  composed  a  paraphrase  of  Genesis, 
down  to  the  death  of  Abraham,  for  the  edification  of  his  son, 
and  very  consistently  complained  (in  a  letter  in  hexameters  on 
the  vices  of  the  age  to  the  Abbot  Salmo)  that  women  were  as 
bad  as  men  in  preferring  the  Pagan  poets.  Sedulius,  a  poet 
of  something  the  same  date,  bears  witness  to  the  same  taste 
for  poetry:  he  writes  partly  for  his  own  edification,  and  partly 
because  his  contemporaries  will  not  read  prose  attentively. 
His  paraphrase  of  the  Gospels  is  vigorous  and  scholarly,  and 
more  original  than  that  of  Juvencus.  It  is,  therefore,  the 
more  curious  that  his  work  in  verse  was  practically  sup- 
pressed by  an  inferior  work  of  his  own  in  prose,  where  the 
language  shows  much  stronger  traces  of  the  degeneracy  of  the 
times.  Happily  Asterius,  who  was  consul  a.d.  474,  repub- 
lished the  "Carmen  Paschale,"  the  title  of  the  gospel  history 
in  verse,  and  enabled  us  to  compare  it  w^th  the  "Opus  Pas- 
chale," then  more  largely  circulated. 

D.  Sedulius  also  distinguished  himself  in  hymnody.  His 
alphabetical  hymn  in  honor  of  Christ,  of  which  two  sections, 
for  Christmas  and  Epiphany,  passed  into  the  Breviary,  marks 
a  certain  progress  in  form,  as,  though  quantity  is  still  care- 
fully observed,  the  conflict  between  the  metrical  and  the 
grammatrical  accent  is  in  the  way  to  disappear. 

The  interest  of  Dracontius  in  poetry  is  more  personal :  he 
persevered  with  it  in  spite  of  the  Vandal  conquest  of  Africa, 
and  nowhere  shows  any  contrition  for  treating  Pagan  topics. 
In  the  "  Satisfactio,"  an  elegiac  poem,  in  the  manner  of  the 
"Tristia,"  addressed  to  King  Gunthamund,  we  see  how  com- 
pletely the  author  belonged  to  this  world  :  he  was  an  advo- 
cate at  Carthage,  had  a  flourishing  business  and  a  large 
family,  when  he  got  himself  into  difficulties  by  dedicating 
some  work  to  a  foreign  authority.  Accordingly  he  writes  in 
the  most  humble  strain  to  the  potentate  whom  most  African 
Christians  thought  an  Arian  tyrant;  this  was  followed  by  a 
rambling  poem  in  three  books  of  hexameters,  each  seven  or 
eight  hundred  lines  long,  generally  illustrative  of  the  good- 
ness and  severity  of  God,  in  the  hope  that  Gunthamund  will 


444 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


imitate  the  former  as  he  has  imitated  the  latter.    The  first  book 
treats  most  of  creation,  and  the  greater  part  of  it  was  circu- 
lated separately,  under  the  title  of  the  "  Hexaemeron  :"  there 
is  a  good  deal  of  ingenuity  of  the  kind  which  won  a  reputa- 
tion for  Dubartas,  though  Dracontius  is  simpler  and  in  better 
taste ;  besides,  he  is  really  musical,  though  the  music  is  mo- 
notonous and  suits  the  cloying  sweetness  of  the  descriptions, 
which  are  overloaded  with  epithets,  and  never  get  beyond  the 
obvious  aspects  of  nature,  and  yet  show  a  certain  freshness  of 
perception.     The  second  book  treats  of  the  work  of  Christ, 
and  has  a  relatively  brilliant  passage  on  the  descent  into  hell. 
The  third  treats,  as  far  as  it  can  be  said  to  have  a  subject,  of 
our  duty  of  gratitude  and  repentance,  and  the  reward  we  may 
expect  if  we  fulfil  it.     Incidentally  Dracontius  declares  that 
he  and  his  contemporaries  are  a  perverse  generation,  and  he 
is  their  chief  something  beyond  a  sinner.     His  secular  poems, 
which  include  versified  declamations,  and  epithalamia  and 
compendious  little  epics,  had  disappeared  completely  from  the 
knowledge  of  men  within  some  half-century  of  their  compo- 
sition, together  with  the  greater  part  of  the  poem  on  God. 
The  "Hexaemeron"  and  the  "  Satisfactio"  were  separately 
edited,  and  the  rest  forgotten. 

Avitus,  a  contemporary  of  Dracontius,  wrote,  besides  episco- 
pal letters  and  homilies,  a  poem  in  five  books  on  the  events  of 
spiritual  history.  The  first  three  treat  of  the  same  subject  as 
"Paradise  Lost,"  and  anticipate  several  of  the  points  of  Mil- 
ton :  the  last  treat  of  the  deluge  and  the  passage  of  the  Red 
Sea,  each  of  which  in  a  different  way  is  a  type  of  baptism; 
besides  which,  it  was  desirable  on  typical  grounds  to  have  five 
books  on  subjects  taken  from  the  Pentateuch.  He  also  wrote 
a  quaint  poem  to  his  sister,  who  had  been  dedicated  in  her 
cradle  to  a  single  life,  partly  in  praise  of  her  state  and  partly 
in  mitigation  of  its  hardships.  It  is  a  naively  original  com- 
mentary on  the  venerable  saying,  "  She  is  happier  if  she  so 
abide,"  dwelling  alternately  upon  the  privileges  of  maiden- 
hood, and  upon  the  practical  inconveniences  of  marriage,  ni  a 
strain  that  found  frequent  echoes  through  the  middle  ages. 
It  is  curious  that  reticence  and  decorum  had  so  completely 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  DECLINE. 


445 


died  out  in  some  of  the  highest  circles  of  Gaul,  for  Avitus  be- 
came bishop  of  Vienne  in  a.d.  490  by  something  like  heredi- 
to;ry  succession,  and  held  his  post  forty-five  years,  during 
which  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  passing  from  the  dominion 
of  the  Arian  Burgundians  to  that  of  the  Catholic  Franks,  and 
of  knowing  that  his  influence  both  with  Clovis  and  the  Chris- 
tian provincials  had  counted  for  much  in  the  transfer.  An- 
other peculiarity  in  the  case  is  that  it  was  settled  so  quickly 
that  parents  had  a  right  to  bind  their  children  who  might  per- 
haps object  to  be  bound. 

:  There  is  nothing  of  this  crudity  in  another  great  noble  of 
Gaul,  whose  promotion  came  eighteen  years  earlier,  Caius 
Sollius  Apollinaris  Sidonius,  who  became  a  bishop  in  middle 
life,  almost  as  he  might  have  become  an  augur,  except  that  in 
becoming  an  augur  he  would  not  have  felt  called  to  renounce 
poetry.  He  never  did  quite  renounce  it :  besides  religious 
verses  and  inscriptions,  he  occasionally  improvised  a  compli- 
ment to  a  friend,  which  was  preserved  among  his  letters.  His 
poems  are  for  the  most  part  an  empty  echo  of  Claudian  and 
the  "  Sylvai "  of  Statins :  so  far  as  he  aims  at  originality  he 
aims  at  it  by  metrical  tricks,  ending  one  elegiac  couplet  with 
the  hemistich  with  which  another  began,  and  the  like.  But 
they  are,  for  the  age,  correct,  and  written  with  a  genuine  en- 
joyment; their  weakness  is  not  that  they  are  dull,  but  that 
they  are  diffuse;  the  subject  disappears  for  the  most  part  under 
its  illustrations.  And  there  was  no  check  upon  such  faults, 
as  they  were  produced  not  for  a  public  but  for  a  coterie,  who 
flattered  and  interested  one  another.  Even  in  the  poems 
there  is  every  here  and  there  a  certain  fresh  perception  of  the 
new  circumstances.  These  are  brought  out  much  more 
vividly  in  the  letters,  which  are  composed  in  imitation  of  Sym- 
machus:  there  is  the  same  extravagant  politeness,  but  there 
is  a  great  deal  more  material  information.  No  one  would 
think  of  treating  the  letters  of  Symmachus,  except  his  official 
correspondence  with  the  emperor,  as  important  historical 
documents ;  but  Sidonius's  letters  give  a  complete  and  curi- 
ous picture  of  the  condition  of  southern  and  central  Gaul 
during  the  period  which  preceded   the   Frankish  conquest. 


446 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


The  indomitable  good-humor  of  the  man  is  as  remarkable  as 
his  readiness  to  admire  others  and  ask  their  admiration;  he 
makes  the  best  of  his  critical  position  on  the  frontier  between 
the  Romans  and  the  Goths,  who  had  settled  at  Toulouse  after 
the  death  of  Alaric  ;  the  author  had  seen  an  attempt  of  the 
men  of  Auvergne  to  set  up  an  emperor  of  their  own  in  the 
person  of  his  uncle,  he  had  seen  him  dethroned  by  Majo- 
rian,  and  had  managed  to  keep  in  high  favor  with  both.  When 
the  fall  of  Majoriau  left  the  Goths  decidedly  the  strongest 
power  in  Gaul,  he  was  the  favored  guest  of  Theodoric.  His 
letters  give  a  curious  picture  of  the  court,  which  copied  that 
of  Ronfe,  and  later  on  they  are  full  of  ecclesiastical  politics, 
telling  how,  for  instance,  in  two  watches  of  the  night  he  com- 
posed" a  speech  to  the  people  of  Bourges,  who  were  excited 
about  the  election  of  a  bishop,  and  he  and  several  neighbor- 
ing bishops  had  come  to  restore  peace;  finally  it  was  settled 
that  the  bishops  should  appoint,  and  that  Sidonius  should  an- 
nounce the  appointment. 

IMost  of  Sidonius's  friends  were  poets,  and  two  of  them  were 
philosophers  — Faustus,  the  bishop  of  Riez,  and  Mamertus 
Claudianus,  a  presbyter  of  Vienne.  The  bishop,  who  was  one 
of  the  last  leaders  of  the  semi-Pelagian  party,  oddly  enough 
had  enunciated  materialistic  views  about  the  soul,  and  Clau- 
dian  answered  him  about  four  years  before  his  death,  about 
two  years  before  Sidonius  became  a  bishop.  The  work  is  de- 
cidedly ingenious,  fencing  with  distinctions  that,  though  the 
soul  was  not  everywhere  at  once,  it  was  whole  at  every  point 
in  the  bodv,  and,  though  there  was  so  much  of  it  and  no  more, 
this  did  not  prove  that  it  was  material,  but  simply  that  it  was 
a  finite  spirit,  and  all  the  "authorities"  of  Scripture,  Plato,  and 
the  poets  are  happily  harmonized. 

Sidonius  singles  out  as  the  special  distinction  of  Claudian 
that  he  was  as  patient  and  forbearing  as  he  was  wise :  this  is 
hardly  a  praise  for  Salvian,  an  eloquent  presbyter  of  Mar- 
seilles, who  wrote  two  veheiiient  denunciations  of  the  age,  one 
in  his  own  name  and  the  other  in  the  name  of  Timotheus,  be- 
fore the  final  downfall  of  the  Roman  power  in  Gaul.  The 
latter  was  written  earlier,  and  is  an  attack  upon  avarice.     The 


LITERATURE   OF   THE  DECLINE 


447 


writer  feels  that  all  wealth  ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of  the 
Church  :  the  best  thing  is  that  it  should  be  given  in  life  ;  failing 
this,  it  ought  to  be  bequeathed  at  death  ;  for  the  one  good  use 
to  which  it  was  possible  in  such  times  to  put  money  was  the 
relief  of  distress.  The  failing  vitality  of  the  age  only  inspires 
his  contemporaries  with  an  incidental  complaint  or  an  inci- 
dental rebuke ;  but  with  Salvian  it  is  the  main  burden  of  his 
thought.  He  dilates  upon  the  vices  of  his  age  with  an  energy 
which  approaches  inspiration.  His  work,  in  eight  books,  on 
the  "Present  Judgment  of  God"  goes  much  further  and  deeper 
in  this  direction  than  the  great  work  of  St.  Augustin  :  he  is 
not  content  with  contrasting  the  final  ruin  of  the  world  with 
the  final  triumph  of  the  Church  ;  he  insists  that  the  ruin  of 
the  Christianized  empire  is  no  argument  against  Providence, 
but  tells  strongly  the  other  way.  The  Christians  of  Irs  day  are 
inferior  in  virtue  both  to  their  pagan  ancestors  and  to  their 
barbarian  conquerors.  They  have  all  the  vices  of  the  pagan 
barbarians,  and  others  of  their  own.  They  lack  the  great  vir- 
tue of  chastity,  which  is  common  to  all  the  heretical  barbarians. 
Their  vices  are  the  one  thing  which  they  retain  out  of  the 
prosperous  past :  prosperity  engendered  their  vices,  and  ad- 
versity only  made  them  cling  to  them  the  closer.  The  picture 
of  the  vices  is  colored  a  little  by  the  writer's  asceticism  ;  the 
eagerness  for  public  shows  is  denounced  with  the  severity 
which  the  Church  inherited  from  the  Porch,  though  there  is 
something  in  the  feeling  that  the  frivolity  which  pursued  pleas- 
ure seriously  in  such  times  was  ruinous.  But  he  could  hardly 
be  too  severe  upon  the  sensuality,  the  indolence,  the  envy,  the 
treachery,  the  anti-social  temper  which  characterize  in  ever- 
increasing  measure  the  unvenerable  old  a2:e  of  an  effete  civil- 
ization.  There  is  nowhere  a  sign  of  hope  :  in  looking  to  the 
future  the  author  does  not  imagine  that  either  the  monks  or 
the  barbarians  are  to  regenerate  the  world;  his  only  aspira- 
tion is  to  save  himself  and  his  house  from  a  crooked  and  per- 
verse generation.  Of  all  his  miscellaneous  works,  which  were 
numerous,  as  we  learn  from  Gennadius,  there  is  nothing  left 
but  nine  letters,  of  which  the  most  interestins:  is  written  to  the 
parents  of  his  wife,  who  were  shocked  at  his  separation  from 


448 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


her,  though  she  appears  to  have  been  quite  as  wilhng  to  Hve 
single  as  he,  and  anxious  that  their  daughter  should  live  single 
all  her  life.  In  his  style  Salvian  is  one  of  the  best  writers  of 
his  age:  his  passion  excuses  his  redundancy,  and  when,  as  in 
the  above  letter,  he  writes  simply,  he  does  not  miss  being 

pathetic. 

With  Salvian  we  may  take  leave  of  the  provincial  literature 
of  the  fifth  century,  and  turn  to  Italy,  where,  under  the  rule  of 
the  Ostrogoths,  there  was  still  a  sort  of  Indian  summer  of  lit- 
erature, associated  with  the  names  of  two  Italians  and  a  refu- 
gee from  Gaul. 


PART    XI. 

LITERATURE  OF  ITALY  UNDER  THE  OSTROGOTHS. 


CHAPTER  L 
BOETHIUS. 

One  is  surprised  to  find  an  unmistakable  improvement  after 
the  final  downfall  of  the  last  successors  of  Honorius,  especial- 
ly as  the  connection  between  orthodoxy  and  obscurantism  had 
already  been  established.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Boe- 
thius  comes  nearer  to  the  feeling  and  tone  of  the  writers  of 
the  first  century  of  our  era  than  any  of  his  predecessors  after 
the  younger  Pliny,  or  any  of  his  successors  until  we  come  to 
Petrarch.  His  position  is  as  singular  as  his  achievements. 
He  was  born  four  years  after  the  senate  had  sent  back  the  im- 
perial ornaments  of  Augustulus  to  Zeno;  he  was  put  to  death 
ill  prison,  at  the  age  of  forty-five.  Apparently  he  was  some- 
thing like  a  professional  man  of  letters  and  science ;  he  had 
the  intention  of  translating  the  whole  works  of  Aristotle  and 
Plato,  and  demonstrating  their  harmony.  He  mastered  the 
tradition  of  arithmetic  and  music,  of  astronomy  and  mechanics, 
and  undertook  to  transmit  it  all  to  posterity.  And  all  this  was 
quite  disinterested  :  he  was  not  in  the  position  of  a  Frontinus, 
who,  when  he  was  appointed  to  an  office,  read  up  the  subject, 
and  then  set  himself  to  test  his  knowledge  by  writing  before 
he  had  to  test  it  in  practice.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  his 
speculative  reputation  which  led  to  his  being  consulted  when 
practical  occasion  arose,  when  the  king  of  the  Ostrogoths 
wished  to  astonish  his  Burgundian  namesake  with  an  ingen- 
ious combination  of  a  water-clock  and  sundial,  or  to  edify  the 


45< 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


king  of  the  Franks  with  a  well-selected  company  of  lyric  artists. 
One  must  suppose  that  the  aristocracy  was  a  good  deal  impov- 
erished when  one  of  its  most  conspicuous  members  could  find 
nothing  so  interesting  as  study ;  for  Seneca  made  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  philosopher  long  before  he  made  his  fortune.  Boe- 
thius  was  a  member  of  the  most  illustrious  family  of  the  later 
empire,  the  great  house  of  Anicius,  whose  founder  had  seen 
the  war  of  Hannibal,  and  whose  representatives  in  the  fourth 
century  had  acquired  the  right  to  display  the  images  of  all  the 
o-reat  families  of  the  Republic.  He  himself  was  successful  in 
public  life :  though  an  orphan,  he  married  the  daughter  of  his 
kinsman,  Q.  Aurelius  Anicius  Symmachus,  and,  like  him,  at- 
tained consular  rank,  and  after  flourishing  for  some  dozen  years 
fell  a  victim  to  the  growing  suspicions  of  Theodoric. 

That  ruler  had  established  himself  in  Italy  with  the  sympa- 
thies of  the  court  of  Constantinople,  which  had  often  tried  after 
the  death  of  Honorius  to  have  their  own  emperor  at  Ravenna, 
and,  failing  this,  were  not  indisposed  to  have  their  own  bar- 
barian ;  but  as  his  rule  consolidated  itself  there  was  a  feeling 
both  at  Rome  and  Constantinople  that  he  was  using  the  people 
who  had  intended  to  use  him.     He,  on  his  part,  became  suspi- 
cious :  and  Albinus,  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  senators,  was 
accused  of  corresponding  with  Constantinople  when  such  cor- 
respondence had  become  treasonable.     Boethius,  who,  among 
his  other  gifts,  was  a  rhetorician,  undertook  the  defence  of  Al- 
binus, and  declared  with  perilous  courage  that,  if  Albinus  were 
guilty,  he  and  the  whole  senate  were  guilty  too.    No  doubt  they 
all  wished  to  keep  up  the  fiction  that  Theodoric  was  the  king 
of  a  nation  in  alliance  with  the  Roman  state,  who  held  a  gen- 
eral's commission  in  the  Roman  army  under  the  emperor  of 
the  East.     But  the  senate  was  always  servile ;  and,  as  Boethius 
could  hardly  be  condemned  upon  the  ground  of  treason,  they 
were  ready  to  condemn  him  upon  the  ground  of  magic.     His 
scientific  studies  were  the  indispensable  conditions  of  such  a 
crime,  and  it  is  unlikely  that  any  astronomer  of  the  period 
could  have  refrained  from  casting  the  nativity  of  the  reigning 
sovereign,  even  if  he  had  no  evil  intention  towards  him.    Boe- 
thius was  imprisoned,  tortured,  and  executed  a.d.  525.    During 


BOETHIUS. 


451 


his  imprisonment  he  wrote  the  "Consolations  of  Philosophy," 
which  King  Alfred  translated  into  English. 

Of  his  other  works  the  most  important  were  the  writings 
on  logic,  especially  the  elaborate  commentaries  on  the  "  Isa- 
<TO"e  "  of  Porphyry,  and  the  treatise  on  "  Interpretation"  from 
the  "Organon."  The  first  occupied  five  books,  and  he  had 
already  written  two  books  of  dialogues  on  the  version  of  Vic- 
torinus.  In  the  same  way  he  wrote  twice  on  the  "  Interpreta- 
tion "  for  beginners  and  more  advanced  students.  He  com- 
mented, too,  upon  Cicero's  "  Topics,"  and  translated  Aristotle's, 
and  also  his  "Categories."  He  marks  a  distinct  stage  in  the 
preparation  of  the  great  problem  of  the  earlier  middle  ages, 
the  nature  of  universals,  which  grew  out  of  the  endeavor  to 
reconcile  the  metaphysical  difference  between  Aristotle's  and 
Plato's  doctrine  of  ideas  by  transferring  it  to  logical  ground. 
It  is  true  that  Aristotle's  logic  got  much  confused  in  the  proc- 
ess., although  Boethius's  own  translations  of  Aristotle  were 
not  colored  by  his  misapprehension  of  the  subject.  His 
treatise  on  music  in  five  books  was  the  classical  text-book  of 
the  middle  ages :  his  treatise  on  arithmetic  was  a  paraphrase, 
as  he  tells  us  himself,  of  Nicomachus.  A  work  on  geometry 
fathered  upon  him  can  hardly  be  the  translation  of  Euclid  on 
which  Cassiodorus  congratulates  him,  and  his  translation  of 
Ptolemy's  Astronomy  has  been  certainly  lost.  It  is  probable 
that  his  reputation  as  a  Christian  martyr  (due  to  the  accident 
that  Theodoric  persecuted  the  pope  just  after  upon  theological 
grounds)  favored  the  disposition  to  father  theological  works 
upon  him.  There  is  no  contemporary  evidence  that  he  wrote 
upon  such  subjects,  and  the  style  of  his  alleged  theological 
works  does  not  agree  well  with  that  of  his  secular  ones, 
though  the  treatise  on  the  Trinity  is  quite  worthy  of  his  repu- 
tation for  universal  knowledsje. 

In  his  great  work,  the  "Consolations  of  Philosophy,"  the 
starting-point  is  not  exactly  Christian:  the  author  moves 
within  the  limits  traced  by  the  intersecting  circles  of  Pagan 
and  Christian  edification.  .  Even  when  he  hints  that  men  may 
rise  to  gods  and  sink  to  beasts  he  does  not  Platonize  beyond 
the  measure  of  Origen,  hardly  beyond  the   measure  of  St. 


452 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


Gregory  Nazianzen,  who  formally  in  one  of  his  poems  holds 
out  the  prospect  of  becoming  a  god  in  the  shining  train  of 
the  greatest  of  gods,  as  the  one  thing  which  could  satisfy  the 
desire  of  his  soul.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  nothing  of  the 
sense  of  sin  which  we  find  even  in  Seneca,  nothing  either  of 
the  rivalry  between  the  sage  and  the  gods  which  is  so  weari- 
some in  Seneca  and  Epicurus.  On  the  contrary,  God  is  the 
supreme  good  to  which  mortals  have  to  aspire,  and  they  de- 
ceive themselves  when  they  look  for  any  other  in  wealth  or 
power  or  pleasure. 

The  beginning  is  not  promising.  Boethius  is  in  exile,  and 
spinning  elegiacs  about  his  misery  and  the  constancy  of  the 
muses  who  have  followed  him  into  banishment,  when  Philoso- 
phy appears,  in  the  figure  of  a  woman  with  very  keen  eyes, 
who  sometimes  seems  to  be  of  human  stature,  and  sometimes 
lifts  her  head  into  heaven  out  of  sight;  and  she  wears  a  dress 
of  her  own  spinning,  with  II  at  the  bottom  and  G  at  the  top 
(for  practical  and  theoretical  philosophy),  and  pieces  are  torn 
out  of  her  dress  (which  is  dim  like  a  statue  that  is  left  in  the 
smoke  and  never  dusted)  by  those  who  desired  to  clutch  the 
whole  for  themselves.  (This  sounds  like  an  echo  of  the  ortho- 
dox complaints  that  heretics  rend  the  "  Seamless  Robe.") 
She  scolds  away  the  muses  of  poetry.  So  far  neither  the  in- 
vention nor  the  style  is  of  a  kind  to  do  credit  to  a  pupil  of 
Apuleius;  but  when  Philosophy  has  Boethius  to  herself  mat- 
ters mend  ;  we  feel  that  for  the  style  we  are  in  the  hands  of 
a  pupil  of  Cicero,  though  the  vocabulary  is  not  scrupulously 
purified.  The  verses  are  quite  worthy  of  Seneca  at  his  best, 
and  sometimes  remind  us  of  Horace  at  his  dullest. 

Such  as  they  are,  they  are  plentifully  distributed  and  ab- 
ruptly introduced,  in  the  fashion  of  Petronius,  and  no  doubt 
other  more  respectable  writers  now  lost.  We  are  told  ex- 
pressly that  Philosophy  sings  her  first  song  on  the  falling 
away  of  Boethius ;  and  further  on  Boethius,  when  he  con- 
cludes his  protestation  of  integrity  with  a  denunciation  of  the 
inequalities  of  fortune  and  the  prosperity  of  the  wicked,  marks 
the  beginning  and  end  of  hi^s  tirade  in  the  narrative  ;  but  the 
narrative  breaks  into  verse  without  notice,  when  Philosophy 


BOETHIUS. 


453 


folds  up  her  dress  to  dry  his  eyes,  and  he  recovers  sight ;  and 
so,  too,  Philosophy  breaks  into  verse  at  the  end  of  her  speech 
on  those  who  have  suffered  in  her  cause,  and  then  subsides 
into  dialogue,  with  no  more  notice  of  the  change  than  an  in- 
quiry whether  her  song  is  thrown  away  upon  him  like  music 

on  an  ass. 

The  first  book  carries  us  no  further  than  the  statement  of 
the  problem.  Boethius  thinks  that  everything  is  well  ordered 
in  the  world  except  the  lot  of  men,  and  Philosophy  explains 
that  he  is  too  excited  to  hear  reason  on  the  subject  at  once, 
though  he  is  sure  to  recover  himself  sooner  or  later,  since  he 
knovvs  that  the  world  comes  from  God,  and  is  ruled  by  God, 
thou"-h  he  does  not  yet  know  or  remember  by  what  means  or 

to  wliat  end. 

In  the  second  book  we  have  a  discussion,  deliberately  lim- 
ited to  rhetorical  ground,  of  the  question  whether  Boethius 
can  be  considered  unhappy  in  his  exile,  and  his  peril  of  exe- 
cution, seeing  that  his  life  has  been  prosperous  as  a  whole, 
and  that  his  family  have  shared  his  prosperity,  and  have  not 
yet  shared  his  misfortunes.  Fortune  is  brought  in  to  plead 
her  own  cause  against  the  unreasonable  complaints  of  a  fort- 
unate man,  and  her  pleading  reminds  us  of  Seneca— there  are 
the  same  crisp  suggestions  of  syllogisms,  something  of  the 
same  neatness  of  antithesis ;  but  there  is  not  the  same  eager- 
ness of  conviction.  The  Stoics  and  F^picureans  had  only 
"  torn  away  the  utmost  skirts  of  Philosophy's  vesture  to  wrap 
themselves  in."  Another  contrast  is  that  Seneca  finds  bless- 
edness independent  of  fortune  in  this  life,  while  Boethius  looks 
for  it  beyond  (not  without  a  periphrastic  allusion  to  the  mar- 
tyrs), since  it  is  always  in  the  power  of  Fortune  to  end  our 
earthly  life. 

After  a  poem  in  which  we  are  warned  to  build,  not  on  the 
tempest-stricken  mountain  or  on  the  shifting  sand,  but  on  the 
lowly  rock,  the  argument  goes  deeper.  The  question  is  now 
whether  what  Fortune  can  give  and  take  away  is  really  to  be 
thought  a  good  ;  the  main,  point  is  that  all  such  things  are 
uncertain,  trivial  if  one  considers  the  magnitude  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  within  the  reach  of  the  worst;  which  is  really  de 


454 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


cisive  since  to  possess  true  good  would  make  the  possessor 
crood  'just  as  the  possession  of  an  art  makes  the  possessor  an 
artist      This  is  clenched  with  a  poem  on  the  turpitude  of 
Nero*    Boethius,  who  has  said  little  hitherto  since  Philosophy 
becran  her  course  of  instruction,  now  vindicates  his  ambition, 
siifce  it  is  unworthy  to  "let  virtue  wear  away  in  silence." 
Philosophy's  reply  shows  how  far  thought  had  travelled  since 
the  days  of  Pliny  the  Younger:  it  is  not  only  that  astronomy 
is  called  in  to  dwarf  all  things  terrestrial,  but  there  is  a  clear 
feelin-  how  small  a  part  of  earth  fame  can  fill,  how  small  a 
part  ol-time  it  can  last.    These  arguments  are  better  set  forth 
in  verse  than  in  prose :   the  poem,  written   in  trimeter  and 
dimeter  iambics,  has  something  more  than  an  echo  of  Horace, 
and  an  unmistakable  anticipation  of  the  mediaeval  sentiment 
which   is    summed    up   in   Villon's   ballad   with   the   burden, 
"Where  are  the  snows  of  yester  year?"     Horace  had  said 
lono-  ago  that  high  and  low  must  die  alike,  but  he  never  said 
Death^l•amples  high  renown  :   he  had  said  we  are  dust  and 
shadow  when  we  have  gone  down  to  Tullus  and  Ancus,  but 
he  never  asked,  "  Where  do  the  bones   of  the  incorruptible 
Fabricius  lie  now?     What  is  Brutus  or  the  unbending  Cato? 
llieir  fame  lives  on  to  seal  up  an  empty  name  in  very  few  let- 
ters "    He  thought  that  his  name  would  live  while  Pontift  and 
Vestal  went  up°  the  Capitol  to  pray,  and  therefore  he  could 
not  die  wholly.       Boethius,  or  rather    Philosophy,  maintains 
that  if  a  man's  name  outlives  him,  he  only  dies  twice,  when 
that' is  forgotten  too.     The  book  concludes  with  a  short  de- 
fence of  Fortune,  or  rather  of  Misfortune,  who,  when  she  shows 
herself  in  her  true  colors  as  everlastingly  uncertain,  shows  us 
xvho   are  our  real  friends  ;  and  then  follows  a  panegyric  on 
Love   which  "binds  in  one  this  frame  of  things  governing 
earth  and  sea,  and  bearing  rule  in  heaven."     "  How  happy 
mankind  would  be  if  the  love,  whereby  heaven  is  ruled,  could 

rule  their  minds  !"  ,    r      i 

'  The  third  book  does  not  carry  the  argument  much  further. 
Boethius  is  now  fit  to  listen  to  serious  arguments,  but  the 
crreater  part  of  the  book  is  devoted  to  an  abstract  proof  that 
no  external  goods  are  intrinsically  desirable :  each  is  an  iso- 


BOETHIUS. 


455 


lated,  and  therefore  a  misleading,  reflection  of  some  one  as- 
pect 'of  the  one  true  good  which  is  blessedness,  which  in  itself 
contains  by  its  definition  the  satisfaction  of  all  our  desires. 
The  illustration  of  the  shortcomings  of  different  worldly  goods 
is  copious,  and  the  experience  of  actual  life  is  combined,  not 
unhappily,  with  an  imitation  of  Platonic   dialectic.      In  the 
second  part  of  the  book,  which  is  ushered  in  by  a  prayer  of 
Philosophy  in  hexameters,  that  the  Father  of  light  will  enable 
her  to  instruct  Boethius,  the  argument  turns  for  the  present 
upon  God  as  the  one  perfect,  simple  Being,  who  is  the  Ruler 
and  First  Principle  of  all  things:  being  good  he  is  the  Chief 
Good,  and  blessed  because  he  is  Blessedness.   'The  tone  of 
thought  throughout  is  elevated,  but  the  catechetical  form  be- 
comes rather  tedious.     All  things  seek  Good,  therefore  he  is 
the  end  of  all :  evil  vanishes  into  nothing,  since  it  is  contrary 
to  the  nature  of  the  One  Almighty  Good  ;  and  the  book  ends 
with  a  pretty  poem  on  Orpheus  and  Eurydice,  applied  to  all 
♦'  who  seek  to  lead  their  mind  to  upper  day :"  they  will  lose 
their  understanding  as  Orpheus  lost  his  wife,  if  they  sufter 
their  eyes  to  turn  back  to  the  lower  world. 

In  the  fourth  book  Boethius  renews  his  complaint  of  the 
prosperity  of  the  wicked,  and  Philosophy  proves  that  it  is  im- 
possible they  should  really  prosper,  or  the  good  be  really 
afflicted,  with  a  superabundance  of  abstract  dialectic;  and 
Boethius  is  rewarded  for  his  docility  by  a  shower  of  paradox- 
ical corollaries  like  this,  that  the  wicked  are  less  wretched 
when  they  are  punished,  even  if  they  are  not  reformed,  be- 
cause it  is  a  good  thing  (being  just)  that  they  should  be 
punished,  and  any  real  good  must  make  their  case  less 
wretched,  so  that  their  apparent  and  short-lived  impunity  is 
really  the  severest  part  of  their  punishment.  Still  Boethius 
insists  that  no  wise  man  w^ould  choose  banishment  or  calumny 
fpr  his  own  portion,  or  object  to  high  office  and  uncontested 
applause,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  that  evil  men  obtain  what 
the  wise  would  not  refuse,  and  that  good  men  encounter  what 
the  wise  would  not  desire. 

The  answer  is  really  an" appeal  to  our  ignorance:  there  is 
a  complicated  and  settled  order,  which  we  ought  not  to  wish 


456 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


to  see  disturbed:  whether  it  depends  on  the  ministry  of  cer- 
tain divine  spirits,  or  whether  the  soul  or  the  whole  of  nature 
is  pressed  into  service,  or  whether  it  is  the  motion  of  the  stars 
in  heaven,  or  the  virtue  of  the  angels,  or  the  manifold  cunning 
of  demons,  or  none  of  these  or  all,  whereby  the  destined  course 
of  the  world  is  woven,  it  is  clear,  at  any  rate,  that  Providence 
is  the  unchangeable  and  simple  model  of  what  shall  come  to 
pass,  while  Fate  is  the  changeable  bond  and  temporal  order 
of  what  the  simplicity  of  the  Godhead  appointed  to  come  to 
pass.  This  leads  up  to  a  "demonstration"  that  whatever  is  is 
rio-ht,  whatever  we  may  naturally  be  disposed  to  think.  "The 
gods  approved  the  cause  which  won,  Cato  the  cause  which 
lost :  and  who  can  boast  of  being  wiser  than  Cato  ?"  And 
then  the  whole  inexhaustible  doctrine  of  "discipline  "  and 
"  compensation  "  is  unrolled.  The  book  closes  with  a  song, 
whose  last  words  are  "  to  conquer  earth  wins  heaven." 

In  the  fifth  book  the  speculative  interest  predominates  for 
the  first  time.  The  discussions  on  chance,  free-will,  the  sub- 
ordination of  fate  to  Providence,  the  relation  of  freedom  to 
foreknowledge,  have  no  reference  to  the  personal  situation, 
and  for  this  reason  we  see  more  of  the  writer's  real  acuteness. 
The  exact  conception  of  chance  is  clearly  explained  from 
Aristotle  by  the  familiar  example  of  treasure-trove :  it  is  al- 
ways possible  to  give  the  reason  why  the  finder  wms  digging 
there,  or  why  the  original  owner  buried  his  treasure  there : 
the  inexplicable  and  important  point  is  just  the  coincidence, 
and  this  is  referred  to  Providence  and  illustrated  by  the  case 
of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  which  flow  from  one  fountain 
(as  all  chains  of  causation  depend  upon  the  First  Cause),  and 
meet  again  lower  down  by  following  each  their  appointed 
course. 

So,  too,  there  is  considerable  acuteness  in  the  criticism  of 
the  crude  sensationalism  of  the  Stoics,  who  thought  that 
"images"  given  off  from  objects  impressed  themselves  upon 
our  passive  organs,  and  the  necessity  for  recognizing  the 
spontaneous  activity  of  the  mind  in  perception  is  set  forth  in 
clear  and  ringing  verse.  This  comes  in  as  part  of  the  argu- 
ment for  the  existence  of  free-will,  which  is  inseparable,  ac- 


BOETHIUS, 


457 


cording  to  Boethius,  from  the  idea  of  a  reasonable  being. 
The  difficulty  how  anything  can  be  certainly  foreseen  unless 
it  is  predetermined  is  discussed  thoroughly,  without  stopping 
short  at  the  familiar  evasion  that  the  foresight  of  an  action 
does  not  necessitate  it.  At  last  the  author  takes  refuge  in  the 
transcendent  nature  of  the  divine  foreknowledge  to  which  all 
things  are  present.  It  is  possible  for  us  to  see  clearly  what  is 
going  on  without  there  being  any  need  to  suppose  that  some 
necessary  cause  determines  it,  and  if  we  imagine  that  the 
divine  omniscience  is  entirely  independent  of  time,  it  follows 
that  actions  may  be  entirely  free  and  yet  their  issues  certain. 
The  discussion  is  purely  metaphysical,  and  nothing  is  said  of 
the  empirical  arguments  in  favor  of  scientific  prevision  and 
determinism.  The  author  is  more  concerned  to  prove  that 
the  divine  foreknowledge  is  unlimited  by  contingency  or  hu- 
man mutability.  "  What,  then,  you  will  say  .^  Shall  God's 
knowledge  be  changed  at  my  disposal,  so  that  when  I  will, 
now  this,  now  that,  it  too  should  seem  to  shift  its  knowing 
about  by  turns?  Not  so.  For  whatever  shall  be  is  prevented 
by  the  insight  of  God  drawing  and  recalling  it  to  the  per- 
petual present  of  his  own  knowledge.  It  does  not  take  it,  as 
you  deem,  turn  and  turn  about  to  foreknow  now  this,  now 
that,  but  at  one  stroke,  abiding  unmoved,  prevents  and  com- 
prehends your  changes.  This,  present  comprehension  and 
vision  of  all  things  comes  to  God,  not  of  the  course  of  future 
things,  but  of  his  own  simplicity.  And  here  is  the  resolution 
of  the  hard  saying  you  laid  down  but  now,  that  it  is  unworthy 
of  God  if  we  are  to  say  that  our  future  acts  supply  God's 
knowledge  with  its  cause.  For  the  power  of  this  knowledge, 
since  it  embraces  all  things  in  a  present  intelligence,  rather 
settles  of  itself  the  measure  of  all  things  than  owes  anything 
to  what  comes  after."-  Here  the  writer  has  almost  betrayed 
himself  into  contradicting  his  doctrine  of  free-will:  so  he 
hastens  to  reassert  it,  and  then  concludes  his  treatise  with  an 
eloquent  peroration  on  the  moral  value  of  a  belief  in  responsi- 
bility and  prayei;. 

The  interest  of  the  work  lies  rather  in  the  separate  discus- 
sions than  in  the  march  of  the  argument  as  a  whole.    Boethius 

.    II. — 20 


458 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE, 


seems  to  be  stringing  together  the  favorite  topics  of  his  hap- 
pier days  by  the  machinery  of  dialogue,  and  this  explains  the 
repeated  allusions  to  the  doctrine  of  "  reminiscence."  Boe- 
thius  is  only  learning  over  again  what  he  has  forgotten  twice 
—once  when  he  fell  into  a  fleshly  body,  and  once  when  he 
fell  into  despondency. 


ENNODIUS, 


459 


CHAPTER   II. 


ENNODIUS. 


The  superiority  of  Boethius  to  his  contemporaries  is  as 
marked  as  his  superiority  to  his  predecessors,  though  in  their 
own  day  two  of  them,  at  any  rate,  had  a  very  considerable 
reputation,  and  the  reputation  of  one  lasted  far  into  the  middle 
ages.  Ennodius,  bishop  of  Pavia,  is  even  a  completer  type 
than  Sidonius  Apollinaris  of  the  man  of  letters  turned  bishop 
by  the  force  of  circumstances.  His  full  name  was  Magnus 
Felix  Ennodius.  He  was  practically  a  refugee  from  southern 
Gaul.  He  managed  to  marry  an  Italian  heiress,  and  when 
through  bad  luck  he  could  no  longer  count  upon  her  heritage, 
he  entered  the  clergy  and  she  retired  to  a  convent.  The 
natural  interest  of  Ennodius  lay  in  the  direction  of  puzzle 
poetry,  but  the  greater  part  of  his  poetical  works  appear  to 
have  perished,  because  neither  he  nor  others  thought  them 
worth  preserving.  We  have  two  books  of  his  poems,  of  which 
the  first  is  made  up  of  complimentary  copies  of  verses,  to 
which  some  editors  add  a  dozen  tame  hymns  ;  the  second 
consists  of  151  epigrams,  partly  inscriptions  of  no  interest, 
partly  the  latest  echo  of  Martial's  uncleanly  jests.  The  poems 
of  the  first  book  correspond  in  range  with  those  of  Ausonius  : 
it  is  noteworthy  that  in  a  poem  on  the  thirtieth  anniversary 
of  the  consecration  of  his  predecessor  he  quotes  the  example 
of  Orpheus  with  as  little  embarrassment  as  earlier  artists  had 
represented  it  upon  the  walls  of  the  catacombs. 

The  most  curious  part  of  his  works  are  those  which  he  com- 
posed in  the  way  of  business  as  a  rhetorician  :  oddlv  enousfh, 
he  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  destroy  them  upon  his  conver- 
sion, though  he  felt  it  necessary  to  renounce  poetry  and  ap- 
parently to  destroy  his  poems.     There  are  regular  school  de- 


460 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


a,e  old  stories  of  stepmothers  and  tyrannicides  and 


bates  on  me  uiu  otv^..^  ^  ^j^    decay 

brave  men,  and  the  gods  are  -voUed  ^u    on^  sees       ^^^,^  y 

of  the  art  in  the  comparafve  V^°^''^^^lf^\^  gi,e  advice, 
branch,  in  which  "-  ^P-^^  j^  ^tfof  a  real  o?  imaginary 
but  simply  to  express  the  teeun.s  stronger  proof 

speaker  in  a  traditional  ^'tuat.on.  A  st  1  s tro  g  P  ^^^ 
!i  decadence  is  '^e  P-e|yr.c  o    1  >^^^^^^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^^^^ 

below  the  panegyrists  of  the  '°""{' ""' J;,  ^elow  the  "  Con- 

r'"^':v;,^s;'r.s:ru  it^r^urthrthetnin,off  m  „. 

fessions     ot  bt.  i^Uj^ubun.  ,     ,u^  .^nvprtv  of  material. 

'^aTal  °and   A  t  nE      Pannonian  of  good  family,  who 
and  Ital},  ana   /vmu.  .     ,  nf  romo  and  when 

had  settled  in  a  hermUage  near  the  LaU  of  Como  ^^ 

pilgrims  refused  to  leav.  '^l-  /.f  ^'^^^'^^  ^.^e  on  educa- 
tive as  a  common  monk,      ^^ere  .s  a^.o  ^^^^ 

•"e^y  tf  C:iS,n^-°:;ls"^::rpa  r^^^^^^^^^  =  .hetoric  is 
ThetU  of  Xe  sciences  and  the  mother  of  the  arts,  and  .s 
able  to  make  white  black  and  black  white. 

CASSIODORUS. 

rassiodorus  like  Ennodius,  was  loyal  to  the  Gothic  dynasty  ; 


CASSIODORUS. 


461 


vvrilten  during  his  retreat,  and  have  something  of  the  prolixity 
of  old  age,  for  he  tells  us  himself  he  lived  to  be  ninety-three, 
and  went  on  writing  to  the  last. 

He  was  in  the  official  service  of  the  Gothic  kings  for  some- 
thing over  thirty  years,  and  under  Theodoric  his  action  as 
private  secretary  gave  him  a  real  influence  in  politics.  He 
continued  to  draft  official  documents  as  late  as  the  reign  of 
Witiges;  he  was  once  consul,  in  514,  four  years  after  Boethius, 
and  thrice  praetorian  prefect,  but  he  lost  part  of  his  influence 
after  the  death  of  Amalasuntha,  Theodoric's  daughter,  who 
carried  her  father's  policy  of  conciliating  the  Romans  further 
than  he  had  done,  and  was  put  to  death  because  she  showed 
an  intention  of  bringing  up  her  son  as  a  Roman.  Like  every 
one  else,  he  commenced  his  career  as  a  rhetorician,  and  some 
fragments  of  his  panegyrics  have  been  recovered  and  edited 
at  Turin.  But  the  most  important  work  of  his  official  life  was 
the  twelve  books  of  letters,  mostly  official  in  character,  which, 
after  Cicero's,  are  the  most  instructive  that  have  come  down 
from  antiquity,  though  they  are  about  the  low-water  mark  both 
for  sense  and  taste,  being  often  so  clumsy  and  pompous  as 
to  be  barely  intelligible  :  their  general  style  is  like  the  worst 
parts  of  Ammianus  Marcellinus. 

Besides  the  letters  he  wrote  a  history  of  the  Goths  in  twelve 
books,  which  was  completed  about  a.d.  533,  and  is  now,  un- 
fortunately, lost,  having  been  superseded  by  an  epitome  com- 
piled less  than  twenty  years  later  by  a  Goth  of  the  name  of 
Jornandes,  or  Jordanes.  We  derive  some  information  about 
it  from  a  letter  which  Cassiodorus  wrote  in  his  own  honor  in 
the  name  of  Athalaric  in  533.  Athalaric  speaks  of  the  surprise 
of  the  Goths  that  a  Roman  should  have  read  what  the  oldest 
of  them  could  hardly  remember,  and  is  delighted  that  the  royal 
descent  of  his  own  family,  the  Amals,  is  established  for  seven- 
teen generations.  He  tells  us  that  Cassiodorus  had  brought 
together  w^hat  had  hitherto  been  scattered  over  the  wide  fields 
of  books.  This  compilation  was  not  altogether  well  inspired. 
It  is  clear  from  Jordanes  that  Cassiodorus  identified  the  Goths 
with  the  Getai,  and  with  all^  or  almost  all,  the  tribes  who  had 
occupied  the  same  territories  \  and  the  information  about  them 


i 


462 


LA  TIN  LITER  A  TURE. 


CASSIODORUS. 


463 


and  about  the  Amazons  and  the  Scythians  of  Herodotus  is 
mixed  up  in  Jordanes,  at  any  rate,  with  the  national  traditions 
of  the  Goths,  in  a  very  confusing  manner.  The  history  ends 
with  the  death  of  Athalaric  in  534,  and  was  probably  published 
the  following  year.  An  earlier  work  was  a  chronicle  from  the 
creation  of  the  world  to  the  consulate  of  Eutharic  in  519,  cov- 
ering a  space,  according  to  the  author's  reckoning,  of  5271 
years.  It  is  only  for  the  last  sixty-four  that  Cassiodorus  tells 
us  anything  that  is  not  better  said  elsewhere ;  it  is  only  for  the 
last  twenty-four  that  he  appears  to  write  from  his  own  knowl- 
edge, though  during  the  whole  of  the  period  during  which  the 
Goths  were  in  contact  with  Rome  it  is  noticed  that  he  seems 
careful  to  mention  everything  to  their  credit,  and  to  pass  over 
everything  that  tells  against  them.  Up  to  the  first  consuls  he 
follows  the  Chronicle  of  Eusebius  as  enlarged  by  St.  Jerome. 
For  the  rest  he  follows  Livy  in  an  epitome  down  109  B.C.,  and 
then  Aufidius  Bassus  for  forty  years,  after  which  he  returns  to 
purely  Christian  sources:  from  a.d.  455  to  495  he  follows  the 
Chronicle  of  Ravenna,  which  he  gives  in  its  full  form  ;  from 
495  he  seems  to  be  an  independent  writer.  The  early  part 
of  the  work  is  astonishingly  capricious  :  for  instance,  the  third 
Punic  war  is  not  mentioned,  and  the  institution  of  state  mines 
in  Macedonia  (ten  years  after  the  overthrow  of  Perseus)  is: 
so,  too,  the  Decemvirate  is  set  down  as  having  lasted  forty 
years,  because  the  compiler  does  not  care  to  mention  the  mil- 
itary tribunes. 

The  same  inattention  to  system  appears  in  the  commentary 
on  the  Psalter,  which  was  the  first  work  to  which  he  applied 
himself  after  his  "conversion,"  i.e.^  his  retirement  from  the 
world,  though  the  "  De  Anima  "  was  finished  sooner,  just  after 
the  publication  of  the  letters.  This  work  is  arranged  in 
twelve  chapters,  because  twelve  is  a  sacred  number,  and  this 
kind  of  arithmetical  mysticism  has  great  attractions  for  Cas- 
siodorus :  in  substance  it  is  taken  from  Claudianus  Mamertus 
and  St.  Augustin,  and  is  rather  a  collection  of  excerpts  than 
an  original  work  ;  the  most  characteristic  part  of  it  is  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  chapters,  which  treat  of  the  signs  whereby 
the  good  and  evil  are  to  be  known.     Practically  the  evil  man 


is  a  place-hunter,  v.hose  looks  betray  him,  whatever  care  he 
takes  of  his  body,  because  he  is  always  anxious  and  cross  ;  and 
the  good  man  is  an  ascetic,  who  is  always  crying,  and  always 
cheerful,  and  the  like.  The  passage  seems  to  be  modelled 
Upon  the  description  of  the  apostles  in  the  Second  Epistle  to 
the  Corinthians,  while  the  philosophers  are  included  among 
the  evil,  quite  mechanically,  because  St.  Augustin  had  set  the 
fashion.  In  spite  of  St.  Augustin's  authority,  the  soul  is 
identified  with  light,  though  the  doctrine  that  it  has  no  special 
shape  is  maintained  on  the  principles  of  Mamertus,  the  notion 
being  that  its  principal  seat  is  in  the  brain,  but  that  it  extends 
throughout  the  body  —  which  might  be  a  description  of  the 
nervous  system. 

The  commentary  on  the  Psalter  is  based  upon  St.  Augustin, 
but  makes  a  certain  show  of  independent  criticism.  According 
to  the  preface  the  commentary  ought  to  fall  into  six  divisions, 
iexplaining  (i)  the  title;  (2)  the  divisions  of  each  Psalm  j  (3) 
its  historical,  mystical,  or  spiritual  sense — these  last  are  not 
clearly  distinguished  ;  (4)  the  special  virtue  which  it  teaches ; 
(5)  the  significance  of  its  number;  (6)  a  summary,  and  a  po- 
lemic against  heretics  :  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  fourth  and 
fifth  heads  are  commonly  mentioned,  when  they  are  mentioned 
at  all,  under  the  third. 

Before  the  Psalter  was  finished,  the  author  had  written 
several  other  treatises,  especially  two  on  education.  One  is 
fan  introduction  to  sacred  literature,  divided  into  thirty-three 
sections,  in  honor  of  the  years  of  the  Lord's  life,  and  is  com- 
paratively original,  the  object  being  not  so  much  to  give  a 
summary  of  the  writer's  knowledge  as  a  guide  for  indepen- 
dent study,  everything  being  brought  to  bear  upon  the  Bible, 
which  Cassiodorus  assumes  to  have  been  the  source  of  every- 
thing valuable  in  Greek  or  Oriental  culture.  We  get  inci- 
dental information  on  the  translations  of  Josephus  and  the 
three  Greek  ecclesiastical  historians,  Socrates,  Sozomen,  and 
Theodoret,  which  Cassiodorus  had  procured  to  be  made.  The 
second  part  of  the  treatise  gives  an  outline  of  the  seven  liberal 
arts,  and  is  intended  to  save  monks  the  trouble  of  learning 
them  in  the  old  fashioii:  accordingly  we  have  little  but  a  tire- 


464 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


some  compendium  of  compendiums.  There  are  numerous 
concessions  throughout  to  intellectual  laziness:  it  is  taken 
for  granted  that  it  is  always  pleasanter  to  read  a  foreign  book 
in  a  translation  than  to  learn  the  language.  Extracts  from 
St.  Augustin,  compiled  by  Eugippius,  are  recommended  as  a 
substitute  for  the  original.  The  aspirations  of  monastic  cult- 
ure do  not  rise  above  those  of  the  secular  culture  of  the  time. 
The  remarkable  thing  is  the  very  ideal  of  a  monastic  society 
carrying  on  the  whole  of  what  still  passed  for  respectable  in 
the  heritage  of  ancient  civilization.  It  is  quite  true  that  what 
seems  most  precious  to  us  in  ancient  civilization  is  left  in  the 
shade ;  art  is  nowhere,  poetry  is  only  represented  by  Vergil. 
It  is  also  true  that  ancient  philosophy  sacrificed  art  and 
poetry  very  much  as  Cassiodorus  sacrificed  philosophy :  it 
was  a  moral  relief  to  be  rid  of  the  one,  it  was  an  intellectual 
relief  to  be  rid  of  the  other.  But  it  was  still  a  great  thing 
that  the  copying  of  MSS.  should  be  considered  the  highest 
and  most  meritorious  form  of  manual  labor  ;  higher  even  than 
the  agriculture  which  enabled  the  community  to  give  alms, 
and  was  itself  considered  in  Egypt  an  unsuitable  employment 
for  monks.  The  summary  commentaries  upon  different  books 
of  Scripture  are  even  less  interesting  than  the  commentary  on 
the  Psalter,  and  they  were  very  little  used  in  the  middle  ages, 
during  which  the  commentary  on  the  Psalter  was  exceedingly 
popular.  The  Epistle  to  the  Romans  was  treated  more  fully: 
the  author  was  anxious  to  combat  the  Pelagian  heresy  still 
raging  in  Dalmatia.  The  latest  work  of  which  we  have  any 
knowledge  is  a  set  of  excerpts  from  twelve  books  of  seven 
writers  on  orthography,  and  in  the  preface  to  this  he  enumer- 
ates his  other  works. 

A  little  more  ought  to  be  said  of  the  collection  of  letters, 
which  give  a  very  curious  picture  of  the  actual  state  of  society 
and  of  culture.  One  point  which  comes  out  very  clearly  is 
that  the  different  parts  of  Italy  were  as  much  "provinces," 
compared  with  Rome,  as  they  had  been  before  all  Italy  was 
admitted  to  Roman  citizenship :  the  Gothic  monarchy  was 
conceived  by  the  analogy  of  the  Roman  empire ;  Lucania  and 
Liguria  took  the  place  of  Africa  and  Gaul.     Another  curious 


CASSIODORUS. 


465 


point  is  the  position  of  the  senate,  which  practically  was  ex- 
pected to  petition  in  favor  of  every  appointment  the  govern- 
ment intended  to  make  in  the  old  official  hierarchy  :  often  the 
Candidate  himself  wrote  to  the  senate  asking  them  to  petition 
because  they  knew  that  his  promotion  was  intended  for  the 
public  service.  Both  the  old  branches  of  the  official  hierarchy 
were  retained :  the  distinction  between  the  offices  instituted 
by  the  emperors  and  those  which  had  descended  from  the 
republic  was  not  effaced:  but  side  by  side  with  these  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Goths  among  themselves  persisted,  and  was 
applied  in  the  regulation  of  the  relations  between  the  new 
dynasty  and  the  old  society.  The  Saius,  or  Saio  (it  seems 
that  in  the  nominative  the  title  ran  in  the  second  declension, 
and  in  other  cases  in  the  third),  or  king's  messenger,  is  one 
if  the  most  important  personages  of  the  day:  he  figures  more 
|han  once  or  twice  in  the  two  books  of  "  formulas  "  which  are 
©ne  of  the  most  characteristic  parts  of  the  correspondence 
of  Cassiodorus.  It  is  astonishing  how  low  he  descends,  and 
how  copious  he  is  :  he  provides  a  complimentary  letter  for  the 
appointment  or  discharge  of  the  functionary  whose  business 
it  was  to  seal  the  king's  letters,  and  also  for  the  functionary 
who  had  the  key  of  his  desk;  to  say  nothing  of  letters  for  the 
bestowal  of  every  dignity,  from  the  consulate  downwards, 
which  had  been  recognized  or  invented  by  Constantine.  An- 
other interesting  feature  of  the  collection  is  the  diligence  with 
which  the  author  labors  to  conciliate  Justinian,  under  the 
feigns  of  Theodahad  (who  put  his  wife,  the  daughter  of  The- 
odoric,  to  death)  and  Witiges,  who  lived  to  be  led  in  triumph 
through  Constantinople.  In  writing  to  the  senate  of  Rome 
under  the  same  kings  Cassiodorus  always  makes  his  master  for 
the  time  being  take  the  language  of  an  independent  sovereign, 
but  in  writing  to  Constantinople  he  makes  his  masters  and 
mistresses  take  the  tone  of  vassals,  who  are  always  appealing 
to  the  "  clemency  "  of  the  emperor  and  empress  ;  for  the  queen 
of  the  Goihs  as  well  as  the  king  had  to  write  to  Constantino- 
ple after  the  reconquest  of  Africa.  But  this  does  not  imply 
that  Cassiodorus  at  any  time  identified  himself  with  the  Roman 
party.     One  of  his  most  enthusiastic  letters  is  written  in  the 


II. 


-20^ 


466 


LATIN  LITERATURE. 


name  of  Theodoric,  to  congratulate  the  senate  on  the  promo- 
tion of  Cyprian,  whom  Boethius  denounces  as  a  delator,  whom 
it  was  one  of  his  own  chief  merits  to  have  opposed  at  all  costs. 
It  is  the  more  noticeable  that  the  kings  flatter  the  senate  by 
reminding  them  of  the  old  routine  which  made  admission  to 
the  senate  a  promotion  to  all  who  had  entered  the  imperial 
service.  "  Hoc  tamen  curiae  felicius  provenit,  quod  nobis  et 
impolitus  tiro  militat,  ilia  vero  non  recipit  nisi  qui  jam  dignus 
honoribus  potuerit  inveniri."  In  the  same  spirit,  when  Tulus, 
a  Goth,  was  to  be  made  a  patrician,  Athalaric  writes  to  the 
senate  (viii.  x.)  asking  to  be  thanked  for  the  appointment  he 
announces.  Apparently  it  was  still  as  difficult  as  ever  for  a 
civilian  to  enter  the  military  service,  for  we  find  in  a  decree 
of  Theodahad  (xi.  xlii.):  "Atque  ideo  edictali  programmate 
definimus  ut  quicunque  contra  violentas  insidias  propter  ine- 
luctabiles  necessitates  suas  mereri  desiderat  fortem  Saionem 
officii  nostri  pcenali  se  vinculo  cautionis  astringat  ut  in  pra^- 
cepta  tristia  jussionis  immissione  plectibili  Saius  quern  mere- 

tur  excesserit." 

The  meaning  appears  to  be  that  it  is  very  objectionable  for 
a  civilian  to  serve  as  a  "gallant  henchman,"  but  that  it  is  to 
be  permitted  when  the  applicant  is  really  forced  to  the  step  ; 
provided  always  that  he  gives  the  most  ample  security  against 
abusing  the  office.  Phrases  like  "edictali  programmate,"  for 
edict,  and  "immissione  plectibili,"  for  penal  process,  make 
these  parts  of  Cassiodorus  very  difficult  to  understand,  though 
he  appears  to  have  thought  them  due  to  the  majesty  of  the 
kino-  of  the  Ostrogoths.  Cassiodorus  valued  himself  upon  his 
ability  to  adapt  his  style  to  the  person  speaking  and  to  the 
person  spoken  to ;  he  takes  pains  to  rise,  as  he  thinks,  with 
the  occasion  ;  and  when  the  occasion  is  not  too  solemn  he 
even  aims  at  levity:  for  instance,  the  second  letter  of  the  first 
book  is  addressed  to  Thriscus,  who  had  charge  of  the  royal 
purple,  which  was  not  very  satisfactory  ;  and,  after  Thriscus 
has  been  bantered  upon  the  consequences  to  which  he  has 
exposed  himself,  the  letter  goes  off  into  a  little  history  of  the 
origin  of  the  dye.  It  is  no  part  of  Cassiodorus's  creed  that 
familiarity  breeds  contempt :  he  makes  the  king  pay  the  most 


CASSIODORUS. 


467 


elaborate  compliments  to  his  nominees,  and  naturally  some 
of  the  choicest  are  for  himself;  for  instance,  on  occasion  of 
one  of  his  appointments  as  praetorian  prefect  we  read,  "  Auspi- 
catus  es  militem  cum  implere  potueris  cognitorem,"  which 
reveals  a  fine  confusion  of  metaphors  and  ideas.  Cassiodo- 
rus was  able  to  fill  (the  place  or  the  person  of)  a  judge,  and 
yet  he  began  (only  Cassiodorus  cannot  reconcile  himself  to 
making  a  king  say  "began,"  so  he  makes  him  say  "  auspi- 
Cc^ccd  ")  as  a  soldier,  meaning  an  advocate,  for  the  warfare  of 
the  forum  was  a  familiar  metaphor,  and  a  tolerable  one  if  it 
had  been  fully  expressed  by  itself.  Cassiodorus  is  almost  as 
solemn  in  a  citation  to  one  Brandila,  whose  wife  was  gravely 
suspected  of  having  beaten  the  wife  of  Patsen:  it  is  implied 
that  the  simplest  and  most  proper  course  would  have  been  for 
Brandila  to  beat  his  wife  ;  but  as  he  apparently  objected  to  do 
so  he  was  to  bring  her  up  to  the  king's  court  for  judgment, 
putting  away  every  pretext  of  delay,  and  is  gravely  assured 
that  whatever  the  decision  may  be  he  ought  to  be  satisfied 
with  it.  Apparently  it  was  in  his  favor,  for  in  the  next  letter 
Patsen's  wife  figures,  very  much  to  her  disadvantage,  in  con- 
nection with  the  upset  of  a  boat,  and  compels  the  king  to  ex- 
claim at  the  impudence  of  women. 

After  these  there  are  letters  on  still  more  trivial  themes. 
Theodoric  commissions  Boethius  to  see  to  a  water-organ  which 
is  to  astonish  the  weak  mind  of  a  Frankish  king,  or  grants  a 
dispensation  to  enable  two  cousins  to  marry.  When  Cassio- 
dorus writes  in  his  own  person  he  fully  deserves  the  compli- 
ments which  he  makes  Witiges  pay  him  upon  his  disinterest- 
edness and  good  temper.  There  is  not  the  least  trace  of 
discontent  or  depression  in  any  of  his  writings,  either  before 
his  retreat  or  after  :  he  wishes  his  monks  to  profit  by  the  works 
on  agriculture  in  their  library,  in  order  to  keep  up  the  old 
Roman  husbandry  for  the  benefit  of  merchants  and  pilgrims, 
and  enforces  his  wish  with  a  description  of  a  famous  fair  in 
Lucania,  then  held  in  honor  of  St.  Cyprian,  at  a  fountain  for- 
merly sacred  to  Leucothea,  which  gave  occasion  to  a  good 
deal  of  brigandage.  But  Cassiodorus  has  less  to  say  about 
the  brigandage  than  about  the  fountain,  which  he  tells  us  al- 


468 


MAXIMIANUS. 


ways  sprang  up  at  Easter,  in  readiness  for  baptisms,  whence 
we  may  infer  that  it  was  fed  by  the  melting  of  the  winter  snow 
in  the  Abruzzi.  There  is  not  a  touch  of  sentiment  at  St. 
Cyprian's  superseding  Leucothea  ;  nothing  of  the  feeling  which 
is  so  strong  in  Boethius,  that  nothing  earthly  lasts. 

MAXIMIANUS. 

Cassiodorus's  tranquil  reliance  on  the  stability  of  what  was 
left  of  the  old  world  is  even  surpassed  by  Maximianus,  a  noble 
of  Etruria,  who  in  his  old  age  composed  half  a  dozen  elegies, 
which  have  a  certain  mawkish  pathos  and  sweetness :  the  best 
of  them  is  the  first,  which  is  full  of  his  regrets  for  his  lost 
youth,  in  which  he  felt  himself  possessed  of  all  the  talents  and 
all  the  virtues  of  all  the  heroes  and  all  the  sages;  he  found 
himself  hardy,  and  thought  himself  a  Stoic.     The  rest  of  the 
poems  are  consecrated  to  a  very  outspoken  narrative  of  his 
amours,  in  most  of  which  he  played  the  part  of  dupe:  in  the 
first  we  are  a  little  surprised  to  find  that  he  had  conscientious 
scruples,  as  he  did  not  contemplate  marriage,  and  more  than 
surprised  to  find  that  they  were  removed  by  the  authority  of 
Boethius.     One  can  hardly  imagine  Cicero  giving  such  coun- 
sel to  C^lius  or  Curio  ;   one  cannot  imagine  Seneca  giving 
such  counsel  to  any  pupil  but  Nero. 

The  cynicism  of  a  declining  race  is  too  strong  for  the  un- 
mistakable progress  in  religious  ideas,  and  the  undeniable 
progress  in  speculative  ideas,  which  is  not  disproved  by  a 
falling-ofif  in  speculative  power.  It  was  time  that  Latin  Lit- 
erature should  retire  into  the  cloister,  that  Latin  civilization 
should  become  a  memory. 


INDEX   TO  VOL.  II. 


Accia  Variola,  speech  of  Pliny  for, 
163. 

Acholius,  312,  «. 

itlian,  176,  385. 

villus  Lanipridius,  307,  314. 

.'Elius  Marcianus,  240. 

.^lius  Spartianus,  306,  307  ;  his 
style,  315. 

African  school,  243  ;  Christian  rhet- 
oricians of,  329. 

Ageruchia,  correspondent  of  St.  Je- 
rome, 414. 

Agnes,  St.,  legend  of,  in  Prudentius, 
366  ;  St.  Ambrose,  oldest  author- 
ity for,  399. 

Agricola,  Julius,  179,  184;  Tacitus, 
Life  of,  188-190.  206. 

Agrippa  the  Younger,  215. 

Agrippina,  Seneca  recalled  by,  3  ; 
memoirs  of  the  Younger,  212. 

Amateur  writers  of  Statius's  day,  61, 

77. 
Ambrose,  St.,  Hymns  of,  397,  405  ; 

penance  of  Theodosius,  398  ;  work 
on  Paradise,  398  ;  folU)ws  Philo, 
398,  399  ;  "  Good  of  Death,"  399  ; 
"  De  Officiis  Ministrorum,"  399, 
419  ;  ethical  standard  of,  400  ;  on 
celibacy,  401  ;  "  Hexaemeron," 
402 ;'  on  Naboth  and  Tobias, 
against  encroachments  and  usury, 
402-j  five  books  "De  Verbo,"403  ; 
on  his  brother's  death,  404 ;  Let- 
ters, 404. 
Ammianus  Marcellinus,  339  ;  con- 
tinues Tacitus,  340  ;  specimen  of 
his  style,  341,  342  ;  dread  of  impe- 
rial favorites,  343  ;  religious  opin- 
ions, 344  ;  respect  for  omens,  345  ; 
on  betrayal  of  Vadomarius,  346 ; 


edited  by  Erfurdt,  347  ;  geogra- 
phy of,  untrustworthy,  347  ;  men- 
tion of  barbarians  in  ottice,  349  ; 
defeat  of  Valens,  349. 

Ancient  art,  history  of,  Pliny's  con- 
tributions to,  160. 

Anicius,  house  of,  450. 

Annaei,  50,  103. 

Antimachus,  49,  55. 

Antonius  Primus,  203. 

Aper,  M.,  185. 

Apicata,  wife  of  Sejanus,  212. 

Apollonius  Rhodius,  68;  his  Medea, 
70. 

Apuleius,  L.,  lOO  ;  date  and  family, 
248;  pc^pular  lecturer,  249;  ac- 
cused of  vanity,  250  ;  of  magic, 
251  ;  harangue  on  the  God  of  Soc- 
rates, 252  ;  on  Plato,  253  ;  "  Met- 
amorphoses," 254-258  ;  worship 
of  Isis,  255,  256  ;  Cupid  and  Psy- 
che, 256,  257  ;  "  Florida,"  259  ; 
compilations  and  paraphrases, 
260. 

Aqua  Alsietina,  177;  Claudia,  177. 

Aqueducts,  Martial's  petition  for 
leave  to  use,  106 ;  such  rights 
jealously  limited,  177;  Frontiiius 
in  charge  of  Roman,  1 76;  his 
work  on,  177,  178. 

"  Aratea,"  translated  by  Cicero, 
Germanicus,  and  Avienus,  353. 

Aristocracy,  contempt  of,  fatal  to 
Otho  and  Vitellius,  197  ;  treach- 
ery of,  198. 

Aristophanes,  compared  to  Juvenal, 
127. 

Aristotle,  followed  by  Seneca,  15-17- 

Arnobius,  317  ;  the  "  Christian  Cic- 
ero," 322  ;  St.  Jerome  on,  328. 


470 


INDEX. 


Arruntius,  L.,  i8i. 

Asclepiades,  329. 

Asclepiodotus,  309. 

Asinius  Pollio,  12,  222. 

Asteiius,  Rufus  ruicius,  443. 

Athanasius,  St.,  344. 

Athcnodoius,  followed  by  Seneca, 
10. 

Ateina,  65. 

Attalus,  2. 

Aufidius  Bassus,  continued  by  Pliny, 
144. 

Augustan  Histories,  304  ;  five  or  six 
authors  of,  308  ;  contributions  as- 
signed to  /tlius  Spartianus,  ^^'^lius 
Lanipridius,  Vulcacius  Gallicanus, 
Julius  Capitoiinus,  Trebellius  Pol- 
lio, and  Vopiscus,  306-314  ;  judg- 
ment on  different  emperors,  and 
traits  de  mceurs,  3 1 5. 

Augustin,  St.,  on  tiie  religion  of  the 
nursery,  279 ;  Romans  a  chosen 
people,  321  ;  resemblance  to  Pru- 
dentius,  364 ;  on  St.  Ambrose, 
400;  St.  Jerome's  letters  10,417, 
418;  his  youth,  418;  "Contra 
Academicos,"  419;  **De  Vita 
Beata,"  "  De  Ordine,"  and  Solil- 
oquies,   420 ;    Confessions,    420- 


423 


intercourse    with    St.   Am- 


brose, 422  ;  "  De  Doctrina  Chris- 
tiana," 424  ;  Commentaries,  425  ; 
controversies  with  the  Arians, 
Manichees,  Pelagians,  and  Do- 
natisis,  425,  426  ;  on  the  Trinity, 
426  ;  correspondence,  427  ;  "  City 
of  God,"  428-433  ;"  antifatalism, 
430  ;  New  Platonists,  430  ;  com- 
parative chronology,  431  ;  Beatific 
Vision,  433  ;  miracles,  433  ;  re- 
tractations, 435. 

Avidius  Cassius,  120  ;  life  of,  314. 

Avienus,  Rufus  Festus,  author  of 
translations,  abridgments,  and 
paraphrases,  353. 

Avienus,  Flavius,  a  fabulist,  381. 

Avis  incendiaria,  153. 

Avitus,  Alfius,  298. 

Avitus,  Bishop  of  Vienne,  444. 

Aulus  Gellius,  264  ;  "  Attic  Nights," 
265  ;  popularity  of,  266  ;  on  gram- 
matical points,  267  ;  Socratic  dia- 
logue, 268  ;  Favorinus,  268,  269  ; 
literary  judgments  of,  270 ;    style 


and  vocabulary,  271  ;  followed  by 
Macrobius,  394. 

Aurelian,  Life  of,  by  Vopiscus,  306, 
309-313;  civil  administration  of, 
309 ;  food  supply  and  fortifica- 
tions of  Rome  by,  310,  31 1. 

Ausonius,  Decimus  Magnus,  3^5,  n. ; 
Epigrams,  354  ;  Play  of  the  Seven 
Sages,  355 ;  poem  on  employ- 
ments of  the  day,  356 ;  Idyll  on 
the  Moselle,  357,  358;  on  a  paint- 
ing at  Treves,  359. 

Autun,  public  schools  of,  330;  en- 
dowed by  Eumenius;  taxation  of, 
reduced,  332. 

Barbarians,    consulship    opened    to, 

349- 
Barea,  Servilius  Barea  Servius,  218. 
Barth,  62. 
Basil,  St.,  401,  402. 
Bassus,  Julius,  governor  of  Bithynia, 

164. 
Baths,  right  to  water  supply,  178. 
Bede,  Ambrosian  hymns  known  to, 

405- 

Berosus,  22. 

Bestius,  84. 

Blaesus,  236. 

Bocchoris,  legendary  expulsion  of 
the  Jews  by,  199. 

Boethius,  449  ;  his  defence  of  Albi- 
nus,  450  ;  writings  on  logic,  music, 
and  geometry,  451  ;  "Consolations 
of  Philosophy,"  451-458. 

I^ookseller,  Martial  refers  to  his,  107. 

Bona  Mens,  Seneca's  favorite  con- 
ception of,  15. 

Britain,  Seneca's  investments  in,  5. 

Britannicus,  212. 

Buddhists,  Pliny's  humanitarianism 
forestalled  by,  147. 

Burrus,  3. 

CabaUiis,  Juvenal's  use  of,  139. 
Caecilius,    Sex.   Caecilius  Africanus, 

238.        . 
Caesar,  unique  style  of,  iSo. 
Calenus,  139. 

Caligula,  remarks  on  Seneca,  2. 
Callicrates,  313. 
Callistratus,  239. 
Callistus,  St.,  285. 
Calpurnius,  35. 


INDEX. 


471 


Calvus,  249. 

fcapella,  Martianus,  442. 

Capito,  Ateius,  236,  237. 

Capito,  a  Lycian,  339. 

Carlyle,  179. 

"Carmen  Apologeticum,"  of  Com- 

modian,  298. 
Carthage,  242. 
Cassian,  St.,  366. 
Cassian,  439  ;  on  monastic  life,  and 

"Collationes  Patrum,"  440. 
Cassiodorus,  460  ;   his  letters,  461, 

464-467  ;    History  of  the  Goths, 

461,  462  ;   Chronicle,  sources  of, 
462  ;  Commentary  on  the  Psalter, 

462,  463. 

Cassius,  Q.  Longinus,  founder  of 
Cassian   school   of  jurisprudence, 

237- 

Castra  Vetera,  topography  of,  in  Tac- 
itus, 191. 

Cato,  12  ;  speech  oC  in  Lucan,  42  ; 
fable  attributed  to  the  Elder,  139. 

Cato,  Dionysius,  moral  aphorisms 
of,  302,  303. 

Catullus,  128,  133. 

Causidicns,  orator,  degenerates  into, 
172. 

Celerinus,  294. 

Celsus,  172. 

Censorship,  revival  of,  390. 

Centurions,  oppression  by,  184. 

Cereal  is,  190. 

Cernulare,  a  coinage  of  Seneca's,  32, 

^33- 

Chaldaeans,  166  ;  Favorinus  on,  268. 

Charisius,  a  grammarian,  387. 

Chorographia  Pliniana,  297. 

Chrysostom,  St.,  on  monasticism,  407. 

Cicero,  Marcus  Tullius,  "  De  Natura 
Deorum,"  17;  estates  of,  owned 
by  Silius,  63  ;  undervalued  by  Pe- 
tronius,  loi  ;  Quinctilian  on  de- 
livery of,  174;  language  contrasted 
\yith  Tacitus,  190;  defence  of,  by 
Suetonius,  231  ;  latest  writer  ad- 
mired by  Fronto,  245  ;  Republic 
of,  known  through  Macrobius,  ^04 ; 
"  De  Utficiis,"  399. 

Cicero,  Marcus  Q.,  drinking  exploits 

^.°^'  ^57. 

Ciceronian  oratory,  criticised  by  Tac- 
.itus,  187,  188. 

Civilis,  revolt  of,  198,  208. 


Civil  law,  three  books  on,  by  Sabi- 
nus,  237. 

Claudian.    See  Claudius  Claudianus. 

Claudian  period,  poetry  of,  35  ;  books 
of,  intended  for  recitation,  142. 

Claudianus  Mamertus,  446. 

Claudius,  progressive  innovations  of, 
205  ;  alleged  assassination  of,  213  ; 
Suetonius's  Life  of,  226. 

Claudius  Claudianus^  of  Alexandria, 
367,368;  mythological  poems, 368, 
369 ;  historical  poems,  370 ;  at- 
tacks on  Rufinus  and  Eutropius, 
371,  372  ;  Roman  feeling  of,  373  ; 
war  of  Gildo,  373  ;  religion  of,  375  ; 
versification  of,  375. 

Claudius  Eusthenius,  307. 

Claudius  Maxim  us,  proconsul  in  Apu- 
leius's  time,  249. 

Claudius  Quadrigarius,  270. 

Claudius  Tryphoninus,  239. 

Ow/A/Z/^j-,  Tacitus's  account  of  Ger- 
man, 192. 

Commodianus,  297  ;  two  poems  by, 
298. 

Compilations  of  4th  century,  337. 

Compitalia,  377. 

"  Conjectanea,"  Capito's  great  work, 
236. 

Conjuratos,  or  liegemen  of  a  Roman 
general,  312. 

Conington,  Professor,  on  Persius's 
imitations,  84. 

Consulship  of  Olybrius  and  Probi- 
nus,  poem  on,  368,  369. 

Consulship  of  Mallius  Theodorus, 
370. 

Cooks,  unsalable  books  bought  by, 
76. 

Corbulo,  184,  211. 

Corinthian  bronzes,  13  ;  Trimalchio 
on,  95  ;  perfume  of,  109. 

Cornelia,  Lucan's,  46. 

Cornelius  Bocchus,  297. 

Cornelius  (St.),  294. 

Cornutus,  edits  Persius's  Satires,  78  ; 
his  master,  81,  85. 

Corporations,  Roman,  88. 

Corruption  in  the  provinces,  164. 

Corvinus,  128. 

Cotta  Messalinus,  Tiberius's  letter 
on  prosecution  of,  208. 

Credo  quia  impossihile,  correct  ver- 
sion of  Tertullian's,  287. 


472 


IXDEX. 


Crispinus,  Juvenal's  denunciation  of, 
132. 

Cupid  and  Psyche,  story  of,  256,  257. 

Curiatius  Maternus,  28. 

Curtius,  Quintus,  304. 

Cyprian  ot  Antioch,  290. 

Cyprian  (  St.  ),  of  Carthage,  289 ; 
Letter  to  Donatus,  290  ;  reply  to 
Demetrius,  291  ;  treatise  on  the 
Plague,  292 ;  on  Patience,  Zeal, 
and  Envy,  Exhortation  to  Martyr- 
dom, 293  ;  place  in  ecclesiastical 
history,  293  ;  controversy  with  the 
confessors,  294  ;  work  on  the  unity 
of  the  Church,  295  ;  against  the 
Jews,  295  ;  "  De  Opere  et  Elee- 
mosynis,"  366, ;/.  ;  commemorated 
by  I'rudentius,  366. 

Damasus,  St.,  on  Lactantius,  329; 
elected  pope,  344  ;  hymns  of,  353  ; 
St.  Jerome's  submission  to,  408. 

"De  Agrorum  Qualitate,"  "De  (Jon- 
troversiis,"  "  De  Limitibus,"  "  De 
Controversiis  Aquarum,"  frag- 
ments of  Frontinus,  176. 

Declamations,  system  ridiculed  by 
Petronius,  100. 

Decline  of  eloquence,  Tacitus's  dia- 
logue on,  48,  171,  187,  188. 

"De  Excusationibus,"  Ulpian'swork, 

239- 
Deidamia,  59. 
Delatores,  universal    reprobation   of, 

132  ;  greatest  rage  of,  under  Do- 

mitian,  194. 
Demetrianus  (or  Demetrius),  291. 
Demetrianus,  a  friend  of  Lactantius, 

329- 
Dialogue  on  the  decline  of  eloquence, 

ascribed  to  Quinctilian,  171. 

Dialogue  on  oratory  of  Tacitus,  179. 

Dictys  and  Dares,  apocryphal  histo- 
ries of,  385. 

Digests,  238,  239. 

Dio,  224. 

Diogenes  Laertius,  261. 

Diomedes,  grammarian,  387. 

Dioscorides,  300. 

Diviners,  136. 

Dolabella,  Cornelius,  136,  n. 

Domitian,  occupied  with  poetry,  67  ; 
Suetonius's  view  of  his  adminis- 
tration, 230. 


Domitius,  follower  of  Pompeius,  46, 

47- 
Domitius,  grannnarian,  267. 

Donatus,  a  confessor,  221  ;  Lactan- 

tius's    work    addressed    to,    325, 

328. 
Donatus,  ^^ilius,  grammarian,  317; 

Grammar  and  Commentaries,  etc., 

of,  387  ;  St.  Jerome  studies  under, 

406. 
Donatus,    Tiberius     Claudius,    the 

Younger,  389. 
Dracontius,    443;    "  Ifexaemeron  " 

and  "  Satisfactio,"  444. 
Dream  of  Scii)io,  commented  by  Ma- 

crobius,  394. 
Drepanius,    Latinus   Pacatus,   334 ; 

praise  of  Theodosius,  335. 
Druids  turned  professors,  355. 
Druidesses,  prophecy  of,  309. 
Drusus,  143,  213. 

Ebert,  273,  364. 
i  "Ecclesiastical  writers,"  by  St.  Je- 
'      rome,  231. 

Economic  condition  of  different 
classes,  according  to  Martial,  106; 
to  Juvenal,  123;  to  Pliny,  167. 

Edict  of  the  curule  aediles,  comment- 
ed on  by  Sabinus,  237  ;  by  Ulpian, 
239  ;  by  Julius  Paul  us,  239. 

Edict,  praetor's,  superseded  by  edict- 
inn  perpetuum,  242. 

Education,  Pliny's  foundation  at  Co- 
mum  for,  168;  of  children  intrust- 
ed to  Greek  dependents,  188. 

Elections,  contested,  in  the  Church, 
344,  391,  397.  408. 

Electricity,  importance  to  Roman 
ideas,  17. 

Emerson,  92. 

Endowments,  168,  242  ;  charitable, 
of  the  age  of  Trajan,  327  ;  relig- 
ious, spared  by  Constantine,  391. 

Ennodius,  author  of  puzzles  and  epi- 
grams, 459 ;  Panegyricon  Theo- 
doric,  "  Eucharisticum,"  Letters 
and  Lives  of  St.  Epiphanius  and 
Antonius,  460. 

Epicurus  quoted  by  Seneca,  14. 

Epigrams,  Seneca's,  on  natural  phe- 
nomena, 19  ;  on  his  exile,  23  ;  of 
Ovid  and  Lucan,  42 ;  of  Tacitus, 
48;  Martial's,  to  Flaccus,  67,  w.; 


INDEX. 


473 


virtual    demands    for   blackmail, 

107  ;  on  Zoiius,  123  ;  bitterness  of 

Tacitus,  193,  200,  205  ;  on  Marcus 

Aurelius,  344;  of  Ausonius,  354; 

Claudian's,  on  General  Jacob,  375 ; 

of  St.  Jerome,  408. 
Epitaph,  Martial's,  on  Erotion,  117. 
Equestrian  Fortune,  temple  of,  215. 
Erfurdt's  edition  of  Ammianus  Mar- 

cellinus,  347. 
Erudition,  frivolous,  of  Aulus   Gel- 

lius's  contemporaries,  265,  266. 
Eltruscus,  his   baths   advertised   by 

Martial,  107. 
Etymologicon  Magnum,  231. 
I'Aumthius,  387. 
Eugenius,  391. 
Eugippius,  464. 
Eulalia,  St.,  hymns  on,  367. 
Eumenius,  331,  332. 
Eunapius,  347. 
Eusebius,  his  history  continued  by 

Rutin  us,  413,  n. 
Eustochium,  St.,  St.  Jerome's  Letter 

to,  406,  409. 
Eutropius,    historical    Compendium 

of,  338,  339- 

Fabianus,  20. 

Fabiola,  408,  414. 

P'abius  Mela,  236. 

Fabius  Rusticus,  215. 

Fabius  Valens,  198. 

Faltonia  Proba,  436,  437. 

Favorinus,  friend  of  Aulus  Gellius, 
267. 

Florus,  L.  (.''  Julius)  Annaeus,  date 
of,  233;  epitome,  234;  authori- 
ties and  style,  235. 

Fonteius,  36. 

Forgery,  Annals  of  Tacitus  sup- 
posed to  be  a,  2 1 7. 

I'reedmen,  rich,  of  Campania,  88,  92. 

Frontinus,  Sextus  Julius,  176  ;  wrote 
on    tactics,    176;    on    aqueducts, 

177  ;  estimate  of  Domitian,  style, 

178  ;  lost  work  by,  317. 
Fronto,  M.  Cornelius,  102  ;  head  of 

a  literary  period,  241  ;  tutor  of 
Marcus  Aurelius,  243  ;  linguistic 
criticisms,  244  ;  literary  criticisms, 
245  ;  correspondence  and  speech- 
es, 246. 
Fulgentius,  theologian,  442. 


Fulgentius,  grammarian,  442. 
Fulvius,  L.,  238. 
Fuscus,  Cornelius,  203. 

Gaius,  239. 

Galba,  194-196;  Suetonius's  Life  of, 

228. 
Gallic  einpire  proclaimed,  198. 
Gallio,  103. 
Game,  definitions   of,  in   the   third 

century,  299. 
Gastronomical  refinements,  accord- 
ing to  Persius,  85  i  to  Petronius, 

89,  91. 
Gaul,  pagan  rhetoricians  of,  329. 
Gaume,  Abbe,  on  Lucan,  38. 
Gellius.     See  Aulus. 
Gennadius,  438,  447. 
Georgics,  300. 

German  army,  revolt  of,  201,  202. 
Germanicus,  second    campaign    of, 

211;    death   of,    213;    Suetonius 

on,  225. 
"Germany,"  of  Tacitus,  191-193. 
Glabrios,  father  and  son,  133. 
Glass,  inventor  of  flexible,  96. 
Gnostics,  Tertullian  against,  283. 
Gnosticism,  of  Arnobius,  318. 
Gordian,  "  Antoninias  "  of  the  elder, 

298. 
Gracchus,  134. 
Grammaticomastix,     of    Ausonius, 

355- 
Gratius,  299. 

Greek,  language  of  fashionable  con- 
versation, 241  ;  histories  compiled 
in,  306. 

Gregory,  St.,  of  Nazianzus,  408. 

Gromatic,  works  on  land-surveying, 
176. 

Grunnius,  Jerome's  name  for  Rufi- 
11  us,  413. 

Hadrian's   decree,  or  unanimity  of 

jurisconsults,  238. 
Hannibal,  view  of,  in  Silius  Italicus, 

64. 
H  el  V  id  ins  Priscus,  206. 
Helvidius,  opponent  of  St.  Jerome, 

410. 
Hercules    Epitrapezius,   of    Statius 

and  Martial,  76. 
Herennius  Modestinus,  240. 
Herodes  Atticus,  270. 


474 


INDEX. 


Herodian,  314,  339. 

Hilary,  St.,  of  Poitiers,  395  ;  treatise 
on  the  Faith,  attack  on  Constan- 
tius,  and  Hymns,  396;  on  the 
Psalter  and  the  Synods,  copied 
by  St.  Jerome,  406. 

Hippolytus,  St.,  legend  of,  366. 

Horace,  Suetonius's  Life  <c>i,  231  ; 
Metres  of,  by  Servius,  389. 

Hordeonius  Flaccus,  199,  201. 

Hortalus,  210. 

Husbandry,  Pliny  on,  155. 

Hyperides,  loi. 

Icelus,  198. 

Idmon,  69. 

Immussulus,  the  bird,  153. 

Imperial  Commentaries,  182. 

Indian  mastiffs,  legend  of,  in  Pliny, 

152. 
Institutes,  of  Gains,  239  ;  of  Ulpian 

and  /Elius  Marcianus,  239,  240. 
'*  Instructiones  "  of  Commodian,  298. 
Irenaeus,  St.,  283. 
Isis,  many  names  for,  in  Apuleius, 

256. 

Jahn,  134. 

Javolenus  Priscus,  167,  236,  237. 

Jerome,  St.  (Eusebius  Hieronymus), 
finds  Persius  obscure,  75,  11.  ;  his 
reference  to  Tacitus's  Annals,  216 ; 
to  Suetonius's  Lives  of  Men  of 
Letters,  231  ;  on  Victorinus,  386  ; 
on  St.  Ambrose,  400,  401  ;  his 
birth  and  studies,  406  ;  a  "  Cice- 
ronian not  a  Christian,"  407  ;  He- 
brew studies,  Letter  to  Helvidius, 
and  Life  of  Paul  ( the  Hermit ), 
408;  relations  with  noble  ladies, 
408,  409,  418;  polemic  against 
Helvidius,  Vigilantius,  and  Jovin- 
ian,  410 ;  translation  of  Origen 
and  Didymus,  411;  controversy 
with  Rufinus,  411,  412;  preface 
to  Lamentations,  414  ;  Commen- 
taries, 414;  Letters,  414-418; 
Life  of  St.  Hilarion,  of  St.  Mal- 
chus,  historical  works,  416  ;  writ- 
ers mentioned  by,  417  ;  transla- 
tion of  the  Scriptures,  418. 

Jewish  war,  195 ;   origin  of  Jewish 
nation,  199. 

John  Foster,  38. 


John,  Bishop  of  Jerusalem,  411. 

John  of  Salisbury,  216. 

Jornandes,  461. 

Josephus,  195,  215. 

Jovinian,  St.  Jerome's   controversy 
with,  410. 

Jowett,  Professor,  320. 

Juba,  followed  by  Victorinus,  386. 

Judicia  Pnblica,  work  on,  by  Maeci- 
anus,  239. 

Julia,  daughter  of  Germanica,  3. 

Julian,  334. 

Julian  law,  122. 

Julius    Caesar,  Suetonius's   Life  of, 
221,  223. 

Julius  Canus,  II. 

Julius  Capitolinus,  306. 

Julius    Martialis,  Tacitus's    phrase 
about,  200. 

Julius  Obsequens,  385. 

Julius  Solinus.     See  Solinus. 

Junius  Cordus,  305. 

Junius  Mauricianus,  238. 

Juvenal,  77  ;  perhaps  the  same  as 
Martial's  friend,  118;  alternative 
dates  of  ist  and  15th  Satires,  118; 
of  the  7th  and  8ih,  119;  of  the 
I2th,  13th,  and  14th,  120;  of  the 
earlier  ones,  121  ;  misogyny  of, 
122;  irreligion  of,  124;  laudator 
teviporis  acti,  125 ;  13th  Satire, 
127;  15th  Satire,  128;  12th  and 
14th,  128, 129;  lothand  11  ih,  129; 
council  of  the  turbot,  133  ;  6th 
Satire,  134;  cruelty  and  supersti- 
tion of  Roman  ladies,  135,  136; 
composed  slowly,  138 ;  oratorical 
reforms  referred  to  by,  188;  Sue- 
tonius's Life  of,  231. 
Juvencus  Vettius  Aquilinus,  para- 
phrase of  the  Gospels  by,  351  ;  of 
the  Old  Testament  ascril)ed  to, 
352  ;  mentioned  by  St.  Jerome, 
417. 
Juventius  Celsus,  237. 

Labeo,  Ateius,  36. 

Labeo,  M.  Antistius,  236,  237. 

Lactantius,  L.  Cselius  Lactantius 
Flamianus,  233  ;  pupil  of  Arno- 
biiis,  323  ;  "Symposium,"  "Gram- 
maticus,"  323 ;  "  De  Opificio  Dei," 
"De  Ira  Dei,"  324;  "DeMortibus 
Persecutorum  "  ascribed  to,  325  ; 


INDEX. 


475 


historical  authority  of,  328 ;  criti- 
cisms of  philosophy  in,  326,  327  ; 
books  of  letters,  329. 

Laurence,  St.,  hymn  for,  367. 

Leges  Julia  et  Papia  Poppa-a,  238. 

Leo,  St.,  395;  Sermons  and  Letters 
on  the  Incarnation,  442. 

Lepidus,  M.  /Emilius,  206. 

Letters  of  Aurelian  toZenobia,  311  ; 
of  Ausonius,  349  ;  of  Cassiodorus, 
464,  467 ;  of  Cicero,  245  ;  of 
Fronto  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  244, 
247 ;  to  Appian,  Verus,  and  the 
elder  Antoninus,  246  ;  of  Longi- 
nus,  312  ;  of  Lactantius,  329  ;  of 
Pliny,  142,  165,  169,  392  ;  of  Sex- 
tus  Pomponius,  238  ;  of  St.  Am- 
brose, 404  ;  of  St.  Cyprian  to  Do- 
natus,  290  ;  of  St.  Jerome,  406, 
409, 414, 416,  418  ;  of  Symmachus, 
392  ;  of  Tertullian  to  the  martyrs, 
278 ;  of  Valerian  on  Vopiscus, 
312. 

Libanius,  340. 

Libellatics,  St.  Cyprian's  treatment 
of,  293. 

Liberius,  St.,  344- 

Libo,  225. 

Libraries,  Trimalchio's  three,  95. 

Linguistic  refinements  of  Fronto, 
244;  in  Aulus  Gellius,  267,  271. 

Linguistic  degeneracy,  signs  of,  in 
Minucius  Felix,  274;  in  Commo- 
dian, 297  ;  Nemesianus,  299  ;  Au- 
gustan  histories,  316;   Juvencus, 

,  .351- 

Literary  activity  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, 317. 

Literature,  in  Seneca's  day,  5 ;  Nero's 
death  an  epoch  in  Latin,  141  ; 
Quinctilian's    review    of  Roman, 

Livia,  213. 

Locusta,  212. 

Lucan's  "  Pharsalia,"  35, 39-46,  174  ; 
rejection  of  mythology  in,  37  ; 
mediaeval  popularity  of,  38 ;  early 
death,  38 ;  pessimism,  47  ;  repu- 
tation, 48;  Salticcp  fahulcE  by,  50; 
Statius's  ode  to  his  widow,  58; 
Suetonius's  Life  of,  231.    ■ 

Lucilius  compared  with  Persius,  75. 

Lucilius,  Fornix  of,  319. 

Lucilius,  Junior,  poem  on  /Etna,  28. 


Lucretius,  referred  to  by  Seneca,  10, 
16  ;  painstaking  scientific  expla- 
nations of,  19. 

Lyons,  games  at,  referred  to  by  Ju- 
venal, 330. 

Macaulay's  "Lays,"  64;  criticism 
on  St.  Augustin's  "Confessions," 
420. 

Macer,  36. 

Macleane,  130. 

Macrobius,  Ambrosias  Theodosius, 
on  Praetextatus,  393 ;  his  "  Sa- 
turnalia," 394;   dream  of  Scipio, 

394- 
Magic,  Pliny  on,  159;  St.  Augustm, 

430- 
Mamertinus,  speeches  to  Maximian, 

330 ;  Mamertinus  to  Julian,  334, 

335- 

Manilius,  19,  299. 

Marcellina,  St.,  sister  of  St.  Am- 
brose, 401. 

Marcellinus,  friend  of  Seneca,  14. 

Marcellus  Eprius,  186,  198. 

Marcion,  282. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  legal  education  of, 
239  ;  pupil  of  Fronto,  241  ;  epi- 
gram on,  344. 

Marius  Maximus,  continuator  of 
Suetonius,  304. 

Marius,  proconsul  of  Africa,  164; 
prosecuted  by  Tacitus,  179. 

Market  laws,  93  ;  case  concerning  a 
private  market,  169. 

Maroboduus,  211. 

Marriage  of  heiresses,  emperor's 
traffic  in,  335. 

Marsus,  continuator  of  Ovid,  36. 

Martial,  Julius  Martialis,  114. 

Martial,  M.  Valerius  Martialis,  on 
Lucan,  49  ;  praise  of  his  contem- 
poraries, 76  ;  privileges  conferred 
on,  103;  return  to  Bilbilis,  103; 
epigrams,  104 ;  petition  to  Domi- 
tian,  106;  on  gifts  of  wine,  etc., 
108;  Mamurra,  109  ;  epigrams  for 
patrons,  no,  ill;  consolatory 
poems,  112;  gallantry,  113;  lines 
to  Julius,  114;  to  TituUus,  115; 
lack  of  passion,  Ii6  ;  accepts  mon- 
ey from  Pliny,  167. 

Marus,  65. 

Maiernus,   Curiatius,   his    "Cato,'* 


476 


INDEX. 


184;  appears  in  Tacitus's  "Dia- 
logue on  Oratory,"  185,  186. 

Maternus,  Firmicus,  {a)  writes  on 
astrology,  383  ;  {b)  writes  against 
idolatry,  384. 

Maximianus,  468. 

Maximus,  misgovernment  of,  335. 

Medea,  of  Seneca,  24  ;  of  Apollonius 
Rhodius,  Valerius  Flaccus,  69-71. 

Melania,  415. 

Menippean  Satire,  99. 

Merobaudis,  Flavius,  panegyric  on 
Aetius,  378,  379  ;  elegiac  poems, 
380. 

Messaila,  in  "Tacitus,"  203. 

Metre,  of  Seneca's  choruses,  28  ;  of 
Statius's  lyrics,  57  ;  of  Petronius, 
100  ;  of  Prudeniius,  362  ;  of  Am- 
brosian  hymns,  405. 

Michael,  Hugo,  340,  //. 

Minucius,  M.  Minucius  Felix,  date 
of,  uncertain,  272;  his  "Octavius," 
272-274;  followed  by  Tertullian, 

281. 
Mommsen,  edition  of  Julius  Solinus 

by,  297- 

Money  -  lending,  of  Seneca,  5  ;  of 
Trimalchio,  88 ;  of  usurers  in  St. 
Ambrose's  day,  402  ;  money-mak- 
ing impossible  in  liberal  profes- 
sions, 105. 

Montanus  Curtius,  133. 

Mopsus,  Valerius,  on  prophecy  of,  69. 

Mucianus,  196,  198,  202,  203. 

Mucins,  enacted  by  a  criminal,  in. 

Mucius,  P.  Mucius  Scaevola,  the 
Augur,  153. 

Nasidienus,  97. 

Nazarius  of  Bordeaux,  333,  334. 

Nemesianus,  M.  Aurelius  Olympius, 
treatise  on  hunting,  etc.,  299. 

Neratius,  237. 

"Nero,"  tragedy  of  Curiatius  Ma- 
ternus, 185  ;  Suetonius's  Life  of, 
227. 

Nerva,  M.  Cocceius,  237. 

Nerva  restores  water  rents  to  the 
State,  178. 

Nevitta,  334. 

Nigidius  Figulus,  17. 

Note-books  published  under  various 
names,  264. 

Novatian,  295. 


Novellius  Torquatus,  156. 

Numatian,  Claudius  Kutilius  Nu- 
matianus,  denunciation-  of  monks 
and  Jews,  376;  Roman  patriotism 

of,  377- 
Numerian,  299. 

Octavian,  Life  of,  by  Suetonius,  223. 
"Octavius"  of  Minucius  Felix,  272. 
Olenus  Calenus,  158. 
Omens   recorded   by  Tacitus,   207  ; 

Ammianus    Marcellinus's    regard 

for,  345. 
Optatianus,    Publilius     Porphyrins, 

metrical  trifling  of,  351. 
Origen,  translated  by  St.  Jerome  and 

Rufinus,  411. 
Orosius,  disciple  of  Augustin,  441. 
Otho,  soldiers'  grievance   redressed 

bv,    183  ;    Tacitus's    estimate    of, 

195  ;  "  Suetonius,"  22S. 
Ovid,  35. 

Ptcnnla,  habit  of  speaking  in,  188. 

Panaetius,  399. 

Panegyric  on  Piso,  33,  131  ;  Pliny's 
on  I'rajan,  162. 

Papinian,  ^milius  Papinianus,  239, 
296. 

Papirius  Justus,  239. 

Paris,  121. 

Parrhasius,  152. 

Parthenius,  I  lo,  II2. 

Parthian  pretenders,  supported  by 
Rome,  212  ;  Tacitus's  account  of, 
215. 

Passienus,  167. 

Paula,  friend  of  St.  Jerome,  408, 409  ; 
letter  on  her  death,  415. 

Paulinus  (Maropius  Pontus  Anicius 
Paulinus),  Pp.  of  Nola,  author  of 
letters  and  poems,  436 ;  corre- 
spondent of  Ausonius,  359. 

Paullus,  Martial's  patron, 64,  65,  no. 

Paulus,  a  jurist,  237,  239. 

Paul  us,  a  correspondent  of  Ausonius, 

359- 
Pegasus,  founder  of  Pegasian  school, 

Pelagius,  413. 

Pentadius,  350. 

I^ejiwi,  dialogue  on  meaning  of,  268. 

Peridorus,  154. 

Pcriegesis,  353. 


INDEX. 


477 


Persians  described  by  Ammianus 
Marcellinus,  348. 

Persius,  36,  75  ;  early  writings,  78 ; 
reproduces  Horace's  philosophy, 
80;  his  Stoicism,  82;  ideas  of 
wealth,  83  ;  indifference  to  the 
country,  84;  humor,  84;  imita- 
tiveness,  85. 

Pervigilium  Veneris,  262. 

Peter's  edition  of  Augustan  histo- 
ries, 306. 

Petronius  Arbiter,  Governor  of  Bi- 
thynia,  novel  by,  87  ;  supper  of 
Trimalchio,  88-96  ;  adventures  of 
the  literati  at  Crotona,  98  ;  style, 
99  ;  verses  on  the  fall  of  Troy  and 
the  civil  war,  99 ;  metres,  classi- 
cism of,  100. 

"  Pharsalia,"  Lucan's,  35,  37,  39,  41- 

Philemon,  261. 

P'holus,  129. 

Piso,  C.  Calpurnius,  Seneca  com- 
promised   by,   5 ;    panegyric    on, 

33- 
Piso,  L.  Calpurnius,  206,  226. 

Piso,  L.  Calpurnius,  the  annalist, 
270. 

piso,  Cn.,  accused  of  poisoning  Ger- 
manicus,  213. 

Plancina,  213. 

Plancus,  153. 

Plato,  Apuleius's  work  on  his  doc- 
trines, 254. 

Plautus,  morality  of,  compared  with 
the  mimes,  102. 

Pleaders  resort  to  Africa,  242. 

Pliny,  the  Elder  (C.  Plinius  Secun- 
dus),  his  vast  compilation,  142  ; 
"  German  Wars,"  3  books  of 
"  Studies,"  143  ;  8  books  on  points 
of  style,  144;  31  in  continuation 
of  Aufidius  Bassus,  Natural  His- 
tory, and  rolls  of  extracts,  144 ; 
uncritical,  145  ;  splenetic,  146 ; 
his  denunciation  of  idolatry,  147  ; 
astronomy,  148  ;  physical  geogra- 
phy, 149  ;  ethnology  and  physio- 
logical marvels,  150;  4  books  of 
zoology,  151  ;  werewolves,  farm 
and  domestic  animals,  152;  birds, 
^lli^  154  ;  eggs,  insects,  and  plants, 
155  ;  on  wine,  156  ;  on  wopds  and 
medicine,  157;  the  mandrake, 
timely   death,  enchantments   and 


prodigies,  158;  magic,  mineral- 
ogy, and  gems,  159,  160 ;  on  gest- 
ure, 174;  Suetonius's  Life  of,  231  ; 
Aulus  Gellius  on,  270  ;  Natural 
History  used  by  later  writers, 
297,  300. 

Pliny,  the  Younger,  on  Seneca,  23  ; 
programme  of  historical  poem 
followed  by  Lucan,  42  ;  on  Silius, 
63  ;  correspondence  with  Trajan, 
120,  164;  his  real  success  as  a 
letter  writer,  142  ;  quotation  from, 
161,  162  ;  his  speeches,  162  ;  pan- 
egyric on  Trajan,  163;  9  books  of 
private  letters,  165  ;  presents  to 
Mariial  and  Quinctilian,  167,  171  ; 
school  for  free-born  children  en- 
dowed by,  168 ;  letters  to  Taci- 
tus, 169;  estimate  of  his  oratory, 
179  ;  self-respect,  336  ;  dislike  of 
Javolenus  Priscus,  237. 

Poggio  Bracciolini,  216. 

Polla,  wife  of  Lucan,  58. 

Pollio,  187. 

llo\v7rpayfiO(TvvT],  27 1. 

Pomerium,  enlargement  of,  215. 

Pompeius,  133. 

Pompeius  Trogus,  304. 

Pomponius  Mela,  geography  of,  297. 

Pomponius  Sabinus,  62. 

Pomponius  Secundus,  28 ;  his  trag- 
edies, 185. 

Pomponius,  Sextus,  237,  238. 

Pomponius,  "Marsyas"  of,  319. 

Pontia,  137. 

Pontius,  biographer  of  St.  Cyprian, 
290. 

Poppaeus  vSabinus,  190.. 

Por|)hyry,  translated  by  Victorinus, 
386  ;  criticism  on  magic,  430. 

Posidonius,  399. 

Prastextatus,  Vettius  Agorius,  a 
learned  Pagan,  393. 

Praetor's  edict,  Salvius  Julianus  on, 
238  ;  superseded,  242. 

Praxeas,  Tertullian  against,  287. 

Presents,  given  by  Romans  at  the 
Saturnalia,  107,  108  ;  acknowl- 
edged by  Martial,  no. 

Priscillianists,  335. 

Priniipilus^  perquisites  of,  ng. 

Prize  poems  of  Nemesianus,  299. 

Probabilia,  of  Capito,  236. 

Prosecutions,  official  records  of,  un- 


478 


INDEX. 


trustworthy,  182  ;  State  prosecu- 
tions under  the  empire,  204. 

Prosper,  of  Aquitaine,  441. 

Provinces,  favor  shown  to,  by  Ti- 
berius and  Claudius,  205. 

Prudentius,  Aurelius  Prudentius 
Clemens,  hymn  on  St.  Eulalia  and 
Cathemerinon,    360 ;    metres    of, 

362  ;  "  Peristephanon  "  and  "  Ha- 
rnartigenia,"  361-363, 366  ;  Apoth- 
eosis,   controversial    hexameters, 

363  ;  2  books  against  Synmiachus, 

364  ;  Psychoniachia,  364,  365. 
Publius,  133. 

Publius  Syrus,  102. 

*'  Punica  "'  of  Silius,  63,  142. 

Purple  dyes  of  Laconia  and  Taren- 

tum,  108,  11. 
Pythagoras,  261. 

Qiiadrigarius,  Claudius,  270. 

*'  Questions  "  of  Papinian  and  Cal- 
listratus,  239. 

Quinctilian,  M.  Fabius  Quinctilla- 
nus,  on  Seneca,  i,  28,  173  ;  "  Me- 
dea" quoted  by,  24;  on  Lucan, 
40,  174  ;  on  Valerius  Fiaccus,  67  ; 
on  Cicero,  Horace,  and  Vergil, 
173  ;  on  Julius  Secundus,  on  Pom- 
ponius  Secundus,  185  ;  on  Mater- 
nus,  185  ;  referred  to,  102,  124,  142, 
167  ;  his  birth,  171  ;  12  books  on 
training  of  an  orator,  171,  396; 
views  on  grammar  and  rhetoric, 
172;  on  etiquette,  174. 

Recitations,  practice  of,  77,  142. 
Regenerare^  Pliny's  use  of,  157. 
Regulus,  the  "  Punica"  on,  65. 
Regulus,  M.  Aquilius,  contemporary 

of  Martial,   76,   132  ;    a   rival   of 

Pliny,  165- 
Rents,  high  in  Rome,  123;  returns 

of,  made  by  Pliny,  164. 
Reposianus,  350. 
Responsa  of  Sabinus,  237  ;  of  Ulpi- 

an,  Papinian,  and  Julius   Paulus, 

239. 
Ribbeck,  120,  134,  387. 

Roman  education  criticised  by  Pe- 
tronius,  loi. 

Roman  law,  axiom  of,  269  ;  elabora- 
tion of  ends,  296. 

Romanus,  St.,  hymn  for,  367. 


Rome,  the  city,  conversion  of,  367. 
Rufinus,    associate    of   St.   Jerome, 

406;    controversy  with,  410-412; 

translates     Origen,    411  ;     other 

translations,  death,  413. 
Rufus,  Instantius,  no. 
Rural  parts  of  the  empire,  state  of, 

258,  330- 
Rutilius.     See  Numatian. 

Sabellus,  106. 

Sabinus,  Bishop,  contemporary  of 
St.  Ambrose,  404. 

Sabinus  Caelius,  237. 

Sabinus,  Masurius,  author  of  "An- 
swers," 237. 

Saleius  Bassus,  33,  131,  186. 

Sallust,  contrasted  with  Tacitus, 
207  ;  latest  writer  approved  by 
Fronto,  245. 

Salmasius,  308. 

Salvian,  395,  447  ;  "  On  the  present 
judgment  of  God,"  447. 

Salvius  Julianus,  236,  238. 

Sammonicus,  Serenus,  poem  on 
medical  recipes,  300-302. 

Samos,  Apuleius's  description  of, 
261. 

Sanqualis,  the  bird,  153. 

Satire,  increasing  importance  in  Fla- 
vian and  Claudian  ages,  75. 

Saturnalia,  presents  for,  107. 

Scaeva,  41. 

Scaevola,  Q.  Cervidius,  239. 

vScantinian  law,  122. 

Scapula,  Tertullian's  memorial  to, 
284. 

Sedulius,  paraphrast,  443. 

vSejanus,  212-214. 

Sempronius  Proculus,  237. 

Seneca,  born  in  Spain,  i  ;  early 
work  on  anger,  2,  6  ;  intercourse 
with  Roman  ladies,  banishment, 
3  ;  apology  for  Nero,  4  ;  enormous 
w-ealth  of,  4,  141,  142  ;  treatise  on 
benefits,  on  clemency,  letters  to 
Lucilius,  6,  13  ;  de  Otio  Sni)icntis, 
7;  on  mental  tranquillity,  8,  9; 
on  shortness  of  life,  12  ;  7  books 
of  natural  questions,  16  ;  igno- 
rance of  physical  science,  16;  on 
comets,  18;  description  of  a  del- 
uge, 19-22  ;  satire  on  the  death 
of  Claudian,    23  ;  plays  ascribed 


INDEX, 


479 


to,  Agamemnon,  25  ;  Medea,  24- 
26  ;  Octavia,  Oidipus,  25,  26,  28  ; 
Hercules  Gitaeus,  25  ;  Troades, 
25,  26  ;  Thyestes,  26,  27  ;  Hip- 
polytus,  27,  28  ;  asceticism  of,  85. 

Sentius  Augurinus,  170,  ;/. 

Septimius,  translation  of  Dictys  by, 

3«5- 
Serenus,  Septimius,  298. 

Serranus,  84. 

Serviiis,  Honoratus,  317  ;  commen- 
tary on  Vergil,  388 ;  on  Donatus, 
388  ;  Centimeter,  388 ;  followed 
by  Macrobius,  394. 

Servius  Probus,  231. 

Severus  Cassius,  173. 

S^z'ir  Aitgiistalis,  88. 

Sextus    Rufus   abridged   Eutropius, 

339- 

Shows,  94. 

Sidonius,  Caius  Sollius  Apollinaris, 
121,  163,  165;  letters  and  poems, 
445,  446. 

Silius  Italicus,  clearer  than  Lucan, 
41  ;  politician  and  patron,  63  ; 
"Punica,"  63,  298,  299;  mythol- 
ogy of,  66. 

Slaves,  fashion  of  sorting  by  age  and 
color,  13  ;  Seneca's  treatment  of, 
15  ;  labor  of,  universal,  131  ;  slave 
crucified  by  Trimalchio,  89  ;  pet 
boys,  90,  94  ;  Martial's  lines  on  a 
little  girl,  112,  113. 

Socrates,  11  ;  Apuleius  on  the  God 
of,  252  ;  favorite  line  of,  266. 

Soda/es  in  Martial,  105. 

"Soldier's  Crown,"  Tertullian  on 
the,  276. 

Solinus,  Julius  (Polyhistor),  on  mem- 
orable things,  296,  297  ;  abridges 
Pliny,  297. 

Sostratus,  126. 

Statins,  stanzas  of,  28;  estimate  of 
Lucan,  48  ;  his  "  Thebaid,"  48,  49, 
56  ;  his  family,  49  ;  first  known  as 
an  iviproz'isatore,  50  ;  imitation  of 
Vergil,  52  ;  political  insight  shown 
by,  54  ;  female  characters  the  more 
life-like,  56. 

Stephen,  St.,  295. 

Stilicho,  death  of,  368. 

Stoical  sages,  abstinence  from  pub- 
lic affairs  of,  6. 

Stoicism,  Seneca's  leaning  to,  208; 


Tacitus's  attitude  towards,  206 ; 
Alii  us  Gellius's  attitude  towards, 
269. 

Strategematon  of  Frontinus,  176. 

Suetonius,  C.  Suetonius  Tranquillus, 
Caligula's  criticism  on  Seneca  pre- 
served by,  2  ;  secretary  to  Trajan 
and  Hadrian,  220 ;  Lives  of  the 
Caesars,  220-230 ;  Lives  of  men 
of  letters,  231  ;  works  on  gramma- 
rians and  rhetoricians,  '•  Prata," 
"  Ludicra,"  on  Greek  and  Roman 
games,  defence  of  Cicero  and  dic- 
tionary of  abuse,  231. 

Suetonius  Optatianus,  Life  of  Taci- 
tus by,  313. 

Suetonius  Paulinus,  190,  228. 

Suicide,  fashion  of.  131  ;  Pliny's  en- 
thusiasm for,  168 ;  Quinctilian's 
declamation  on,  174. 

Suidas,  231,  338. 

Sulla,  151. 

Sulpicia,  Martial  on,  115;  surviving 
work  of,  139. 

Sulpicius  Severus,  Tacitus  quoted 
by,  195,  216;  Life  of  St.  Martin 
by,  437;  Pelagian  leanings  of,  438. 

Sumptuary  laws  of  Aurelian,  310. 

Sibyl,  quoted  by  Lactantius,  325. 

Sibylline  books,  Valerius  Fiaccus  a 
keeper  of,  67  ;  Praetextatus,  a  keep- 
er of,  393  ;  consulted  by  Aurelian, 
312  ;  destruction  of,  377. 

Symmachus,  Q.  Aurelius,  329  ;  cor- 
respondent of  Ausonius,  359  ;  his 
f;Uher,  389 ;  mentioned  by  Liba- 
nius,  390  ;  memoir  to  the  younger 
Valentinian,  391  ;  letters,  official 
and  private,  391,  392. 

Tacitus,  130 ;  letter  from  Pliny  to, 
162,  169;  mannerism  of,  179;  Di- 
alogue on  Oratory,  179,  184;  An- 
nals and  Histories,  180  ;  a  contin- 
uator  of  other  historians,  181  ;  tra- 
dition of  good  society  embodied 
in,  182;  state  in  danger  of  bank- 
ruptcy, 183  ;  importance  given  to 
personalities  in,  184;  imitation  of 
Cicero,  185;  Agricola,  189,  190; 
style  of,  190;  "Germania,"  191- 
193;  ethnology  of,  191  ;  on  cus- 
toms and  institutions,  192 ;  lost 
books,   194;   histories,   195-204; 


48o 


INDEX. 


f 


illiberal,  205 ;  superstitions  of, 
207  ;  fatalism,  208 ;  reign  of  Tibe- 
rius, 208-211  ;  imperial  intrigues, 
212,  213  ;  projected  histories,  in- 
accuracies, 214,  215  ;  style,  218. 

Tacitus,  the  Emperor,  217,  31 1,  313. 

Talking  birds,  in  Pliny,  154. 

Taxes,  obscure  account  of,  in  Taci- 
tus, 183  ;  remitted  by  Julian,  335  ; 
kept  down  by  Valentinian  and  Va- 
lens,  343. 

Terence,  Life  of,  by  Suetonius,  231. 

Terentianus  Maurus,  298. 

Terentius  Clemens,  238. 

Tertullian,  Q.  Septimius  Florens 
Tertullianus,  174,  231,  272;  his 
style,  275  ;  date,  276 ;  treatise  on 
the  "  Soldier's  Crown,"  on  prayer, 
baptism,  penitence,  to  the  martyrs, 
and  to  his  wife,  276,  278 ;  pessi- 
mism of,  279 ;  charges  against 
Christians,  280;  "Testimony  of 
the  Soul,"  281  ;  against  the  Gnos- 
tics, Valentinians,  and  Hermoge- 
nes,  282  ;  De  Praescriptione  He- 
reticoruni,  Revelations  of  the  Pa- 
raclete, Tract  on  Spectacles,  283, 
284;  Memorial  to  Scapula,  284; 
on  chastity,  on  women's  dress, 
285  ;  on  the  veiling  of  virgins, 
286 ;  St.  Cyprian's  dependence 
on,  289. 

"  Thebaid  "  of  Statius,  49-56.  142. 

Theoclius,  311. 

Theon,  359. 

Theophile  Gautier,  246. 

Theophrastus  used  by  Pliny,  145. 

Thrasea,  132. 

Tiberianus,  306. 

Tiberius,  financial  crisis  in  the  reign 
of,  183,  226  ;  letter  of,  208;  Taci- 
tus's  account  of,  209,  s(/^.  ;  me- 
moirs of,  212;  Suetonius's  Life 
of,  224. 

Tigellinus,  87. 

Titus,  203. 

Tragedy  of  Seneca  compared  with 
Soph  cles  and  Euripides,  25. 

Trajan,  Pliny's  letters  to,  120,  164-; 
children  included  in  public  lar- 
gesses by,  168. 

Trebellius'Pollio,fragmentaryLifeof 
Valerian  by,  314;  on  thirty  tyrants, 
3H- 


Trimalchio, supper  of.  5'<f^•Petronius. 
Twelve  Tables,  work  on,  by  Gains, 

239-. 
Tzetzes,  231. 

Ulpian,  Domitius  Ulpianus,  237,  239^ 

296. 
Ulpius  Crinitus,  312. 
Ulpius,  Marcellus,  239. 
Urseius  Ferox,  238. 

Vadomarius,  346. 

Valens,  Alburnius,  238. 

Valerius    Flaccus,   Setinus,  67,  68 ; 

native  of  Patavium,  67;   "Argo- 

nautica,"  68-71  ;  most  observant 

of  Roman  poets,  73  ;  development 

of  Scythian  episode,  73. 
Valerius  Maximus,  130  ;  followed  by 

Frontinus,  177. 
Valerius   Probus,  followed  by  Dio- 

medes,  388. 
Varius,  42. 

Varro,  64,  279,  297,  430. 
Vegetarianism,  the  ideal  of  Pruden- 

tius,  361. 
Vegetius,  176,  317. 
Veiento,  133. 
Velleda,  200. 

Venuleius  Saturninus,  238. 
Vergil,  estates  of,  owned  by  Silius, 

63  ;  life  of,  by  younger  Donatus, 

3^9. 
Verginius,    collision    with    Vindex, 

195  ;  popularity  of,  201. 
Verrius  Flaccus,  267,  297. 
Verus,  M.  Vindius,  238. 
Vespasian,    197,    19^;    frugality   of, 

202,   214,  230;   Suetonius's   Life 

of,  229,  230. 
Vestal,  executed  by  Domitian,  168. 
Vettius  Agorius,  442. 
Vibius  Crispus,  133,  186. 
Vibius  Sequester,  389. 
Victor  of  Africa,  late  work  by,  338. 
Victor,  Sextus  Aurehus,  337  ;  de  Vi- 

ris  lUustribus,  338. 
Victorinus,  deputy  of  Ausonius,  355. 
Victorinus,  a  converted  rhetorician, 

387. 

Vigilantius,  410. 

Vincent  of  Lerins,  438  ;   quoted  in 
!      Reformation  controversies,  439. 
i  Vincent,  St.,  367. 


INDEX. 


Vindex,  rising  of,  in  Tacitus,  195. 

Vinius,  198. 

Virro,  97. 

Viteliius,  Tacitus's  account  of,  195- 

198  ;  Suetonius's  account  of,  228. 

Volusius,    L.    Volusius    Mxcianus, 

239- 
Vopiscus,  151. 

Vopiscus,  Flavins,  306,  308,  310. 

Volcacius  Gallicanus,  306,  314. 

Werewolves,  Pliny  on,  152. 
11.— 21 


481 


\\  hale,  sperm,  of  the  Indian  Ocean, 
largest   animal    known    to    Piiny 
^So-  . 

Wines,  Martial  on,  107,  108;  Plinv 
on,  156.  ^ 

Women,  Tacitus  on  German,  192. 

Zeno,  syllogism  of,  controverted  by 

Seneca,  13  ;  beauty  of,  249. 
Zodiac,  Trimalchio's  lecture  on,  92. 
Zoroaster,  159. 
Zosimus,  347. 


THE   END. 


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MOTLEYS  JOHN    OF    BAKNEVELD.     The  Life  and  Death 
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the  Primary  Causes  and  ^^I-^">^"^^,  ^^^     V^r  T         11^.  Un - 
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the  Cape  of  Good  Ho])e  to  Loanda,  on  the  West  Coast ;  thence 
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SCHWEINFURTirs  HEART  OF  AFRICA.  The  Heart  of 
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Dr.  Georg  SciiwEiNFURTH.  Translated  by  Ellen  E.  Frewkr. 
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BOSWELL'S  JOHNSON.  The  Life  of  Samuel  Johnson,  LL.D., 
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BLUNTS    BEDOUIN    TRIBES    OF    THE    EUPHRATES. 

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ENGLISH  CORRESPONDENCE.  Four  Centuries  of  English 
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Lewis  s  History  of   Germany. — Ecclesiastical  His- 
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